Cognitive integration is a defining yet overlooked feature of our intellect that may nevertheless have substantial effects on the process of knowledge-acquisition. To bring those effects to the fore, I explore the topic of cognitive integration both from the perspective of virtue reliabilism within externalist epistemology and the perspective of extended cognition within externalist philosophy of mind and cognitive science. On the basis of this interdisciplinary focus, I argue that cognitive integration can provide a minimalist yet adequate epistemic norm of (...) subjective justification: so long as the agent’s belief-forming process has been integrated in his cognitive character, the agent can be justified in holding the resulting beliefs merely by lacking any doubts there was something wrong in the way he arrived at them. Moreover, since both externalist philosophy of mind and externalist epistemology treat the process of cognitive integration in the same way, we can claim that epistemic cognitive characters may extend beyond our organismic cognitive capacities to the artifacts we employ or even to other agents we interact with. This move is not only necessary for accounting for advanced cases of knowledge that is the product of the operation of epistemic artifacts or the interactive activity of research teams, but it can further lead to interesting ramifications both for social epistemology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

What is the nature of knowledge? A popular answer to that long-standing question comes from robust virtue epistemology, whose key idea is that knowing is just a matter of succeeding cognitively—i.e., coming to believe a proposition truly—due to an exercise of cognitive ability. Versions of robust virtue epistemology further developing and systematizing this idea offer different accounts of the relation that must hold between an agent’s cognitive success and the exercise of her cognitive abilities as well as of the very (...) nature of those abilities. This paper aims to give a new robust virtue epistemological account of knowledge based on a different understanding of the nature and structure of the kind of abilities that give rise to knowledge. (shrink)

Our aim is to provide a topography of the relevant philosophical terrain with regard to the possible ways in which knowledge can be conceived of as extended. We begin by charting the different types of internalist and externalist proposals within epistemology, and we critically examine the different formulations of the epistemic internalism/externalism debate they lead to. Next, we turn to the internalism/externalism distinction within philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In light of the above dividing lines, we then examine first (...) the extent to which content externalism is compatible with epistemic externalism; second, whether active externalism entails epistemic externalism; and third whether there are varieties of epistemic externalism that are better suited to accommodate active externalism. Finally, we examine whether the combination of epistemic and cognitive externalism is necessary for epistemology and we comment on the potential ramifications of this move for social epistemology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Many virtue-based approaches to propositional knowledge begin with the ability and achievement intuitions. In this paper, I rely on this pair of intuitions to explore the relationship between knowing how and knowing that. On the view that emerges, propositional knowledge is a kind of success through cognitive know how. Rather than simply equating know how with ability, I reveal deeper connections between both kinds of knowledge by focusing on the role of self-regulation.

The place of social epistemology within contemporary philosophy, as well as its relation to other academic disciplines, is the topic of an ongoing debate. One camp within that debate holds that social epistemology should be pursued strictly from within the perspective of individualistic analytic epistemology. In contrast, a second camp holds that social epistemology is an interdisciplinary field that should be given priority over traditional analytic epistemology, with the specific aim of radically transforming the latter to fit the results and (...) methodology of the former. We are rather suspicious of this apparent tension, which we believe can be significantly mitigated by paying attention to certain recent advances within philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Accordingly, we attempt to explain how extended knowledge, the result of combining active externalism from contemporary philosophy of mind with contemporary epistemology, can offer an alternative conception of the future of social epistemology. (shrink)

This paper advances the claim that skilful reflection is a master virtue in that skilful reflection shapes and corrects the other epistemic and intellectual virtues. We make the case that skilful reflection does this with both competence-based epistemic virtues and character-based intellectual virtues. In making the case that skilful reflection is a master virtue, we identify the roots of ideas central to our thesis in Confucian philosophy. In particular, we discuss the Confucian conception of reflection, as well as different levels (...) of epistemic virtue. Next we set out the Dual Process Hypothesis of Reflection, which provides an explanation of the workings of reflection in relation to Type 1 and Type 2 cognitive processes. In particular, we flag how repetition of Type 2 processes may eventually shape Type 1 processes and produce what we call downstream reflection. We distinguish competence-based epistemic virtues from character-based intellectual virtues. We also explain how our metacognition account of reflection, drawing on a Confucian conception of reflection and the Dual Process Hypothesis of Reflection, explains skilful reflection as a master virtue. Finally we outline an application of our metacognition account of reflection to a current debate in epistemology. (shrink)

To avoid the problem of regress, externalists have put forward defeaters-based accounts of justification. The paper argues that existing proposals face two serious concerns: (i) They fail to accommodate related counterexamples such as Norman the clairvoyant, and, more worryingly, (ii) they fail to explain how one can be epistemically responsible in holding basic beliefs—i.e., they fail to explain how basic beliefs can avoid being arbitrary from the agent’s point of view. To solve both of these problems, a new, externalist, defeaters-based (...) account of justification is offered—viz., System Reliabilism. The core message of the view—and the way it deals with both (i) and (ii)—is the claim that the justificatory status of justified basic beliefs originates from being the undefeated outputs of a reliable, cognitively integrated system that is capable of defeating them. Simply put, to be candidates for being justified, basic beliefs must be epistemically responsible and to be so they must be undefeated while being defeasible. The paper also offers a detailed, naturalistic analysis of the notion of cognitive integration. This long-due, mechanistic account of cognitive integration is then used to argue that an additional advantage of System Reliabilism is its unique position to account for the as yet unexplained intuition that responsible beliefs are also likely to be true. (shrink)

Combining active externalism in the form of the extended and distributed cognition hypotheses with virtue reliabilism can provide the long sought after link between mainstream epistemology and philosophy of science. Specifically, by reading virtue reliabilism along the lines suggested by the hypothesis of extended cognition, we can account for scientific knowledge produced on the basis of both hardware and software scientific artifacts. Additionally, by bringing the distributed cognition hypothesis within the picture, we can introduce the notion of epistemic group agents, (...) in order to further account for collective knowledge produced on the basis of scientific research teams. (shrink)