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Virtues and Vices of Virtue Epistemology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

John Greco
John Greco*
Affiliation:
Fordham University, Rose Hill Campus, Bronx, NY10458, USA
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Extract

In recent years, virtue epistemology has won the attention of a wide range of philosophers. A developed form of the position has been expounded forcefully by Ernest Sosa and represents the most plausible version of reliabilism to date. Through the person of Alvin Plantinga, virtue epistemology has taken philosophy of religion by storm, evoking objections and defenses in a wide variety of journals and volumes. Historically, virtue epistemology has its roots in the work of Thomas Reid, and the explosion of Reid scholarship in the last few years is perhaps both a cause and an effect of recent interest in the position.

In this paper I want to examine the virtues and vices of virtue epistemology. My conclusion will be that the position is correct, when qualified appropriately. The central claim of virtue epistemology is that, Gettier problems aside, knowledge is true belief which results from a cognitive virtue. In section one I will clarify this claim with some brief remarks about the nature of virtues in general, and cognitive virtues in particular. In section two I will consider two objections to the theory of knowledge which results. In section three of the paper I will argue that virtue epistemology can be qualified so as to avoid the objections raised in section two. Finally, I will argue that the amendments which solve the objections of section two also allow us to solve a version of the dreaded generality problem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , September 1993 , pp. 413 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1993

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References

1 For the most recent presentation of Sosa’s position see Sosa, Ernest Knowledge in Perspective: Collected Essays in Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Plantinga’s position is presented in Alvin Plantinga, ‘Positive Episternic Status and Proper Function,’ in Tomberlin, James E. ed., Philosophical Perspectives, 2 Epistemology, 1988 (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview 1988) 1-50Google Scholar, and in ‘Episternic Justification,’ Nous 20 (1986) 3-18. The recent literature on Reid is too extensive to be noted here.

2 Plantinga, ‘Positive Epistemic Status,’ 8ff.

3 Sosa, ‘Intellectual Virtue in Perspective,’ in Knowledge in Perspective, 289

4 Here I am indebted to Sosa, who suggested this response in conversation.

5 The notion of an epistemic perspective and its role in Sosa’s account of reflective justification is discussed below.

6 The present example does not violate Plantinga’s condition that the relevant segment of the design plan be aimed at producing true beliefs. For although the design plan is here aimed at Mary’s preservation, that goal is achieved by means of producing true beliefs about tigers.

7 Sosa, Knowledge in Perspective, 282. Sosa develops this strategy in ‘Intellectual Virtue in Perspective’ and in ‘Reliabilism and Intellectual Virtue,’ both in Knowledge in Perspective.

8 This position is defended in detail in my ‘Intemalism and Epistemically Responsible Belief,’ Synthese 85 (1990) 245-77.

9 A similar example in tennis was suggested to me by Henry Hultquist. Tennis coaches often tell their players that they should stand sideways to the ball to hit with power. The best tennis players, however, stand square to the ball and generate power by turning their upper body.

10 For a similar distinction, see Pollock, John Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield 1986), 168Google Scholar.

11 Of course questions remain. For example, it is plausible that a person’s norms will change and even conflict over time. How does this effect epistemic responsibility? There is also the problem of ‘norm schizophrenia,’ or the problem of conflicting norms at the same time. Finally, it might be thought that the above account leads to an unacceptable kind of epistemic relativism. I address all of these questions in my ‘Intemalism and Epistemically Responsible Belief.’ There I conclude that a) responsibility concerns conformance to one’s present norms; b) when present norms conflict responsibility requires that none of S’s norms disallow S’s belief; and c) the only kind of relativism involved is harmless, and should be expected given the analogy to moral responsibility.

12 I am willing to concede that not all beings capable of justification need countenance such norms, but these beings would be very different from ourselves, and my intuitions about them are not strong. I tend to think that when we fill in the story, the present account rules correctly concerning these strange beings.

13 Sosa, ‘Intellectual Virtue in Perspective,’ 284. See also Sosa’s definitions on 286-9.

14 Perhaps I should say ‘rather than merely in a fixed inner nature,’ since it is possible that S’s conformance to relevant norms is itself based in a deeper inner nature.

15 For a discussion of how virtue epistemology might handle the generality problem without introducing norm intemalism, see Sosa, ‘Intellectual Virtue in Perspective.’

16 In this paper I am hopelessly indebted to the work of Ernest Sosa. I also owe him a special thanks for his written comments and for his patient conversation. Also, I would like to thank Vincent Colapietro, Linda Zagzebski, and Dean Zimmerman for their helpful comments on drafts, and on other material relevant to this paper. Finally, I would like to thank the referees for the Canadian Journal of Philosophy for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.