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Character in Epistemology

Philosophical Studies 128 (3):479-514 (2006)

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  1. (1 other version)Virtue epistemology.Heather Battaly - 2008 - Philosophy Compass 3 (4):639-663.
    What are the qualities of an excellent thinker? A growing new field, virtue epistemology, answers this question. Section I distinguishes virtue epistemology from belief-based epistemology. Section II explains the two primary accounts of intellectual virtue: virtue-reliabilism and virtue-responsibilism. Virtue-reliabilists claim that the virtues are stable reliable faculties, like vision. Virtue-responsibilists claim that they are acquired character traits, like open-mindedness. Section III evaluates progress and problems with respect to three key projects: explaining low-grade knowledge, high-grade knowledge, and the individual intellectual virtues.
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  • Two for the show: Anti-luck and virtue epistemologies in consonance.Guy Axtell - 2007 - Synthese 158 (3):363 - 383.
    This essay extends my side of a discussion begun earlier with Duncan Pritchard, the recent author of Epistemic Luck. Pritchard’s work contributes significantly to improving the “diagnostic appeal” of a neo-Moorean philosophical response to radical scepticism. While agreeing with Pritchard in many respects, the paper questions the need for his concession to the sceptic that the neo-Moorean is capable at best of recovering “‘brute’ externalist knowledge”. The paper discusses and directly responds to a dilemma that Pritchard poses for virtue epistemologies (...)
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  • (1 other version)نگاهی انتقادی به معرفت‌شناسی فضیلت به روایت لیندا زاگزبسکی: چند ایراد اولیه.اکرم عسکرزاده مزرعه - 2021 - پژوهشنامه فلسفه دین 19 (1):49-68.
    در قرائت لیندا زاگزبسکی از معرفت‌شناسی فضیلت عناصر بسیاری در کنار هم قرار گرفته‌اند. در این نظریۀ ترکیبی -اگر نگوییم التقاطی- زمینه برای طرح ایرادات بسیار است. در این مقاله، پس از ارائه تقریری بسیار مختصر از لبّ نظریۀ معرفت‌شناسی فضیلت زاگزبسکی، چهار ایراد درباره آن مطرح شده که از این قرارند: فضیلت و باورِ برآمده از مسیری که زاگزبسکی ترسیم می‌کند در همه موارد شرط لازم و کافی برای حصول معرفت نیست؛ تفکیک میان فضایل طبیعی و اکتسابی و نقش (...)
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  • Learning from diversity: Public reason and the benefits of pluralism.Laura Siscoe - 2024 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 23 (4):385-408.
    The New Diversity Theory (NDT) represents a novel approach to public reason liberalism, providing an alternative to the traditional, Rawlsian public reason paradigm. One of the NDT's distinctive features is its emphasis on the potential advantages of a diverse society, with a particularly strong focus on the epistemic benefits of diversity. In this paper, I call into question whether societal diversity has the epistemic benefits that New Diversity theorists claim. I highlight a number of pernicious epistemic phenomena that tend to (...)
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  • Virtue Epistemology and Epistemic Responsibility.Berit Brogaard - 2023 - In Luis R. G. Oliveira (ed.), Externalism about Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 213–246.
    Virtue epistemologies about knowledge have traditionally been divided into two camps: virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. Initially, what set them apart was that virtue responsibilism took intellectual character virtues and responsible agency to be necessary to knowledge acquisition, whereas virtue reliabilism took reliable cognitive faculties to be constitutive of it instead. Despite recent concessions between these camps, there are residual disagreements. Chapter 8 focuses primarily on Linda Zagzebski’s account of virtue responsibilism and John Greco’s and Ernest Sosa’s defenses of virtue (...)
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  • (4 other versions)Virtue epistemology.John Greco & John Turri - 2017 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    This entry introduces many of the most important results of the contemporary Virtue epistemology (hereafter 'VE') research program. These include novel attempts to resolve longstanding disputes, solve perennial problems, grapple with novel challenges, and expand epistemology’s horizons. In the process, it reveals the diversity within VE. Beyond sharing the two unifying commitments mentioned above, its practitioners diverge over the nature of intellectual virtues, which questions to ask, and which methods to use.
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  • Intellectual Perseverance.Heather Battaly - 2017 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 14 (6):669-697.
    _ Source: _Page Count 29 This essay offers a working analysis of the trait of intellectual perseverance. It argues that intellectual perseverance is a disposition to overcome obstacles, so as to continue to perform intellectual actions, in pursuit of one’s intellectual goals. The trait of intellectual perseverance is not always an intellectual virtue. This essay provides a pluralist analysis of what makes it an intellectual virtue, when it is one. Along the way, it argues that the virtue of intellectual perseverance (...)
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  • (4 other versions)Virtue Epistemology.John Turri, Mark Alfano & John Greco - 1999 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:1-51.
    Contemporary virtue epistemology (hereafter ‘VE’) is a diverse collection of approaches to epistemology. At least two central tendencies are discernible among the approaches. First, they view epistemology as a normative discipline. Second, they view intellectual agents and communities as the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, with a focus on the intellectual virtues and vices embodied in and expressed by these agents and communities. -/- This entry introduces many of the most important results of the contemporary VE research program. These include (...)
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  • Vice Epistemology.Quassim Cassam - 2016 - The Monist 99 (2):159-180.
    Vice epistemology is the philosophical study of the nature, identity, and epistemological significance of intellectual vices. Such vices include gullibility, dogmatism, prejudice, closed-mindedness, and negligence. These are intellectual character vices, that is, intellectual vices that are also character traits. I ask how the notion of an intellectual character vice should be understood, whether such vices exist, and how they might be epistemologically significant. The proposal is that intellectual character vices are intellectual character traits that impede effective and responsible inquiry. I (...)
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  • Skill in epistemology I: Skill and knowledge.Carlotta Pavese - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (11):642-649.
    Knowledge and skill are intimately connected. In this essay, I discuss the question of their relationship and of which (if any) is prior to which in the order of explanation. I review some of the answers that have been given thus far in the literature, with a particular focus on the many foundational issues in epistemology that intersect with the philosophy of skill.
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  • Epistemic situationism and cognitive ability.John Turri - 2017 - In Mark Alfano & Abrol Fairweather (eds.), Epistemic Situationism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 158-167.
    Leading virtue epistemologists defend the view that knowledge must proceed from intellectual virtue and they understand virtues either as refned character traits cultivated by the agent over time through deliberate effort, or as reliable cognitive abilities. Philosophical situationists argue that results from empirical psychology should make us doubt that we have either sort of epistemic virtue, thereby discrediting virtue epistemology’s empirical adequacy. I evaluate this situationist challenge and outline a successor to virtue epistemology: abilism . Abilism delivers all the main (...)
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  • The Most Agreeable of All Vices: Nietzsche as Virtue Epistemologist.Mark Alfano - 2013 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (4):767-790.
    It’s been argued with some justice by commentators from Walter Kaufmann to Thomas Hurka that Nietzsche’s positive ethical position is best understood as a variety of virtue theory – in particular, as a brand of perfectionism. For Nietzsche, value flows from character. Less attention has been paid, however, to the details of the virtues he identifies for himself and his type. This neglect, along with Nietzsche’s frequent irony and non-standard usage, has obscured the fact that almost all the virtues he (...)
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  • Manifest Failure: The Gettier Problem Solved.John Turri - 2011 - Philosophers' Imprint 11.
    This paper provides a principled and elegant solution to the Gettier problem. The key move is to draw a general metaphysical distinction and conscript it for epistemological purposes. Section 1 introduces the Gettier problem. Sections 2–5 discuss instructively wrong or incomplete previous proposals. Section 6 presents my solution and explains its virtues. Section 7 answers the most common objection.
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  • Curiosity was Framed.Dennis Whitcomb - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (3):664-687.
    This paper explores the nature of curiosity from an epistemological point of view. First it motivates this exploration by explaining why epistemologists do and should care about what curiosity is. Then it surveys the relevant literature and develops a particular approach.
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  • Virtues of Art.Peter Goldie - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (10):830-839.
    The idea that there is an important place in philosophical aesthetics for virtues of art is not new, but it is now undergoing a serious re‐examination. Why might this be? What are the principles behind virtue aesthetics? Are there any good arguments for the theory? (I will take virtue aesthetics to be the theory that there is a central place for virtues of art.) What problems does virtue aesthetics face? And what might the implications be of virtue aesthetics both in (...)
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  • Expanding Epistemology: A Responsibilist Approach.Guy Axtell - 2008 - Philosophical Papers 37 (1):51-87.
    The first part of this paper asks why we need, or what would motivate, ameaningful expansion of epistemology. It answers with three critical arguments found in the recent literature, which each purport to move us some distance beyond the preoccupations of ‘post-Gettier era’ analytic epistemology. These three—the ‘epistemic luck,’ ‘epistemic value’ and ‘epistemic reconciliation’ arguments associated with D. Pritchard, J. Kvanvig, and M. Williams, respectively—each carry this implication of needed expansion by functioning as forceful ‘internal critiques’ of the tradition. The (...)
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  • (1 other version)Epistemic self-indulgence.Heather Battaly - 2010 - Metaphilosophy 41 (1-2):214-234.
    I argue in this essay that there is an epistemic analogue of moral self-indulgence. Section 1 analyzes Aristotle's notion of moral temperance, and its corresponding vices of self-indulgence and insensibility. Section 2 uses Aristotle's notion of moral self-indulgence as a model for epistemic self-indulgence. I argue that one is epistemically self-indulgent only if one either : (ESI1) desires, consumes, and enjoys appropriate and inappropriate epistemic objects; or (ESI2) desires, consumes, and enjoys epistemic objects at appropriate and inappropriate times; or (ESI3) (...)
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  • Attacking Character: Ad Hominem Argument and Virtue Epistemology.Heather Battaly - 2010 - Informal Logic 30 (4):361-390.
    The recent literature on ad hominem argument contends that the speaker’s character is sometimes relevant to evaluating what she says. This effort to redeem ad hominems requires an analysis of character that explains why and how character is relevant. I argue that virtue epistemology supplies this analysis. Three sorts of ad hominems that attack the speaker’s intellectual character are legitimate. They attack a speaker’s: (1) possession of reliabilist vices; or (2) possession of responsibilist vices; or (3) failure to perform intellectually (...)
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  • How to make the generality problem work for you.Christopher Lepock - 2009 - Acta Analytica 24 (4):275-286.
    Reliabilist theories of knowledge face the “generality problem”; any token of a belief-forming processes instantiates types of different levels of generality, which can vary in reliability. I argue that we exploit this situation in epistemic evaluation; we appraise beliefs in different ways by adverting to reliability at different levels of generality. We can detect at least two distinct uses of reliability, which underlie different sorts of appraisals of beliefs and believers.
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  • (1 other version)Evidentialism, vice, and virtue.Jason Baehr - 2009 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78 (3):545-567.
    Evidentialists maintain that epistemic justification is strictly a function of the evidence one has at the moment of belief. I argue here, on the basis of two kinds of cases, that the possession of good evidence is an insuflicient basis for justification. I go on to propose a modification of evidentialism according to which justification sometimes requires intellectually virtuous agency. The discussion thereby underscores an important point of contact between evidentialism and the more recent enterprise of virtue epistemology.
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  • Collective epistemic virtues.Reza Lahroodi - 2007 - Social Epistemology 21 (3):281 – 297.
    At the intersection of social and virtue epistemology lies the important, yet so far entirely neglected, project of articulating the social dimensions of epistemic virtues. Perhaps the most obvious way in which epistemic virtues might be social is that they may be possessed by social collectives. We often speak of groups as if they could instantiate epistemic virtues. It is tempting to think of these expressions as ascribing virtues not to the groups themselves, but to their members. Adapting Margaret Gilbert's (...)
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  • Pierre Duhem’s epistemic aims and the intellectual virtue of humility: a reply to Ivanova.Ian James Kidd - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (1):185-189.
    David Stump has recently argued that Pierre Duhem can be interpreted as a virtue epistemologist. Stump’s claims have been challenged by Milena Ivanova on the grounds that Duhem’s ‘epistemic aims’ are more modest than those of virtue epistemologists. I challenge Ivanova’s criticism of Stump by arguing that she not distinguish between ‘reliabilist’ and ‘responsibilist’ virtue epistemologies. Once this distinction is drawn, Duhem clearly emerges as a ‘virtue-responsibilist’ in a way that complements Ivanova’s positive proposal that Duhem’s ‘good sense’ reflects a (...)
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  • Virtue epistemology and tacit cognitive processes in high-grade knowledge.Sruthi Rothenfluch - 2015 - Philosophical Explorations 18 (3):393-405.
    Duncan Pritchard has recently argued that a certain brand of virtue epistemology, known as “virtue responsibilism”, cannot account for knowledge acquired through the use of tacit reasoning processes. I defend virtue responsiblism by showing that Pritchard's charge is founded on a mischaracterization of the view. Contra Pritchard, responsibilists do not demand that agents have complete access to the grounds for their beliefs in order to know. A closer examination of prominent accounts of virtue responsiblism, including Zagzebski's and Hookway's, reveals that (...)
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  • Four Varieties of Character-Based Virtue Epistemology.Jason Baehr - 2008 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 46 (4):469-502.
    The terrain of character-based or “responsibilist” virtue epistemology has evolved dramatically over the last decade -- so much so that it is far from clear what, if anything, unifies the various views put forth in this area. In an attempt to bring some clarity to the overall thrust and structure of this movement, I develop a fourfold classification of character-based virtue epistemologies. I also offer a qualified assessmentof each approach, defending a certain account of the probable future of this burgeoning (...)
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  • Unifying the Intellectual Virtues.Christopher Lepock - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (1):106-128.
    The intellectual virtues include two seemingly quite different types of traits: reliable faculties on the one hand and inquiry-regulating traits of intellectual character like conscientiousness and openmindedness on the other. Extant virtue theories do not appear to have provided a single account that adequately covers both types of virtue. In this paper, I examine the different ways in which a trait or disposition can contribute to our cognitive goal of acquiring significant true beliefs. I propose that the two types of (...)
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  • Knowledge happens: Why Zagzebski has not solved the meno problem.Trent Dougherty - 2011 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 49 (1):73-88.
    I argue that Linda Zagzebski's proposed solution to the Meno Problem faces serious challenges. The Meno Problem, roughly, is how to explain the value that knowledge, as such, has over mere true belief. Her proposed solution is that believings—when thought of more like actions—can have value in virtue of their motivations. This meshes nicely with her theory that knowledge is, essentially, virtuously motivated true belief. Her solution fails because it entails that, necessarily, all knowledge is motivated in a way that (...)
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  • On Virtue Epistemology in Anglophone Philosophy.Stefaniia Sidorova - 2022 - Filosofska Dumka (Philosophical Thought) 3:170-184.
    Virtue epistemology is one of the most popular approaches to epistemological research in Anglophone philosophy. However, it is little known in Ukraine. The article aims to familiarize its readers with the making of virtue epistemology, presenting parallels with virtue ethics. The au- thor makes an attempt to determine the place that virtue epistemology holds in modern philo- sophical discourse. The article provides a brief overview of the main research topics, the biggest controversies within the field, and the systematisation of classification (...)
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  • Why empathy is an intellectual virtue.Alkis Kotsonis & Gerard Dunne - 2024 - Philosophical Psychology 37 (4):741-758.
    Our aim in this paper is to argue that empathy is an intellectual virtue. Empathy enables agents to gain insight into other people’s emotions and beliefs. The agent who possesses this trait is: (i) driven to engage in acts of empathy by her epistemic desires; (ii) takes pleasure in doing so; (iii) is competent at the activity characteristic of empathy; and, (iv) has good judgment as to when it is epistemically appropriate to engage in empathy. After establishing that empathy meets (...)
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  • Is There a Place for Epistemic Virtues in Theory Choice?Milena Ivanova - 2014 - In Abrol Fairweather & Owen Flanagan (eds.), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Cham: Synthese Library. pp. 207-226.
    This paper challenges the appeal to theory virtues in theory choice as well as the appeal to the intellectual and moral virtues of an agent as determining unique choices between empirically equivalent theories. After arguing that theoretical virtues do not determine the choice of one theory at the expense of another theory, I argue that nor does the appeal to intellectual and moral virtues single out one agent, who defends a particular theory, and exclude another agent defending an alternative theory. (...)
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  • The Normative Complexity of Virtues.Giulia Luvisotto - 2023 - Philosophies 8 (5):77.
    On what I will call the standard view, the distinction between the moral and the epistemic realms is both psychologically and conceptually prior to the distinction between any two given virtues. This widespread view supports the claim that there are moral and intellectual (or epistemic) virtues. Call this the fundamental distinction. In this paper, I raise some questions for both the standard view and the fundamental distinction, and I propose an alternative view on which virtues regain priority over the moral/epistemic (...)
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