Sentimentalist Virtue Epistemology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Slote ◽  
Heather Battaly
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Epistemic Virtues ◽  
Ethical Virtue

Virtue ethics and virtue epistemology have been reviving in recent decades. There are currently two main competing branches of virtue ethics: the neo-Aristotelian and the sentimentalist or neo-Humean. But the two main forms of virtue epistemology, reliabilism and responsibilism, both take inspiration from Aristotle: the former from his work on intellectual virtue, the latter from his work on ethical virtue. In neither case is Hume in the picture, but we hope to show the reader that virtue epistemology in fact has a lot to learn from Hume and from sentimentalism. Here, we explore an alternative to both reliabilism and responsibilism: personalism. Personalism recognizes two categories of epistemic virtues that have been undervalued by reliabilists and responsibilists. It recognizes natural epistemic virtues that operate at the level of the person, and acquired epistemic virtues for which the agent herself is not responsible.

An Epistemology for Target Centred Virtue Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 297-318
Author(s):  
Christine Swanton
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Epistemic Virtue ◽  
Moral Intuitions ◽  
Epistemic Virtues ◽  
Virtuous Agent ◽  
Ethical Virtue

This chapter provides an epistemology for virtue ethics—target-centred virtue epistemology, arguing that we all need the epistemic virtues rather than relying on the wisdom of a virtuous agent. It thus contrasts target-centred virtue epistemology with qualified agent virtue epistemology. Epistemic virtues are understood in terms of their epistemic targets rather than primarily in terms of virtuous epistemic motives. The chapter argues that virtue epistemology is a branch of virtue ethics, and that epistemic virtues should be understood as not isolated from ethical virtue but are instead ‘virtues proper’. It discusses too the evidential status of “moral intuitions” in relation to target-centred virtue epistemology, and deleterious social factors in the transmission of beliefs such as the network and contagion social epistemic models, in relation to personal epistemic virtue.

Virtue epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Cognitive Structure ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Epistemic Values ◽  
Early Form ◽  
Epistemic Agent ◽  
Epistemic Evaluation ◽  
Theory Of Value

‘Virtue epistemology’ is the name of a class of theories that focus epistemic evaluation on good epistemic properties of persons rather than on properties of beliefs. The former or some interesting subset of the former are called intellectual virtues. Some of these theories propose that the traditional concepts of justification or knowledge can be analysed in terms of intellectual virtue, whereas others maintain that these traditional concepts are defective or uninteresting and it is desirable to replace them with the notion of an intellectual virtue. In all these theories, epistemic evaluation rests on some virtuous quality of persons that enables them to act in a cognitively effective and commendable way. Simple reliabilism may be treated either as a precursor to virtue epistemology or as an early form of it. Later versions add requirements for virtue intended to capture the idea that it is a quality which makes an epistemic agent subjectively responsible as well as objectively reliable. Proponents of virtue epistemology claim a number of advantages. It is said to bypass disputes between foundationalists and coherentists on proper cognitive structure, to avoid sceptical worries, to avoid the impasse between internalism and externalism and to broaden the range of epistemological enquiry to include such neglected epistemic values as understanding and wisdom. Some theorists argue that the real virtue of virtue epistemology is the way it permits us to redefine the central questions of epistemology. In addition, since virtue epistemology can be blended with virtue ethics, it holds out the promise of a unified theory of value.

Intellectual Virtues

Philosophy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Crerar ◽  
Teresa Allen ◽  
Heather Battaly
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Intellectual Humility ◽  
Professional Fields ◽  
Aristotelian Tradition

Intellectual virtues are qualities that make us excellent thinkers. There are different analyses of exactly which qualities count as intellectual virtues: virtue responsibilists have emphasized praiseworthy character traits, such as open-mindedness and intellectual humility, while virtue reliabilists have emphasized reliable skills and faculties, such as vision, memory, and skills of logic. Importantly, all agree that intellectual virtues are (i) excellences, as opposed to defects; and (ii) distinctively intellectual and not, or not simply, moral. In other words, intellectual virtues are qualities that make us excellent (and not defective) as thinkers, not (or not simply) as people in general. This bibliography provides an overview of philosophical work on the intellectual virtues. It includes articles and books addressing responsibilist and reliabilist analyses of the structure of intellectual virtue; analyses of individual intellectual virtues; the application of intellectual virtue to education and other professional fields; the role of intellectual virtues in epistemology; and, finally, the structure of intellectual vice. It also includes some historical sources on intellectual virtue, though its focus is contemporary. Analyses of intellectual virtue (and of individual intellectual virtues) have developed in tandem with the epistemological subfield of virtue epistemology, which employs the notion of intellectual virtue in an account of knowledge. These analyses also frequently draw on virtue ethics, especially in the Aristotelian tradition. Some of the sources cited touch upon connections between intellectual virtue and these fields, though a fuller treatment of these topics can be found in the corresponding bibliographies on Virtue Epistemology and Virtue Ethics.

Virtue Ethics and/or Virtue Epistemology: A Response to Anton Froeyman

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 432-446
Author(s):  
Herman Paul
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
Intellectual Courage ◽  
Virtuous Behavior ◽  
Moral Dimensions ◽  
Ethical Approaches

Abstract In response to Anton Froeyman’s paper, “Virtues of Historiography,” this article argues that philosophers of history interested in why historians cherish such virtues as carefulness, impartiality, and intellectual courage would do wise not to classify these virtues unequivocally as either epistemic or moral virtues. Likewise, in trying to grasp the roles that virtues play in the historian’s professional practice, philosophers of history would be best advised to avoid adopting either an epistemological or an ethical perspective. Assuming that the historian’s virtuous behavior has epistemic and moral dimensions (as well as aesthetic, political, and other dimensions), this article advocates a non-reductionist account of historical scholarship, which acknowledges that the virtues cherished by historians usually play a variety of roles, depending on the goals they are supposed to serve. Given that not the least important of these goals are epistemic ones, the articles concludes that virtue ethical approaches, to the extent that they are focused on the acquisition of moral instead of epistemic goods, insufficiently recognize the role of virtue in the pursuit of such epistemic aims as knowledge and understanding.

scholarly journals ARE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES TRUTH-RELEVANT?

Episteme ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-392
Author(s):  
Blake Roeber
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Ernest Sosa ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Wide Range

ABSTRACTAccording to attributor virtue epistemology (the view defended by Ernest Sosa, John Greco, and others), S knows that p only if her true belief that p is attributable to some intellectual virtue, competence, or ability that she possesses. Attributor virtue epistemology captures a wide range of our intuitions about the nature and value of knowledge, and it has many able defenders. Unfortunately, it has an unrecognized consequence that many epistemologists will think is sufficient for rejecting it: namely, it makes knowledge depend on factors that aren't truth-relevant, even in the broadest sense of this term, and it also makes knowledge depend in counterintuitive ways on factors that are truth-relevant in the more common narrow sense of this term. As I show in this paper, the primary objection to interest-relative views in the pragmatic encroachment debate can be raised even more effectively against attributor virtue epistemology.

Epistemic Virtue of Wisdom and Evidentialism

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 196-208
Author(s):  
Kirill V. Karpov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Epistemic Virtue ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Objective Knowledge ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Historical Case

My primary concern in this article is the connection between virtue epistemology and evidentialism. This possible connection is analyzed upon, firstly, the example of the intellectual virtue of wisdom, and, secondly, the historical case – Thomas Aquinas’ approach to virtue of wisdom as an intellectual disposition (habitus). I argue that it is possible to offer such an interpretation of ‘intellectual virtue’ that aligns with the peripatetic tradition broadly understood (to which the epistemology of virtues ascends), and on the basis of which an evidentialist theory of justification is offered. In the first part of the paper, I briefly present the main interpretations of virtue epistemology and evidentialism in the light of externalism/internalism debate. In the second part I discuss Aquinas’ understanding of intellectual virtue as a disposition (habitus). The main concern here are virtues of theoretical habitus – wisdom and (scientific) knowledge. I show that habitus in this case is understood in two ways: as an ability, inherent to human beings, and as objective knowledge. Thus, there are two understandings of wisdom – as a virtue and knowledge (scientia). Finally, in the concluding parts of the paper, I outline possible ways of solving presented in the first part challenges to evidentialism and internalism.

Clinical trials and the origins of pharmaceutical fraud: Parke, Davis & Company, virtue epistemology, and the history of the fundamental antagonism

2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 533-558
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Gabriel ◽  
Bennett Holman
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Pharmaceutical Industry ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Laboratory Science ◽  
Epistemic Virtues ◽  
History Of ◽  
Origin Point

This paper describes one possible origin point for fraudulent behavior within the American pharmaceutical industry. We argue that during the late nineteenth century therapeutic reformers sought to promote both laboratory science and increasingly systematized forms of clinical experiment as a new basis for therapeutic knowledge. This process was intertwined with a transformation in the ethical framework in which medical science took place, one in which monopoly status was replaced by clinical utility as the primary arbiter of pharmaceutical legitimacy. This new framework fundamentally altered the set of epistemic virtues—a phrase we draw from the philosophical field of virtue epistemology—considered necessary to conduct reliable scientific inquiry regarding drugs. In doing so, it also made possible new forms of fraud in which newly emergent epistemic virtues were violated. To make this argument, we focus on the efforts of Francis E. Stewart and George S. Davis of Parke, Davis & Company. Therapeutic reformers within the pharmaceutical industry, such as Stewart and Davis, were an important part of the broader normative and epistemic transformation we describe in that they sought to promote laboratory science and systematized clinical trials toward the twin goals of improving pharmaceutical science and promoting their own commercial interests. Yet, as we suggest, Parke, Davis & Company also serves as an example of a company that violated the very norms that Stewart and Davis helped introduce. We thus seek to describe one possible origin point for the widespread fraudulent practices that now characterize the pharmaceutical industry. We also seek to describe an origin point for why we conceptualize such practices as fraudulent in the first place.

Dilemmas for the Rarity Thesis in Virtue Ethics and Virtue Epistemology

Philosophia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-406
Author(s):  
J. S. Blumenthal-Barby
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Virtue Epistemology

scholarly journals Educating for Intellectual Virtue: A Critique from Action Guidance

Episteme ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Kotzee ◽  
J. Adam Carter ◽  
Harvey Siegel
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Philosophy Of Education ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Primary Role ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Effective Pedagogy ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Action Guidance ◽  
Pedagogical Challenge

Abstract 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 (most notably Baehr) 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 (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.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document