Virtue Epistemology
Themes in Ethics and Epistemology
Shane Ryan
s.g.ryan@sms.ed.ac.uk
27/11/13
Structure

1 Virtue Epistemology: Background

2 Virtues: Reliabilism versus Responsibilism

3. Advantages of VE

4. Challenges Facing VE

5. Conclusion
1. Virtue Epistemology: Background
Commitments
1. Epistemology is a normative discipline
2. “[I]ntellectual agents and communities are the
primary source of epistemic value and the
primary focus of epistemic evaluation.” (Greco
and Turri, 2011).
1. Virtue Epistemology: Background
Epistemology as normative discipline
1(a). Denies Quine's claim in “Epistemology
Naturalized” that philosophers should restrict
themselves to cognitive psychology.
1(b). Epistemic norms, values, and evaluations
are proper objects of study for epistemology.
And central concepts or terms, such as
“knowledge”, “evidence”, and “justification”,
may require the use of normative language for
1. Virtue Epistemology: Background
Value and evaluation
2. The second commitment implies a distinctive
direction of analysis. This is a direction of
analysis common to both virtue epistemology
and virtue ethics.
1. Virtue Epistemology: Background
Parallel with Virtue Ethics


“Virtue ethics explains an action's moral properties in terms of
the agent's properties, for instance whether it results from
kindness or spite. VE [virtue epistemology] explains a
cognitive performance's normative properties in terms of the
cognizer's properties, for instance whether a belief results
from hastiness or excellent eyesight, or whether an inquiry
manifests carelessness or discrimination.” (Greco and Turri,
2011.)
The relevant properties in virtue ethics are moral virtues and
vices, and in VE they are intellectual virtues and vices. (Greco
and Turri, 2011.)
1. Virtue Epistemology: Background
There are five primary questions that analyses of
the intellectual virtues should address:
“First, are the virtues natural or acquired?
Second, does virtue possession require the
agent to possess acquired intellectually
virtuous motivations or dispositions to perform
intellectually virtuous actions? Third, are the
virtues distinct from skills? Fourth, are the
virtues reliable? Finally, fifth, what makes the
virtues valuable? Are they instrumentally,
constitutively, or intrinsically valuable?”
1. Virtue Epistemology: Background
Three Key Debates within VE



1. What are intellectual virtues and what is
their scope?
2. What are the questions that VE should
address?
3. What methods should be used? (Greco and
Turri, 2011.)
1. Virtue Epistemology: Background


A range of diverse approaches come under
the label “Virtue Epistemology”.
Two prominent approaches

Virtue reliabilism

Virtue responsibilsm
2 Virtues: Reliabilism versus
Responsibilism
The Nature of Intellectual Virtue
Some epistemologists, such as Ernest Sosa,
define an intellectual virtue as “any stable and
reliable or truth conducive property of a
person”. (Baehr, 2004).
Examples of such virtues cited include vision,
memory, and introspection.
2 Virtues: Reliabilism versus
Responsibilism
Such epistemologists tend to be concerned with
providing virtue based analyses of knowledge
and/or epistemic justification.
Analyses of knowledge tend to be along the lines
of knowledge is true belief arising from the
exercise of epistemic virtue.
The similarity of their position to that of reliablism
2 Virtues: Reliabilism versus
Responsibilism
A second group of epistemologists, including
Linda Zagzebski and Lorraine Code, conceive
intellectual virtues as good intellectual
character traits.
Examples include, open-mindedness, intellectual
thoroughness, fair-mindedness,
inquisitiveness. (Baehr, 2004).
2 Virtues: Reliabilism versus
Responsibilism
The traits that these epistemologists regard as
intellectual virtues might also be viewed as the
traits of a responsible knower or inquirer,
hence the label “virtue responsibilism”. (Baehr,
2004).
The reliabilist/responsibilist taxonomy has
attracted criticism. It's not clear why one must
choose one approach over the other.
2 Virtues: Reliabilism versus
Responsibilism
Conventional versus Alternative
Virtue epistemologists may deploy the resources
of VE in standard or non-standard ways.
- That is, address standard epistemological
questions in standard ways.
Or they may address non-standard questions or
attempt to answer questions in non-standard
ways.
3. Advantages of VE
Answering the sceptic
Virtue epistemologists claim that the approach helps with some
sceptical problems.
Sceptical Problem – All knowledge must be grounded in good
reasons. This threatens to require an infinite regress of
reasons.
But virtue approach can explain why not all knowledge needs
grounding in reasons. Knowledge is true belief grounded in
intellectual virtue but intellectual virtue may involve grounding
in faculties like memory that don't involve inferences. (Greco
and Turri, 2011).
3. Advantages of VE
Epistemic Value
Zagzebski: An adequate account of knowledge
should explain why knowledge is more
valuable than mere true belief.
Epistemic justification might be understood as
the process that brings about true beliefs in
cases of knowledge.
3. Advantages of VE
Consider the following example:
There are two cups of coffee. One has been
made by a machine that reliably produces good
cups of coffee. The other has been made by a
machine that is unreliable. But both cups of
coffee taste good. Typically we don't think that
a cup of coffee is better because of the
machine that produces it, we just care about
the taste.
3. Advantages of VE
Upshot of the example: A true belief is not made
better because it was produced by a reliable
method.
How VE can help: If knowledge is a true belief
because of an intellectual virtue, then there is
an important disanalogy that can help us
explain why knowledge is more valuable that
mere true belief.
Virtue epistemologists can claim that knowledge
4. Challenges Facing VE
Challenge I
“Jennifer Lackey (2007) argues that we do not
deserve credit for everything we know, so (a)
standard VE definitions of knowledge are false,
and (b) VE is not ideally suited to explain
knowledge's value.” (Greco and Turri, 2011).
4. Challenges Facing VE
The Jenny case runs as follows:
Our protagonist, whom we will call “Jenny”,
arrives at the train station in Chicago and,
wishing to obtain directions to the Sears Tower,
approaches the first adult passer by that she
sees. Suppose further that the person that she
asks has first-hand knowledge of the area and
gives her the directions that she requires.
Intuitively, any true belief that Jenny forms on
this basis would ordinarily be counted as
knowledge. (Pritchard, 2010: 40).
4. Challenges Facing VE
Lackey's interpretation of the VE commitment to
credit is that, to gain credit for a true belief,
“your “reliable cognitive faculties” must be “the
most salient part” of the explanation for why
you believe the truth”. (Lackey 2007, 351).
(Greco and Turri, 2011).
If credit arising from virtue were only a necessary or
important part of the explanation, then there would
be Gettier counterexamples. (Lackey 2007, 347–8).
4. Challenges Facing VE
Challenge II
Lackey also points out that innate knowledge
seems to be a counterexample to VE whereby
knowledge can't be thought of as creditable.
(Lackey 2007, 358).
Such knowledge is possible, and an adequate
theory of knowledge should allow for that
conceptual possibility. Nevertheless, “it seems
highly unlikely that a subject would deserve
4. Challenges Facing VE
Challenge III
The situationist challenge:
Our epistemic success may be effected by nonepistemic, situational factors. While this may
be the case, we should want to say that there
can still be knowledge in such cases, but
standard VE approaches would have to deny
this.
4. Challenges Facing VE
Background
According to Homiak (2011) situationists hold that much
human behaviour is explained by “seemingly trivial
features of the situations in which persons find
themselves”.
Situationists argue that research in moral psychology
supports this view and challenge the competing
theoretical view that people have stable moral characters
or traits. Specifically they challenge the view that we have
robust traits such that these traits are exhibited in a wide
variety of situations where those traits are relevant. (Doris
2002, cited in Homiak 2011).
4. Challenges Facing VE
The thought is that we may talk about agents
being virtuous, but if we understand virtuous
as analogous to how Doris understands robust
traits, then situationists claim that we will be
mistaken.
Situationists are sceptical that agents, at least in
4. Challenges Facing VE
Some of the research:
Isen and Levin (1972: 387, cited in Doris and
Stich (2011)) found that “subjects who had just
found a dime were 22 times more likely to help
a woman who had just dropped some papers
than subjects who did not find a dime”;
Darley and Batson (1973: 105, cited in Doris and
4. Challenges Facing VE
Mathews and Canon (1975: 574–5, cited in Doris
and Stich (2011)) reported that with normal
level ambient noise in the background
“subjects were 5 times more likely to help an
apparently injured man who had dropped some
books… than when a power lawnmower was
running nearby”.
4. Challenges Facing VE
The situationist challenge to virtue epistemology
is newer. Mark Alfano (2011), citing empirical
research presents such a challenge.
4. Challenges Facing VE
The Duncker candle task:
Participants are presented with
a book of matches, a box of
thumbtacks, and a candle.
They are set the task of fixing
4. Challenges Facing VE
To succeed participants need to empty the
box and tack it to the cork board, place
the candle on the platform created and
light the candle. Only 13% of the
participants solved the problem. (Alfano,
2011: 14).
4. Challenges Facing VE
Can it be said that successful participants have
known of the solution that they arrived at?
Alfano (2011: 14) answers that to him it seems
right to say that, for those who wouldn’t have
got it right without the mood elevation, they did
know but that they didn’t solve the problem
because of the exercise of intellectual virtue,
but because their mood had been elevated by
5. Conclusion
We discussed two commitments of VE and
differences of approach that come under the
heading of VE – Virtue Reliabilism and Virtue
Responsibilism
We also discussed some of the theoretical
advantages that adopting a VE approach
brings and challenges to adopting such an
approach.