Epistemic Idolatry and Intellectual Vice

American Philosophical Quarterly 59 (3):219-231 (2022)
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Abstract

Following Robert Adams's account of idolatry, this paper develops the concept of epistemic idolatry. Where there is devotion belonging to truth but given to a particular epistemic good, there we find epistemic idolatry. With this concept in hand, motivationalist virtue epistemologists gain two theoretical advantages: their list of defective motives can include intellectual motivation in excess without the implausible claim that, intellectually, one can be too motivated by truth; and the disvalue of many intellectual vices, including some putative counterexamples to their theory of intellectual vice, can be explained in terms of epistemic idolatry.

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Josh Dolin
University of California, Irvine

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