On Veritism. Pritchard’s Defense

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-45
Author(s):  
Ernest Sosa ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Good Thing ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Rescue Mission ◽  
Specific Relation ◽  
Big Brother ◽  
Process Reliabilism ◽  
Process Framework

This time Pritchard is on a rescue mission. Veritism is besieged and he rises to defend it. I do agree with much in his Veritism, but I demur when he adds: “So, the goodness of all epistemic goods is understood instrumentally with regard to whether they promote truth”. If Big Brother brainwashes us to believe the full contents of The Encyclopedia Britannica, then even if we suppose those contents to be true without exception, that would not make what they do an unalloyed good thing, not even epistemically. But it does seem to promote truth. What might then diminish Big Brother’s action so much, so as to make it so deplorable epistemically after all, despite how powerfully it does instrumentally promote truth. At a minimum we need to say more about the relations between epistemic goods and truth, so as to better understand how it is that the epistemic good is made so good by what specific relation to the truth. I lay out a way to understand Veritism so that it can say more about the relations between epistemic goods and truth, thus enhancing our understanding of epistemic normativity. And in a second part I lay out a solution to Linda Zagzebski’s Swamping problem for reliabilism. I argue that it is a problem for process reliabilism, but not for a virtue epistemology that accepts a kind of reliabilism, but in an agential telic framework, and not in a process framework. So, I lay out one way to be a “veritist”, by defending explicitly its Axiological side, and by implication its Conceptual side as well. I have raised questions for Pritchard’s own defense and have offered in each case an alternative defense that I believe fits the words of his formulations, and is in their spirit as well.

scholarly journals Hoops and Barns: a new dilemma for Sosa

Synthese ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 197 (12) ◽  
pp. 5187-5202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Kelp ◽  
Cameron Boult ◽  
Fernando Broncano-Berrocal ◽  
Paul Dimmock ◽  
Harmen Ghijsen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Rescue Mission ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
Apt Belief ◽  
The Way ◽  
A Performance

AbstractThis paper critically assesses Sosa’s normative framework for performances as well as its application to epistemology. We first develop a problem for one of Sosa’s central theses in the general theory of performance normativity according to which performances attain fully desirable status if and only if they are fully apt. More specifically, we argue that given Sosa’s account of full aptness according to which a performance is fully apt only if safe from failure, this thesis can’t be true. We then embark on a rescue mission on behalf of Sosa and work towards a weakened account of full aptness. The key idea is to countenance a distinction between negligible and non-negligible types of risk and to develop an account of full aptness according to which even performances that are endangered by risk can be fully apt, so long as the risk is of a negligible type. While this alternative account of full aptness solves the problem we developed for Sosa earlier on, there is also bad news for Sosa. When applied to epistemology, the envisaged treatment of barn façade cases as cases in which the agent falls short of fully apt belief will no longer work. We show that, as a result, Sosa faces a new version of a familiar dilemma for virtue epistemology. Either he construes full aptness as strong enough to get barn façade cases right in which case his view will run right into the problem we develop. Or else he construes full aptness as weak enough to avoid this problem but then he will not be able to deal with barn façade cases in the way envisaged.

Knowing Full Well

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Sosa
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Epistemic Circularity ◽  
Good Judgment ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
First Order ◽  
Knowledge Norm ◽  
Epistemic Competence

This book explains the nature of knowledge through an approach originated by the author years ago, known as virtue epistemology. The book provides a comprehensive account of the author's views on epistemic normativity as a form of performance normativity on two levels. On a first level is found the normativity of the apt performance, whose success manifests the performer's competence. On a higher level is found the normativity of the meta-apt performance, which manifests not necessarily first-order skill or competence but rather the reflective good judgment required for proper risk assessment. The book develops this bi-level account in multiple ways, by applying it to issues much disputed in recent epistemology: epistemic agency, how knowledge is normatively related to action, the knowledge norm of assertion, and the Meno problem as to how knowledge exceeds merely true belief. A full chapter is devoted to how experience should be understood if it is to figure in the epistemic competence that must be manifest in the truth of any belief apt enough to constitute knowledge. Another takes up the epistemology of testimony from the performance–theoretic perspective. Two other chapters are dedicated to comparisons with ostensibly rival views, such as classical internalist foundationalism, a knowledge-first view, and attributor contextualism. The book concludes with a defense of the epistemic circularity inherent in meta-aptness and thereby in the full aptness of knowing full well.

From Reliabilism to Virtue Epistemology

2020 ◽  
pp. 141-151
Author(s):  
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Process Reliabilism ◽  
Proper Functionalism ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mere True Belief ◽  
Better Than

This chapter is Zagzebski’s first paper that discusses “the value problem,” or the problem that an account of knowledge must identify what makes knowledge better than mere true belief. One of the problems with reliabilism is that it does not explain what makes the good of knowledge greater than the good of true belief. In Virtues of the Mind she gave this objection only to process reliabilism. In this chapter she develops the objection in more detail, and argues that the problem pushes first in the direction of three offspring of process reliabilism—faculty reliabilism, proper functionalism, and agent reliabilism, and she then argues that an account of knowledge based on virtuous motives grounded in the motive for truth can solve the value problem.

scholarly journals Knowledge as Achievement, More or Less

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Turri
Keyword(s):  
Research Program ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Program Performance ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Epistemic Evaluation ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
The Gettier Problem

This chapter enhances and extends a powerful and promising research program, performance-based epistemology, which stands at the crossroads of many important currents that one can identify in contemporary epistemology, including the value problem, epistemic normativity, virtue epistemology, and the nature of knowledge. Performance-based epistemology offers at least three outstanding benefits: it explains the distinctive value that knowledge has, it places epistemic evaluation into a familiar and ubiquitous pattern of evaluation, and it solves the Gettier problem. But extant versions of performance-based epistemology have been the object of serious criticism. This chapter shows how to meet the objections without sacrificing the aforementioned benefits.

Virtue epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
Basic Concept ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Cognitive Structure ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Fundamental Concept ◽  
Epistemic Values ◽  
Forming Process ◽  
Epistemic Evaluation ◽  
Process Reliabilism

‘Virtue epistemology’ is the name of a class of theories that analyse fundamental epistemic concepts such as justification or knowledge in terms of properties of persons rather than properties of beliefs. Some of these theories make the basic concept constitutive of justification or knowledge that of a reliable belief-forming process, or a reliable belief-forming faculty or, alternatively, a properly functioning faculty. Others make the fundamental concept that of an epistemic or intellectual virtue in the sense of virtue used in ethics. In all these theories, epistemic evaluation rests on some virtuous quality of the person that enables them to act in a cognitively effective and commendable way, although not all use the term ‘virtue’. The early, simple forms of process reliabilism are best treated as precursors to virtue epistemology since the latter arose out of the former and has added requirements for knowledge intended to capture the idea of epistemic behaviour that is 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 inquiry in a way that permits the recovering of such neglected epistemic values as understanding and wisdom.

scholarly journals Two Forms of Virtue Epistemology

Epistemology ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 140-156
Author(s):  
Ernest Sosa
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
Intellectual Courage ◽  
Virtue Reliabilism

This chapter explains how two quite distinct forms of virtue epistemology are generally recognized. One of these finds in epistemology important correlates of Aristotle's moral virtues. Such responsibilist character epistemology builds its account of epistemic normativity on the subject's responsible manifestation of epistemic character. Meanwhile, the other form of virtue epistemology adheres closer to Aristotelian intellectual virtues while recognizing a broader set of competences still restricted to basic faculties of perception, introspection, and the like. The chapter shows that because of its focus on traditional faculties such as perception, memory, and inference, such virtue reliabilism is said to overlook character traits such as open-mindedness and intellectual courage.

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