Virtues of the Mind

Abstract

Almost all theories of knowledge and justified belief employ moral concepts and forms of argument borrowed from moral theories, but none of them pay attention to the current renaissance in virtue ethics. This remarkable book is the first attempt to establish a theory of knowledge based on the model of virtue theory in ethics. The book develops the concept of an intellectual virtue, and then shows how the concept can be used to give an account of the major concepts in epistemology, including the concept of knowledge. This highly original work of philosophy for professionals will also provide students with an excellent introduction to epistemology, virtue theory, and the relationship between ethics and epistemology.

A Problem for Pritchard’s Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology

“…Now as a point of obviousness, the approach to analysing knowledge that is prima facie best suited to accommodating the ability constraint is the virtuetheoretic approach, examples of which include the much-discussed proposals defended by the three towering figures in virtue epistemology: Sosa (2007;2009), Greco (2006;2010) and Zagzebski (1996). Although these leading writers disagree about (among other things) how the connection knowledge requires between the acquisition of truth and the exercise of intellectual virtue should be understood, they are in solid agreement that one fails to know unless one satisfies the ability constraint (AC).…”

“…Let's look first at CA-A, which contains the agent-focused interpretation of cognitive success. Bear in mind now some considerations relevant to which reading should be thought the most plausible one: First, the most prominent defenders of virtue-theoretic accounts of knowledge, Greco (2010), Zagzebski (1994;1996) and with some caveats Sosa 21 (2007; 2009), have all endorsed without revision the view that environmental luck-as is what's at play in barn façade cases-is incompatible with knowing. As a point of textual interpretation, then, if either one of CA-A and CA-B but not the other implied straightforwardly for the VE account that environmental luck is compatible with knowing, then ceterus paribus, we should read the canonical VE articulation of cognitive achievement as being the one free from this implication.…”

“…Secondly, and more importantly, we should bear in mind that our discussion of luck has already left us with a precedent for determining which characterisation of the success of believing truly would stand relevant to whether one knows: this precedent is one we can extend from discussions of how knowledge (can't) depend on luck to relevantly similar discussions of how knowledge (must) depend on cognitive ability 22 . To make this point clear, let's take the ambiguously phrased 'believing p truly.'…”

Introduction: Virtues and Arguments

“…Vices are commonly understood as something more than the absence of a virtue; and virtues can be attributed to arguers, their arguments, or to the acts of arguing. Ball effectively stresses the motivational component in virtues (and vices), bringing out resonances between VAT accounts and, say, Zagzebski's (1996) understanding of virtues in virtue epistemology. The research programme on virtues and fallacies is already under way!…”

Bogency and Goodacies: On Argument Quality in Virtue Argumentation Theory

“…However, Aberdein (2007Aberdein ( , 2010a has made also abundantly clear that VAT is but the latest offspring of an illustrious scholarly tradition, to wit, virtue theory in general, dating back to ancient philosophy, and most notably to Aristotle's ethical writings. As it is well-known, that particular approach has been gaining a lot of momentum in recent years, in the context of virtue ethics (Foot, 1978;MacIntyre, 1981;Hursthouse, 1999) and positive psychology (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), as well as in the area of virtue epistemology (Sosa, 1991;Zagzebski, 1996), which shares many topics of concern with argumentation theories. So it should not come as a surprise to see that VAT is currently prospering: for instance, "Virtues of Argumentation" was the topic of the latest international conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argument (Windsor, 22-25 May 2013), with Daniel Cohen featuring as one of the keynote speakers; nor is the relevance of VAT confined to argumentation theories, given that a non-specialistic philosophy journal such as Topoi is currently preparing a special issue on "Virtues and Arguments," guest edited by Andrew Aberdein and Daniel Cohen. In spite of all these indications of success, the surest sign of the growing importance of VAT is the fact that it also attracted a fair share of criticism and doubt.…”