Virtue Epistemology

Virtue Epistemology

Themes in Ethics and Epistemology

Shane [email protected]

27/11/13

Structure

1 Virtue Epistemology: Background 2 Virtues: Reliabilism versus Responsibilism 3. Advantages of VE 4. Challenges Facing VE 5. Conclusion

1. Virtue Epistemology: Background

Commitments

1. Epistemology is a normative discipline

2. “[I]ntellectual agents and communities are the primary source of epistemic value and the primary focus of epistemic evaluation.” (Greco and Turri, 2011).


Epistemology as normative discipline

1(a). Denies Quine's claim in “Epistemology Naturalized” that philosophers should restrict themselves to cognitive psychology.

1(b). Epistemic norms, values, and evaluations are proper objects of study for epistemology. And central concepts or terms, such as “knowledge”, “evidence”, and “justification”, may require the use of normative language for their full explanation.


Value and evaluation

2. The second commitment implies a distinctive direction of analysis. This is a direction of analysis common to both virtue epistemology and virtue ethics.


Parallel with Virtue Ethics

“Virtue ethics explains an action's moral properties in terms of the agent's properties, for instance whether it results from kindness or spite. VE [virtue epistemology] explains a cognitive performance's normative properties in terms of the cognizer's properties, for instance whether a belief results from hastiness or excellent eyesight, or whether an inquiry manifests carelessness or discrimination.” (Greco and Turri, 2011.)

The relevant properties in virtue ethics are moral virtues and vices, and in VE they are intellectual virtues and vices. (Greco and Turri, 2011.)


There are five primary questions that analyses of the intellectual virtues should address:

“First, are the virtues natural or acquired? Second, does virtue possession require the agent to possess acquired intellectually virtuous motivations or dispositions to perform intellectually virtuous actions? Third, are the virtues distinct from skills? Fourth, are the virtues reliable? Finally, fifth, what makes the virtues valuable? Are they instrumentally, constitutively, or intrinsically valuable?” (Battaly, 2008: 7).


Three Key Debates within VE

1. What are intellectual virtues and what is their scope?

2. What are the questions that VE should address?

3. What methods should be used? (Greco and Turri, 2011.)


A range of diverse approaches come under the label “Virtue Epistemology”.

Two prominent approaches Virtue reliabilism Virtue responsibilsm

2 Virtues: Reliabilism versus Responsibilism

The Nature of Intellectual Virtue

Some epistemologists, such as Ernest Sosa, define an intellectual virtue as “any stable and reliable or truth conducive property of a person”. (Baehr, 2004).

Examples of such virtues cited include vision, memory, and introspection.


Such epistemologists tend to be concerned with providing virtue based analyses of knowledge and/or epistemic justification.

Analyses of knowledge tend to be along the lines of knowledge is true belief arising from the exercise of epistemic virtue.

The similarity of their position to that of reliablism generally has led them to be labelled “virtue reliabilists”. (Baehr, 2004).


A second group of epistemologists, including Linda Zagzebski and Lorraine Code, conceive intellectual virtues as good intellectual character traits.

Examples include, open-mindedness, intellectual thoroughness, fair-mindedness, inquisitiveness. (Baehr, 2004).


The traits that these epistemologists regard as intellectual virtues might also be viewed as the traits of a responsible knower or inquirer, hence the label “virtue responsibilism”. (Baehr, 2004).

The reliabilist/responsibilist taxonomy has attracted criticism. It's not clear why one must choose one approach over the other.


Conventional versus Alternative

Virtue epistemologists may deploy the resources of VE in standard or non-standard ways.

- That is, address standard epistemological questions in standard ways.

Or they may address non-standard questions or attempt to answer questions in non-standard ways.

- For example, they may “shun definitions and tidy analyses”. (Greco and Turri, 2011).

3. Advantages of VE

Answering the sceptic

Virtue epistemologists claim that the approach helps with some sceptical problems.

Sceptical Problem – All knowledge must be grounded in good reasons. This threatens to require an infinite regress of reasons.

But virtue approach can explain why not all knowledge needs grounding in reasons. Knowledge is true belief grounded in intellectual virtue but intellectual virtue may involve grounding in faculties like memory that don't involve inferences. (Greco and Turri, 2011).

3. Advantages of VE

Epistemic Value

Zagzebski: An adequate account of knowledge should explain why knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief.

Epistemic justification might be understood as the process that brings about true beliefs in cases of knowledge.

3. Advantages of VE

Consider the following example:

There are two cups of coffee. One has been made by a machine that reliably produces good cups of coffee. The other has been made by a machine that is unreliable. But both cups of coffee taste good. Typically we don't think that a cup of coffee is better because of the machine that produces it, we just care about the taste.

3. Advantages of VE

Upshot of the example: A true belief is not made better because it was produced by a reliable method.

How VE can help: If knowledge is a true belief because of an intellectual virtue, then there is an important disanalogy that can help us explain why knowledge is more valuable that mere true belief.

Virtue epistemologists can claim that knowledge is a credit-worthy state, knowledge requires epistemic virtue, while simply having a reliably produced true belief is not.

4. Challenges Facing VE

Challenge I

“Jennifer Lackey (2007) argues that we do not deserve credit for everything we know, so (a) standard VE definitions of knowledge are false, and (b) VE is not ideally suited to explain knowledge's value.” (Greco and Turri, 2011).


The Jenny case runs as follows:

Our protagonist, whom we will call “Jenny”, arrives at the train station in Chicago and, wishing to obtain directions to the Sears Tower, approaches the first adult passer by that she sees. Suppose further that the person that she asks has first-hand knowledge of the area and gives her the directions that she requires. Intuitively, any true belief that Jenny forms on this basis would ordinarily be counted as knowledge. (Pritchard, 2010: 40).


Lackey's interpretation of the VE commitment to credit is that, to gain credit for a true belief, “your “reliable cognitive faculties” must be “the most salient part” of the explanation for why you believe the truth”. (Lackey 2007, 351). (Greco and Turri, 2011).

If credit arising from virtue were only a necessary or important part of the explanation, then there would be Gettier counterexamples. (Lackey 2007, 347–8).


Challenge II

Lackey also points out that innate knowledge seems to be a counterexample to VE whereby knowledge can't be thought of as creditable. (Lackey 2007, 358).

Such knowledge is possible, and an adequate theory of knowledge should allow for that conceptual possibility. Nevertheless, “it seems highly unlikely that a subject would deserve credit for such knowledge.” After all the belief's origin, “such as natural selection or some other evolutionary mechanism,” would be what is salient in explaining why you had the true belief. (Lackey, 2007).


Challenge III

The situationist challenge:

Our epistemic success may be effected by non-epistemic, situational factors. While this may be the case, we should want to say that there can still be knowledge in such cases, but standard VE approaches would have to deny this.


Background

According to Homiak (2011) situationists hold that much human behaviour is explained by “seemingly trivial features of the situations in which persons find themselves”.

Situationists argue that research in moral psychology supports this view and challenge the competing theoretical view that people have stable moral characters or traits. Specifically they challenge the view that we have robust traits such that these traits are exhibited in a wide variety of situations where those traits are relevant. (Doris 2002, cited in Homiak 2011).


The thought is that we may talk about agents being virtuous, but if we

understand virtuous as analogous to how Doris understands robust

traits, then situationists claim that we will be mistaken.

Situationists are sceptical that agents, at least in any significant

proportion, are such that they will be, say, courageous or kind across a

wide range of situations in which courageousness or kindness is called

for. Rather they claim that research supports their view that it is situation

or circumstance that is salient in explaining people’s moral behaviour.


Some of the research:

Isen and Levin (1972: 387, cited in Doris and Stich (2011)) found that

“subjects who had just found a dime were 22 times more likely to help

a woman who had just dropped some papers than subjects who did

not find a dime”;

Darley and Batson (1973: 105, cited in Doris and Stich (2011))

discovered that amongst their subjects the chances of a passerby

helping a person “who appeared to be in significant distress” were 6

times more likely if that passerby was not in a hurry;


Mathews and Canon (1975: 574–5, cited in Doris

and Stich (2011)) reported that with normal level

ambient noise in the background “subjects were 5

times more likely to help an apparently injured

man who had dropped some books… than when

a power lawnmower was running nearby”.


The situationist challenge to virtue epistemology

is newer. Mark Alfano (2011), citing empirical

research presents such a challenge.


The Duncker candle task:

Participants are presented with a book of matches,

a box of thumbtacks, and a candle. They are set

the task of fixing the candle to a vertical cork

board (a bulletin board) in a such a way that once

the candle is lit no wax drips to the floor.


To succeed participants need to empty the box and tack it to the cork

board, place the candle on the platform created and light the candle.

Only 13% of the participants solved the problem. (Alfano, 2011: 14).

However, when the moods of the participants were elevated by having

them view a short comedy or by giving them candy, participants’

performances improved significantly. 75% of participants whose

mood had been elevated solved the task. (Alfano, 2011: 14)


Can it be said that successful participants have known of

the solution that they arrived at? Alfano (2011: 14)

answers that to him it seems right to say that, for those

who wouldn’t have got it right without the mood elevation,

they did know but that they didn’t solve the problem

because of the exercise of intellectual virtue, but because

their mood had been elevated by the candy or funny film.

5. Conclusion

We discussed two commitments of VE and differences of approach that come under the heading of VE – Virtue Reliabilism and Virtue Responsibilism

We also discussed some of the theoretical advantages that adopting a VE approach brings and challenges to adopting such an approach.

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Virtue Epistemology