In recent years, a number of philosophers have turned their attention to developments in Artificial Intelligence, and in particular to deepfakes. A deepfake is a portmanteau of ‘deep learning' and ‘fake', and for the most part they are videos which depict people doing and saying things they never did. As a result, much of the emerging literature on deepfakes has turned on questions of trust, harms, and information-sharing. In this paper, I add to the emerging concerns around deepfakes by drawing (...) on resources from vice epistemology. As deepfakes become more sophisticated, I claim, they will develop to be a source of online epistemic corruption. More specifically, they will encourage consumers of digital online media to cultivate and manifest various epistemic vices. My immediate focus in this paper is on their propensity to encourage the development of what I call ‘intellectual cynicism'. After sketching a rough account of this epistemic vice, I go on to suggest that we can partially offset such cynicism – and fears around deceptive online media more generally – by encouraging the development what I term a trained ‘digital sensibility'. This, I contend, involves a calibrated sensitivity to the epistemic merits of online content. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology is among the dominant influences in mainstream epistemology today. An important commitment of one strand of virtue epistemology – responsibilist virtue epistemology (e.g., Montmarquet 1993; Zagzebski 1996; Battaly 2006; Baehr 2011) – is that it must provide regulative normative guidance for good thinking. Recently, a number of virtue epistemologists (most notably Baehr, 2013) have held that virtue epistemology not only can provide regulative normative guidance, but moreover that we should reconceive the primary epistemic aim of all education as (...) the inculcation of the intellectual virtues. Baehr’s picture contrasts with another well-known position – that the primary aim of education is the promotion of critical thinking (Scheffler 1989; Siegel 1988; 1997; 2017). In this paper – that we hold makes a contribution to both philosophy of education and epistemology and, a fortiori, epistemology of education – we challenge this picture. We outline three criteria that any putative aim of education must meet and hold that it is the aim of critical thinking, rather than the aim of instilling intellectual virtue, that best meets these criteria. On this basis, we propose a new challenge for intellectual virtue epistemology, next to the well-known empirically-driven ‘situationist challenge’. What we call the ‘pedagogical challenge’ maintains that the intellectual virtues approach does not have available a suitably effective pedagogy to qualify the acquisition of intellectual virtue as the primary aim of education. This is because the pedagogic model of the intellectual virtues approach (borrowed largely from exemplarist thinking) is not properly action-guiding. Instead, we hold that, without much further development in virtue-based theory, logic and critical thinking must still play the primary role in the epistemology of education. (shrink)

One typical aim of responsibilist virtue epistemology is to employ the notion of intellectual virtue in pursuit of an ameliorative epistemology. This paper focuses on “political inquiry” as a case study for examining the ameliorative value of intellectual virtue. The main claim is that the case of political inquiry threatens to expose responsibilist virtue epistemology in a general way as focusing too narrowly on the role of individual intellectual character traits in attempting to improve our epistemic practices.

This paper describes a neglected aspect of the critique of academic ‘cultures of speed’ offered by Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber in The Slow Professor. I argue internalisation of the values and imperatives of cultures of speed can encourage the erosion of a range of academic virtues while also facilitating the development of a range of academic vices. I focus on the ways that an internalised ‘psychology of speed’ erodes our capacity to exercise the virtues of intellectual beneficence – excellences (...) of character which advance the intellectual needs of others – by radically distorting our experience of time. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology is among the dominant influences in mainstream epistemology today. An important commitment of one strand of virtue epistemology – responsibilist virtue epistemology – is that it must provide regulative normative guidance for good thinking. Recently, a number of virtue epistemologists have held that virtue epistemology not only can provide regulative normative guidance, but moreover that we should reconceive the primary epistemic aim of all education as the inculcation of the intellectual virtues. Baehr’s picture contrasts with another well-known position (...) – that the primary aim of education is the promotion of critical thinking. In this paper – that we hold makes a contribution to both philosophy of education and epistemology and, a fortiori, epistemology of education – we challenge this picture. We outline three criteria that any putative aim of education must meet and hold that it is the aim of critical thinking, rather than the aim of instilling intellectual virtue, that best meets these criteria. On this basis, we propose a new challenge for intellectual virtue epistemology, next to the well-known empirically-driven ‘situationist challenge’. What we call the ‘pedagogical challenge’ maintains that the intellectual virtues approach does not have available a suitably effective pedagogy to qualify the acquisition of intellectual virtue as the primary aim of education. This is because the pedagogic model of the intellectual virtues approach is not properly action-guiding. Instead, we hold that, without much further development in virtue-based theory, logic and critical thinking must still play the primary role in the epistemology of education. (shrink)

This paper argues for the diversification of university-level philosophy curricula. I defend the ideal of expansionist pluralism and connect it to metaphilosophical myopia – problematically limited or constrained visions of the range of forms taken by philosophy. Expansively pluralist curricula work to challenge metaphilosophical myopia and one of its costs, namely, a specific kind of hermeneutical injustice, perpetrated against the communities and traditions shaped by the occluded forms of philosophy.

This article argues that the Teaching Excellence Framework manifests the vice of epistemic insensibility. To this end, it explains that the TEF is a metrics‐driven evaluation mechanism which permits English higher education institutions to charge higher fees if the ‘quality’ of their teaching is deemed ‘excellent’. Through the TEF, the Government aims to improve the quality of teaching by using core metrics that reflect student satisfaction, retention and short‐term graduate employment. In response, some have criticised the TEF for failing to (...) meaningfully evaluate the quality of teaching. This article seeks to explain and justify this criticism. It thus presents Heather Battaly's account of the vice of epistemic insensibility and argues that the TEF manifests two key features of an epistemically insensible policy, namely: it promotes a failure to desire, consume and enjoy epistemic goods that it is appropriate to desire, consume and enjoy; and it does so because it is committed to a false conception of the epistemic good. Crucially, it argues that the TEF falsely assumes that epistemic goods that serve to bolster its core metrics are more valuable than epistemic goods that do not. The article thus shows how this relies on an erroneous conception of the purpose of education and thus a false conception of the epistemic good. Finally, the article considers two brief objections and concludes that the TEF advances a conception of the student‐as‐customer which detracts from desiring, consuming and enjoying epistemic goods related to edification, civic participation and the student‐teacher relationship. (shrink)

The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy was published in 2016 to critical acclaim. Rejecting outright the marketisation of the modern university, the book proposed a countercultural approach which denounced the seductive imperatives to overwork and competition and called on academics to make a more deliberate moral choice. In this paper, I critically engage with The Slow Professor's ethical vision. I draw on the work of writers Sally Rooney, John Williams and David Foster Wallace in careful (...) exploration of ‘slowness’ and its cognate terms. I am interested not only in the importance of slowness for university academics but for students in the 21st century university. These students, as pointed out recently by Bruce Macfarlane, are made to carry a plethora of conflicting identities and yet it is perhaps more important that we begin to demand less of our students and not more. Thus, in an era of audit and accountability, this paper explores the possibilities for a less frenetic approach to university teaching and learning. (shrink)

What is indoctrination? This paper clarifies and defends a structural epistemic account of indoctrination according to which indoctrination is the inculcation of closed-minded belief caused by “epistemically insulating content.” This is content which contains a proviso that serious critical consideration of the relevant alternatives to one's belief is reprehensible whether morally or epistemically. As such, it does not demand that indoctrination be a type of unethical instruction, ideological instruction, unveridical instruction, or instruction which bypasses the agent's rational evaluation. In this (...) way, we can account for why indoctrination can occur for liberal democratic beliefs as much as it occurs for fascist, fundamentalist, or fanatical belief: for indoctrination is fundamentally a structural epistemic phenomenon. (shrink)

This article is an exercise in the virtue epistemology of the internet, an area of applied virtue epistemology that investigates how online environments impact the development of intellectual virtues, and how intellectual virtues manifest within online environments. I examine online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles (Nguyen 2020, Episteme 17(2), 141–61), exploring the conceptual relationship between these online environments and the virtue of open-mindedness (Battaly 2018b, Episteme 15(3), 261–82). The article answers two key individual-level, virtue epistemic questions: (Q1) How does immersion (...) in online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles affect the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, and (Q2) Is it always intellectually virtuous to exhibit open-mindedness in the context of online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles? In response to Q1, I contend that both online echo chambers and online epistemic bubbles threaten to undermine the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, albeit via different mechanisms and to different degrees. In response to Q2, I affirm that both a deficiency and an excess of open-mindedness can be virtuous in these online environments, depending on the epistemic orientation of the digital user. (shrink)

In this article, I explore an epistemic vice I call “evidential incognizance.” It is a vice of failing generally to recognize evidence, or recognize the full force of evidence, in a domain of knowledge. It frequently manifests as a kind of unbridled skepticism or hopelessness about knowing in the domain, including (but not limited to) skepticism about expert testimony. It is epistemically vicious primarily because it leads people to overlook valuable epistemic opportunities, and thus tends to obstruct knowledge and justified (...) belief. I believe it is of interest particularly because it tends to arise as a reaction to a certain kind of information environment and is often induced intentionally by populist candidates and authoritarian regimes. I discuss the nature of evidential incognizance, its relation to and differences from other epistemic shortcomings, its political significance, why it may have been previously overlooked in the literature, and the potential for overcoming it. (shrink)

Some of the students in our classrooms doubt their intellectual strengths—their knowledge, abilities, and skills. They may be unaware of the intellectual strengths they have, or may ignore, lack confidence in, or under-estimate them. They may even incorrectly judge themselves to be intellectually inferior to their peers. Students who do such things consistently are deficient in the virtue of intellectual pride—in appropriately ‘owning’ their intellectual strengths—and are on their way to developing a form of intellectual servility. Can the ‘standard approach’ (...) to intellectual character education help these students make progress toward intellectual pride? This article argues that there are two limitations in its ability to help. First, the standard approach isn’t likely to help unless it is combined with classroom strategies for ameliorating servility. Second, even when it is combined with ameliorative strategies, any progress it might make in the classroom is likely to be fleeting when a student’s servility is caused by systemic epistemic injustice. This article suggests that rather than prioritize the standard approach, we prioritize strategies that aim at systemic change and amelioration. (shrink)

ABSTRACT With a particular focus on the experience of young people in higher education, this paper turns to the philosophical work of Cora Diamond to open up new ways of conceptualising mental health. We claim that Diamond offers a compelling insight into that experience of human difficulty so often subsumed by a medicalised vocabulary. We propose that she offers philosophically astute perceptions of the related human attempts at deflection. And we situate this reading of Diamond against a broader understanding of (...) the contemporary university as a place of institutional darkness. In developing this general discussion, we place ourselves within a very particular context. We draw on the narratives of a number of third-level students in Ireland, who shared their experiences as part of a hermeneutic phenomenological study into the lived experience of mental health difficulties. (shrink)

A central aim of non-epistemology is to eschew idealisations that tend to distort our epistemological theorising. In this paper, I use the resources of non-ideal epistemology to shed light on a perceived asymmetry between the structure of epistemic virtues and vices. On the one hand, epistemic virtues are widely held to exhibit a skill-component as part of their formal structure. On the other hand, epistemic vices are taken to lack this component. I cast doubt on this asymmetry by demonstrating that (...) it is sustained by two idealisations virtue epistemologists have tended to employ in their theorising of epistemic vice and the environments in which agents develop epistemic virtues. In doing so, I argue that this asymmetry has problematically obscured from view what I call ‘vice-indexed skills’ – distinctive skills associated with epistemic vices. The existence of these skills not only reveals an important structural symmetry between the epistemic virtues and vices, but it is something that comes to light by applying the tools of non-ideal epistemology to vice epistemology. (shrink)

Contemporary epistemologists of education have raised concerns about the distorting effects of some of the processes and structures of contemporary academia on the epistemic practice and character of academic researchers. Such concerns have been articulated using the concept of epistemic corruption. In this paper, we lend credibility to these theoretically-motivated concerns using the example of the research impact agenda during the period 2012-2014. Interview data from UK and Australian academics confirms the impact agenda system, at its inception, facilitated the development (...) and exercise of epistemic vices. As well as vindicating theoretically-motivated claims about epistemic corruption, inclusion of empirical methods and material can help us put the concept to work in ongoing critical scrutiny of evolving forms of the research impact agenda. (shrink)

Organisational leaders mismanaging business affairs are guided by performance pressures and/or greed while pressurising employees to follow. Unethical activities have led to stakeholder losses, with no accountability by individuals perpetuating the fraud. Corporate governance frameworks and subsequent reforms have been used merely as tick box measures, proving them inefficient in numerous corporate collapses. This study intends to explore and analyse the roles of personal and collective virtues in corporate citizenship. Developing from the virtues theory and using a mixed method of (...) three focus group discussions and a self-administered questionnaire of 119 participants from various organisations, the authors establish that personal virtues are important to portray ethical individualism. However, in a corporate setting, collective virtues are more important to enhance corporate citizenship, through ethical culture and collective accountability. (shrink)

This paper explores the phenomenon of vulnerabilisation in relation to the experiences of persons with chronic illnesses. We distinguish a range of kinds of vulnerability, including epistemic vulnerabilities related to epistemic injustices, and describe various interpersonal and institutional processes which can create, exacerbate and intensify those vulnerabilities. The dynamics of vulnerabilisation are related to individual vices and institutional failings, the pervasive pathophobia of many societies and various contingent life-events. We conclude that susceptibility to varieties of vulnerabilisation is ultimately reflective of (...) the fragility that is definitive of the human condition. (shrink)

Since the publication of Miranda Fricker’s seminal book Epistemic Injustice, philosophy of education scholarship has been mostly limited to analyses of culprit-based epistemic injustice in education. This has left structural manifestations relatively underexplored with great detriment to those who are most vulnerable to experience such injustice. This paper aims to address this oversight and open avenues for further research by exploring approaches to theorizing structural epistemic injustice in education and envisioning efficacious remedies. The author identifies three approaches: one that focusses (...) on educational institutions; one that focusses on institutional processes that impact educational outcomes; and one that focusses on epistemological processes that are internal to education. Whilst the approaches differ as to their explanatory power and ease of implementation, it is argued that all three demonstrate that epistemic injustice in education is often the result of structural factors which cannot be attributed to individual epistemic agents. The author concludes by suggesting that educational philosophers must examine each of these approaches in greater depth to make significant progress in disrupting the impact of epistemic injustice in education. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that focusing on resilience education fails to appropriately reflect the socio-political nature of character. I define protective epistemic character traits (PECTs) as epistemic character traits which aid students in avoiding, limiting or mitigating harm in the classroom. I argue that the relationship between epistemic character and protection in hostile classrooms is importantly influenced by context in two main ways: (1) the exercise and development of some PECTs may carry significant cost for some students and (2) (...) social and developmental factors may promote or obstruct the development of virtuous PECTs for individual students. I employ two principles from Ian James Kidd’s Critical Character Epistemology – aetiological sensitivity and normative contextualism – and propose a revised approach to resilience education. I argue that this revision requires an increased focus on changing underlying structures of oppression and cautions against teaching a standardised list of epistemic virtues. (shrink)

ABSTRACT There is growing interest in epistemic injustice and its connection to education. However, the relation between social studies and epistemic injustice has not yet been adequately explored and this topic has been given insufficient attention by social studies educators. But it is regarded as an important resource for students who are socially disadvantaged to render their experiences intelligible. However, due to its unique status, it has also been an effective tool for those who are in power and want to (...) maintain social inequalities. For that reason, social studies is the subject most likely to give rise to epistemic injustice in the classroom. In this paper, we address this issue that is currently coming to the fore in social studies. We argue that cultivating moral sensitivity plays a substantive role in overcoming epistemic injustice and this cultivation comes with shaping student’s schemas by integrating the interpretive resources into social studies. (shrink)

The study examines one type of breaches of integrity, namely using one’s authority in public office for personal gain, in the administration of teachers in Ghana. It was executed using an embedded mixed methods design with a population of 667 teachers employed by the Ghana Education Service. A sample of 270 respondents was chosen by simple random sampling for the study. The questionnaire containing open-ended and closed-ended items was administered to the respondents. Data generated by the close-ended items were analysed (...) using frequencies and percentages and data obtained from the open-ended items were analysed in themes. The study found that integrity breaches were prevalent in GES and occurred under the watch of superior officers in the service. It was more pronounced in teachers’ requests for upgrading and promotion, and salary processing. Victims did not report the act because they believed nothing would happen and because they fear victimisation. Integrated Personnel and Payroll Database coordinators and Human Resource Managers at the district and regional levels of GES were found to be the most corrupt officers in the service. It is recommended that character references on GES staff be sought; the processing of salaries, transfer, upgrading, promotion, among others, at the GES offices should be automated; and effective whistleblower hotlines should be instituted. (shrink)

This books offers new ways to think about teaching excellence in higher education. After surveying key debates on this topic, the author presents a definition of the concept of teaching excellence. He then offers a fresh interpretation of Boyer’s famous account of scholarship as the foundation of university teaching. To fully understand the nature of teaching excellence in higher education, the book then gives an account of the various dimensions of the domain of university teaching and the core drivers required (...) to bring those domains to life. The idea of empowerment underlies the journey to excellence in teaching. The book argues that university lecturers aspiring to become excellent should be active agents, strongly pursuing the development of their perfectible abilities required for high quality teaching. The author then draws on recent developments in virtue theory to set out the qualities of character requisite for guiding and driving university lecturers to grow and develop into excellent teachers. What this book does: • Makes the idea of scholarship, as offered by Boyer, foundational to the work of university faculty. • Outlines the core aspects of university teaching that demand attention in the quest for excellence in teaching. • Demonstrates the role of agency, empowerment, and skills development in the development of excellent teaching. • Presents ideas drawn from virtue epistemology as fundamental drivers to become excellent at university teaching. • Offers guidelines for the cultivation of excellent teaching performances that display elegant artistry. (shrink)

This thesis examines the relationship between character and intellectual or epistemic vices. The philosophical study of epistemic vices is called vice epistemology. To date, much of the work in this emerging field has focused on the nature and epistemological significance of particular intellectual vices such as close-mindedness or dogmatism. Far less has been said about how it is that people come to acquire and develop these intellectual vices. My aim in this thesis is to fill this lacuna by articulating how (...) this phenomenon occurs. Specifically, this thesis develops an account of epistemic corruption. (shrink)

People tend to think of our intellectual characters as at least partially malleable. We can become more – or less – virtuous or vicious epistemic agents. However, people also tend to think of characterological change as typically slow and incremental. I use recent empirical work on the effects of psychedelic experiences on personality to argue that such circumscribed experiences may be epistemically transformative, for better or worse. We have good, if tentative reasons to believe that psychedelics can alter their user's (...) character traits in ways that may lead her to become a more (or less) virtuous epistemic agent after as little as one or two trips. This, in turn, means that even if psychedelics do not drastically alter our stock of, say, true or justified beliefs, they can still drastically change our epistemic standing. Since, plausibly, the value (or disvalue) of epistemic traits is not exhausted by their capacity to assist or hinder the attainment of the ends of inquiry, psychedelic experiences are epistemically valuable (or disvaluable) in ways hitherto little explored by philosophers of psychedelics. (shrink)