Dual processes, dual virtues

I argue that virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism are complementary. They do not give competing accounts of epistemic virtue. Rather they explain the excellent functioning of different parts of our cognitive apparatus. Reliabilist virtue designates the excellent functioning of fast and context-specific Type 1 cognitive processes, while responsibilist virtue means an excellent functioning of effortful and reflective Type 2 cognitive processes. This account unifies reliabilist and responsibilist virtue theory. But the virtues are not unified by designating some epistemic norm that both aim at. Instead, I unify them through their cognitive foundations. Because Type 1 and Type 2 cognition are complementary, reliabilist and responsibilist virtues are complementary. Thereby, this dual-process theory of epistemic virtue gives a naturalised account of virtues as well as an explanation of how reliabilism and responsibilism relate. This approach offers a solution for both the generality problem and the situationist challenge to virtue epistemology; additionally it preserves the epistemological autonomy of each virtue type.

A Virtue Theoretic Ethics of Intellectual Agency

There is a well-established literature on the ethics of belief. Our beliefs, however, are just one aspect of our intellectual lives with which epistemology should be concerned. I make the case that epistemologists should be concerned with an ethics of intellectual agency rather than the narrower category of ethics of belief. Various species of normativity, epistemic, moral, and so on, that may be relevant to the ethics of belief are laid out. An account adapted from virtue ethics for an ethics that goes beyond the ethics of belief is defended. The main claim advanced here is that we should act as the virtuous agent would characteristically act in the circumstances. This claim is supported with reference to a number of examples, as well as considerations informing virtue ethics. An acknowledged feature of this account is that it provides limited guidance regarding right action in intellectual agency. While the account draws on virtue responsibilism to offer guidance, the case is made that it’s a mistake to think that an account in this area can provide a successful decision procedure.

Extending Epistemic Virtue

What would happen if extended cognition (EC) and virtue-responsibilism (VR) were to meet? Are they compatible, or incompatible? Do they have projects in common? Would they, as it were, end their meeting early, or stick around but run out of things to say? Or, would they hit it off? This chapter suggests that VR and EC are not obviously incompatible, and that each might fruitfully contribute to the other. Although there has been an explosion of recent work at the intersection of virtue epistemology and EC, this work has focused almost exclusively on the reliabilist side of virtue epistemology. Little has been said about the intersection of VR and EC. This chapter takes initial steps toward filling that gap.

Virtue Responsibilism

This chapter begins by marking the distinction between reliabilism and responsibilism in virtue epistemology. It then charts the development of virtue responsibilism through a number of authors, noting the subtle distinctions in their views. Varieties of virtue responsibilism are distinguished first, by their characterization of the intellectual virtues, and second, by the role (if any) they assign to the intellectual virtues in defining knowledge. A number of arguments against defining knowledge with reference to the intellectual virtues are surveyed. Situationism is then presented as a general objection to the very existence of either moral or intellectual virtues. It is argued that the empirical studies taken to support situationism do not demonstrate the lack of virtuous character traits when those traits are properly understood. Finally, there is a survey of the host of directions in which current approaches to virtue responsibilism are developing.

Reliabilist Virtue Epistemology

According to reliabilist virtue epistemology, or virtue reliabilism, knowledge is true belief that is produced by intellectual excellence (or virtue), where intellectual excellence is understood in terms of reliable, truth-directed cognitive dispositions. This chapter explains why virtue reliabilism is a form of epistemological externalism, is a moderately naturalized epistemology, and is distinct from virtue responsibilism. It explains virtue reliabilism’s answers to various forms of skepticism, its solution to the Gettier Problem, and its explanation of the value of knowledge. The chapter also describes several varieties of contemporary virtue reliabilism. Finally, it offers replies to two recently prominent objections to virtue reliabilism: that it is committed to an untenable epistemological individualism, and that there are empirical reasons to doubt whether people generally have the kinds of intellectual abilities that virtue reliabilism requires for knowledge.