Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T13:01:16.564Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 10 - Responsibilism within Reason

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2020

By
Kurt Sylvan
Edited by
Christoph Kelp  and
John Greco
Christoph Kelp
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
John Greco
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Get access

Summary

According to ambitious responsibilism (AR), the virtues that are constitutive of epistemic responsibility should play a central and fundamental role in the analysis of justification and knowledge.While AR enjoyed a shining moment in the mid-1990s, it has fallen on hard times. Part of the reason is that many epistemologists – including fellow responsibilists – think it paints an unreasonably demanding picture of knowledge and justification.This chapter argues that this concern only undermines the periphery of AR and develops a new version that avoids it.§2 begins by clarifying AR’s core commitments and how influential responsibilists have added to them in optional ways. §3 rehearses the standard objections to AR, explaining why they only impugn the add-ons. §4 turns to develop a two-tiered view I call Kantian responsibilism (KR). According to KR's first tier, epistemically virtuous thought is thought that manifests respect for truth; because manifesting certain reasons-sensitive dispositions is necessary and sufficient for respecting truth, KR's second tier takes epistemic virtues to coincide substantively with reasons-sensitive dispositions. After unpacking KR in §4, I show in §5 how it answers the objections to AR, and close in §6 with some broader points about KR's virtues.

Keywords

responsibilismjustificationreasonsrespectvirtueZagzebskiBaehr
Type
Chapter
Information
Virtue Theoretic Epistemology
New Methods and Approaches
 , pp. 225 - 256
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alfano, M. 2012. ‘Expanding the Situationist Challenge to Responsibilist Virtue Epistemology,’ Philosophical Quarterly 62: 223–249.Google Scholar
Alston, W. 1989. Epistemic Justification. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Alston, W. 2000. ‘Virtue and Knowledge.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60: 185–189.Google Scholar
Arpaly, N. 2003. Unprincipled Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Baehr, J. 2011. The Inquiring Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Broome, J. 2004. ‘Reasons,’ in Wallace, R. Jay et al. (eds), Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Broome, J. 2013. Rationality through Reasoning. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Code, L. 1984. ‘Toward a ‘Responsibilist’ Epistemology,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45: 29–50.Google Scholar
Conee, E. and Feldman, R. 2004. Evidentialism: Essays in Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dancy, J. 2003. ‘Critical Study of Paul Grice, Aspects of Reason,’ Philosophical Quarterly 53: 274–279.Google Scholar
Dancy, J. 2004. Ethics without Principles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Darwall, S. 1977. ‘Two Kinds of Respect,’ Ethics 88: 36–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwall, S. 2006. The Second-Person Standpoint. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dougherty, T. 2011. ‘Knowledge Happens: Why Zagzebski Has Not Solved the Meno Problem,’ Southern Journal of Philosophy 49: 73–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dretske, F. 1969. Seeing and Knowing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dretske, F. 1981. Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Finlay, S. 2014. A Confusion of Tongues. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, J. M. and Ravizza, M. 1998. Responsibility and Control. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Foley, R. 1987. The Theory of Epistemic Rationality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Foley, R. 2004. ‘A Trial Separation between the Theory of Knowledge and the Theory of Justified Belief,’ in Greco, J. (ed.), Ernest Sosa and His Critics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Fricker, M. 2007. Epistemic Injustice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goldman, A. I. 1967. ‘A Causal Theory of Knowing,’ Journal of Philosophy 64: 357–372.Google Scholar
Goldman, A. I. 1979. ‘What Is Justified Belief?’ in Pappas, G. (ed.), Justification and Knowledge. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.Google Scholar
Greco, J. 2000. ‘Two Kinds of Intellectual Virtue,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60(1): 180–185.Google Scholar
Greco, J. 2010. Achieving Knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregory, A. 2016. ‘Reasons as Good Bases,’ Philosophical Studies 173: 2291–2310.Google Scholar
Harman, G. 2001. ‘Virtue Ethics without Character Traits,’ in Byrne, A., Stalnaker, R., and Wedgwood, R. (eds), Fact and Value. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hieronymi, P. 2008. ‘Responsibility for Believing,’ Synthese 161: 357–373.Google Scholar
Hurka, T. 2006. ‘Virtuous Acts, Virtuous Dispositions,’ Analysis 66: 69–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kagan, S. 1997. Normative Ethics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Kolodny, N. 2005. ‘Why Be Rational?’ Mind 114: 509–563.Google Scholar
Kornblith, H. 2000. ‘Linda Zagzebski’s Virtues of the Mind,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60: 197–201.Google Scholar
Kornblith, H. 2009. ‘Knowledge Needs No Justification,’ in Smith, Q. (ed.), Epistemology: New Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, C. 2008. The Constitution of Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, C. 2009. Self-Constitution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, C. 2011. ‘The Activity of Reason,’ in Wallace, R. J., Kumar, R., and Freeman, S. (eds), Reasons and Recognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kvanvig, J. 1992. The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Littlejohn, C. 2014. ‘Fake Barns and False Dilemmas,’ Episteme 11: 369–389.Google Scholar
Lord, E. and Sylvan, K. Forthcoming. ‘Believing for Normative Reasons: Prime, Not Composite,’ in Bondy, P. and Carter, J. A. (eds), Well-Founded Belief: New Essays on the Basing Relation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
McDowell, J. 1979. ‘Virtue and Reason.’ The Monist 62: 331–350.Google Scholar
McHugh, C. 2014. ‘Exercising Doxastic Freedom,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88: 1–37.Google Scholar
Nelkin, D. 2011. Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Olin, L. and Doris, J. 2012. ‘Vicious Minds,’ Philosophical Studies 168: 665–692.Google Scholar
Pettigrew, R. 2015. Accuracy and the Laws of Credence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Parfit, D. 2011. On What Matters (Vol. 1). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, R. C. and Wood, J. C. 2007. Intellectual Virtues. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. 1998. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. 2011. ‘The Unity of the Normative,’ Philosophical Studies 154: 443–450.Google Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. 2014. Being Realistic about Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schroeder, M. 2007. Slaves of the Passions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, M. 2016. ‘Reducing Reasons,’ Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 10(1): 1–22.Google Scholar
Sosa, E. 1980. ‘The Raft and the Pyramid,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5: 3–26.Google Scholar
Sosa, E. 1991. Knowledge in Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sosa, E. 2015. Judgment and Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sylvan, K. 2016a. ‘Epistemic Reasons I: Normativity,’ Philosophy Compass 11: 364–376.Google Scholar
Sylvan, K. 2016b. ‘Epistemic Reasons II: Basing.’ Philosophy Compass 11(7): 377–389.Google Scholar
Sylvan, K. 2017. ‘Responsibilism out of Character,’ in Fairweather, A. and Alfano, M. (eds), Epistemic Situationism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sylvan, K. 2018. ‘Knowledge as a Non-normative Relation,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 97: 190–222.Google Scholar
Sylvan, K. 2020. ‘An Epistemic Nonconsequentialism,’ Philosophical Review 129(1): 1–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sylvan, K. Forthcoming. ‘Can Performance Epistemology Explain Higher Epistemic Value?’ Synthese.Google Scholar
Sylvan, K. and Sosa, E. 2018. ‘The Place of Reasons in Epistemology,’ in Star, D. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Thomson, J. J. 1997. ‘The Right and the Good,’ The Journal of Philosophy 94: 273–98.Google Scholar
Way, J. 2015. ‘Reasons as Premises of Good Reasoning,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. Online first. DOI: doi:10.1111/papq.12135CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolf, S. 1994. Freedom within Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Worsnip, A. 2018. ‘The Conflict of Evidence and Coherence,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 96: 3–44.Google Scholar
Zagzebski, L. 1996. Virtues of the Mind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zagzebski, L. 2003. ‘Intellectual Motivation and the Good of Truth’ in DePaul, M. and Zagzebski, L. (eds), Intellectual Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, M. 2002. ‘Taking Luck Seriously,’ The Journal of Philosophy 99: 553–576.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×