Intellectual Responsibility and Epistemological Theism

One of the most interesting and widely discussed trends in modern epistemology is the so-called intellectual ethics, normative in its essence, centered around the concept of epistemic virtue, based on the idea of metaphysical anthropology, supplemented by elements of theology. The last consists in the idea of a certain “gift” to a person from the side of the Supreme Being, which is God – and this gift lies in the epistemic virtues inherent in the individual. This subject-centered concept emphasizes the intellectual and epistemic qualities of the cognizing subject that guarantee the truth of their beliefs. However, if is God the true guarantor of their “epistemic reliability” and the possibility of thus identifying justified belief with knowledge? The reliability of the cognitive human ability is seen in the realization of virtus as “perfection in being for the good”, in this case epistemic, the only guarantee of which can only be divine will. Is it so? This article attempts to answer this question in the course of reconstruction and analysis of the epistemological-theistic approach to defining one of the key epistemic virtues of the cognizing subject – intellectual responsibility.

DOXASTICISM: BELIEF AND THE INFORMATION-RESPONSIVENESS OF MIND

ABSTRACTThis paper concerns a problem that has received insufficient analysis in the philosophical literature so far: the conditions under which an information-bearing state – say a perception or recollection – yields belief. The paper distinguishes between belief and a psychological property easily conflated with belief, illustrates the tendency of philosophers to overlook this distinction, and offers a positive conception of the mind's information-responsiveness that requires far less belief-formation – and far less formation of other propositional attitudes – than has been commonly supposed to be produced by perception and other experiences. This conception is clarified by a partial sketch of the natural economy of mind. The paper then considers two important questions the conception raises. Does it force us to abandon the venerable belief-desire conception of intentional action, and does it require expanding the domain of intellectual responsibility and thereby our conception of epistemic virtue?