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 as Action

This chapter argues that judgment and knowledge itself are forms of intentional action. Such action falls under a certain normative structure of success, competence, and aptness, or success that manifests competence. Judgment is a special case falling under that structure. The chapter explains that intentional actions come in two sorts. An attempt is an intentional action, an endeavor to attain a certain objective. An attempt can fail and remain a mere attempt, whereas an achievement is a certain sort of successful attempt. Intentional actions are one sort of performance. Some performances are also aimings, however, without being intentional. These, too, can fail and remain mere aimings, to be distinguished from those that are successful.

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.

Knowledge, Time, and Negligence

This chapter analyses Saul Kripke's dogmatism paradox. It argues that, in order to address properly that puzzle, one needs a notion of epistemic negligence that fits naturally within a virtue-theoretic framework. Kripke's puzzle concerns a prospective intention to close one's mind. A second puzzle is closely related. Instead of the prospective intention, it concerns an antecedent belief: namely, that any further evidence will be misleading if negative. Once you attain knowledge, you virtually know that any contrary evidence will be misleading and is best ignored. When negative evidence does come forth at some later time, scholars wonder whether a person should ignore it in accordance with what they already know. This problem is resolved by noting that knowledge can be lost with a change of evidence.

Mind–World Relations

This chapter discusses how people often appeal to what they would ordinarily say, and even to what they would ordinarily think, in the exercise of generally shared concepts. When one wonders about personal identity, freedom and responsibility, the mind and its states and contents, justice, rightness of action, happiness, and so on, the main focus is not just the words or the concepts. There are things beyond words and concepts whose nature people wish to understand. The metaphysics of persons goes beyond the semantics of the word “person” and its cognates, and even beyond the correlated conceptual analysis. Philosophical progress might then take a form similar to the kind of scientific progress that involves conceptual innovation.

Virtue Epistemology and a Theory of Competence

This chapter begins by laying out a theory of competence in general and its application to epistemology. This is meant to round out the concept of virtue epistemology, which must essentially rely on a theory of competence. A competence is a disposition (ability) to succeed when one tries. When complete, they have a triple-S constitution. These three sorts of dispositions are as follows: the innermost (seat), the inner (seat + shape), and the complete (seat + shape + situation). However, not every disposition to succeed when one tries constitutes a competence, although every competence will be constituted by a disposition to succeed when the agent is within certain ranges of shape and situation.

Varieties and Levels of Knowledge

This chapter considers the different types and levels of knowledge, focusing on apt judgment (and judgmental belief) and on corresponding knowledge above mere subcredal animal knowledge. In a best-case scenario, the agent who judges aptly knows that they would likely enough affirm correctly if they affirmed as they intended. The agent affirms alethically fully and aptly only if guided to a correct and apt affirmation by second-order awareness of their competence to so affirm. The affirmation must be safe because the agent must know that they would succeed aptly if they tried, so that if he affirmed they would do so correctly, which is tantamount to safety of affirmation and, in turn, to safety of judgment.

The Value of Human Knowledge

This chapter addresses the question of what sort of normativity is constitutive of a person's knowledge. A belief that falls short of knowledge is thereby inferior. A satisfactory answer to the value problem likely requires a correct view of the definitional problem. Two of Plato's best-known dialogues are inquiries about knowledge. The Theaetetus inquires into its nature, while the Meno into its value. Scholars assume that knowledge requires a belief that is true, and therefore asks what condition must a belief satisfy, in addition to being true, in order to constitute knowledge. This question about the nature of knowledge has been central to epistemology in recent decades, as it had been for Plato.

Regress Skepticism

This chapter examines one of the main strands of thought that can be distinguished in the dialectic on philosophical skepticism. This strand concerns the problem of the external world and how that relates to a particular sort of externalism in epistemology—naturalist externalism—which has taken various forms in the epistemology of recent years, including causal, tracking, process, and virtue varieties. The chapter shows how some practices or faculties or competences, by contrast, are not checkable independently. These are practices or faculties or competences that are “fundamental.” The chapter illustrates how it would be an accomplishment to reduce perceptual cognition to more fundamental cognition, such as armchair cognition, including introspection and pure reason.

Descartes’s Pyrrhonian Virtue Epistemology

This chapter discusses how Descartes uses his principle of clarity and distinctness to raise his first-order judgments to the scientia level. Error is what one must avoid, not just falsity; so he seeks not just truth but also aptness. You are to assure yourself that you attain such aptness, which is required for confidence that you avoid error and attain certainty. But this assurance is forthcoming only with assurance that the operative source of your judgment is indeed a reliable-enough competence. This raises an issue of circularity, also known as the Cartesian Circle. The chapter shows how this circle also affects contemporary virtue epistemology when it postulates a level of reflective knowledge above that of animal knowledge.