Competence and Justification

Chapter 10 explains how the expanded view makes room for a sort of “epistemic justification” constitutive of knowledge. Critics have argued repeatedly that no externalist epistemology can account for epistemic justification. Their main argument repurposes the celebrated Cartesian evil demon thought experiment. The conclusion is now that the beliefs of the demon’s victim can be about as well justified as are many of our perceptual and other beliefs, although it is hard to see how any externalist epistemology could account for this fact. This chapter seeks a way out for the externalist virtue epistemologist.

Virtue Theory against Situationism

This chapter looks at the shocking but robust results obtained by social epistemologists in experiments that prompt a situationist attack on virtue theory. Based on a body of troubling results in social psychology, an intriguing critique has been pressed in recent years against virtue ethics, raising doubts both about its moral psychology and about its normative content. Similar discoveries have been made by social psychologists about belief management so that a similar critique can be pressed against virtue epistemology. The chapter shows how the logical structure of scholars' response to the critique of virtue ethics is closely replicated by a response available to the virtue epistemologist.

Knowledge and Justification

This chapter offers a way out for the externalist virtue epistemologist, with implications for the perennial problematic of radical skepticism. Consisting of three parts, the chapter outlines some main components of the epistemology laid out in the earlier chapters while providing further historical context. The first part briefly reprises the account of knowledge as action using the notion of epistemic competence, then connects this with central ideas of Aristotle's ethics and Descartes' epistemology. This analysis then illuminates epistemic justification in part two and radical skepticism in part three. The chapter shows that only with understanding of how knowledge is constituted can scholars properly seek the place of epistemic justification in that constitution.

On Virtue, Credit and Safety

According to robust virtue epistemology, the difference between knowledge and mere true belief is that in cases of knowledge, the subject’s cognitive success is attributable to her cognitive agency. But what does it take for a subject’s cognitive success to be attributable to her cognitive agency? A promising answer is that the subject’s cognitive abilities have to contribute to the safety of her epistemic standing with respect to her inquiry, in order for her cognitive success to be attributable to her cognitive agency. Call this idea the contribution thesis. The author will argue that the contribution thesis follows naturally from virtue epistemological accounts of knowledge, and that it is precisely the contribution thesis that allows the virtue epistemologist to deal with a wide variety of objections. Nevertheless, the principal aim of this paper is to argue that virtue epistemological theories of knowledge that are committed to the contribution thesis are ultimately untenable. There are cases of knowledge where the subject’s cognitive abilities do not improve the safety of the subject’s belief.

Los sueños, la agencia y el juicio

De acuerdo con Sosa, Descartes es un epistemólogo de virtudes, y podemos entender el proyecto epistemológico de Descartes sólo como un proyecto de segundo orden que concuerda con esta manera de entender su epistemología. Mi objetivo en este artículo es el de ahondar en esta comparación con la epistemología de Descartes, principalmente mediante la exploración de una manera en la que uno podría añadir ciertos detalles suplementarios a la postura general de Sosa, con la finalidad de que ésta concuerde de mejor manera con la postura de Descartes, o al menos con la que yo considero que es la postura de DescartesPalabras clave: Ernest Sosa, Descartes, conocimiento animal, conocimiento reflexivo, cognitio, scientia.AbstractAccording to Sosa, Descartes is a virtue epistemologist, and we can make sense of Descartes’ epistemological project only as a second-order project that fits with this view of his epistemology. My aim in this paper is to pursue this comparison with Descartes’ epistemology—principally through exploring a way in which one might add certain supplementary details to Sosa’s general approach, in order to bring it into closer alignment with Descartes’ view, or at least what I take to be Descartes’ view Keywords: Ernest Sosa, Descartes, animal knowledge, reflective knowledge, cognitio, scientia.