Chapter Two
Putting Knowledge In Its Place:
Virtue Epistemology and the Internalism/Externalism Debate
Guarded language (be less guarded, more aggressive.
I. Introduction
The guiding idea of this dissertation is that flourishing rational agents are agents who
possess character traits that facilitate intelligent problem solving. If a character trait helps
its possessor to solve intelligently the particular problems that arise in her environment,
that character trait is a virtue. If a character trait hinders problem solving, it is a vice. As
I stated in Chapter One, to solve a problem is to make absent or threatened values accrue
stably to experience. To flourish as a rational agent is to secure the continued existence
of that which is valuable and to increase opportunities for the enjoyment of that which is
valuable. Those who are best able to accomplish these ends are those who are not only
knowledgeable but who can give an account of their knowledge (i.e., people who can
give reasons for believing what they rightly believe). In other words, the ability to give
an account of one’s knowledge is an important part of flourishing rationality.
Unfortunately, the value of the ability to give an account of one’s knowledge has gone
largely underexplored, and, as we will see, this is in large part due to the way the debate
between epistemological internalists and externalists has played out in contemporary
epistemology.
In the present chapter I argue that virtue epistemology can make a significant
contribution to the ongoing debate between epistemological internalists and externalists.
Traditionally, this debate has centered on the value of knowledge and its justification. By
adopting a virtue approach to epistemology we can separate the question of the value of
1
the ability to give an account of one’s knowledge from the question of the value of
knowledge and its justification. This allows us to accept what I shall call the “insight of
externalism” while still acknowledging the importance of internalists’ insistence on the
value of “articulate reflection.”1
Intellectual virtue can function as the unifying
consideration in a study of a plurality of epistemic values, all of which are goods internal
to inquiry. (Indeed, we may find that virtue can function as the unifying consideration in
a general study of value.)
I begin (in Section II) by identifying the central point of contention in the debate
between advocates of epistemological internalism and externalism.
Advocates of
externalist epistemology maintain that the value of knowledge can be divorced from the
value of articulate reflection.
Internalist epistemologists argue that the value of
knowledge is dependent upon the value of articulate reflection.
This debate has
traditionally centered on the epistemic value of knowledge and its justification
conditions, leaving the independent value of articulate reflection largely underexplored.
In Section III, I trace the early development of externalist epistemology, focusing
primarily on the work of one of its most successful pioneers, Alvin Goldman. Goldman’s
“reliabilist,” externalist epistemology overcomes a significant objection leveled against
earlier versions of externalism, making externalist accounts of knowledge and its
justification much more attractive. Moreover, Goldman’s reliabilism served as part of the
inspiration for a new approach to epistemology, namely, virtue epistemology.
1
Throughout the remainder of this dissertation I will use the substantive term “articulate
reflection” in place of the more cumbersome phrase “the ability to give an account of
one’s knowledge.” The latter phrase is a bit more accurate in that it expresses a capacity
or competence. I intend the more wieldy term, “articulate reflection,” to express this as
well, though I admit that it does not do so as naturally or explicitly.
2
In Section IV I trace the rise of virtue epistemology. Originally conceived (by
Ernest Sosa) as a kind of externalism, virtue epistemology shifts the locus of epistemic
evaluation away from individual beliefs and to subjects (i.e., persons). Sosa’s externalist
virtue epistemology avoids many of the criticisms leveled against more common
approaches to the topic of epistemic justification—namely coherentism and
foundationalism (of which Goldman’s brand of reliabilism is an example). Externalist
virtue epistemology offers a promising (if not wholly adequate) account of knowledge
and its justification. But the value of virtue epistemology exceeds its contribution to the
study of knowledge and its justification—a fact of which many epistemologists (not just
virtue epistemologists) are quickly becoming aware. Virtue epistemology is transforming
the contemporary epistemological landscape.
Passivity in this section: “let’s do this . . .” or “it lets us do this or that” We
want to do X, externalism doesn’t let us, so we should go ahead. Section V considers
how virtue epistemology can transform the internalism/externalism debate in a productive
way.
Through the concept of intellectual virtue, we can shift the focus of the
internalism/externalism debate away from its narrow concern with knowledge and its
justification and reorient it on the wider field of epistemic value.
In doing so,
contemporary epistemologists can accept the insight of externalism without abandoning
the internalists’ insistence upon the value of articulate reflection. Articulate reflection is
an epistemic good to which knowledgeable people should aspire.
Finally, in Section VI, I explore Christopher Hookway’s suggestion that virtue
epistemologists should focus more of their attentions on the study of inquiry and
deliberation and less on the clarification of the concepts of knowledge and justified
3
belief. I offer two reasons why virtue epistemologists should follow-up on Hookway’s
suggestion.
II. Externalism, Internalism, and the Value of Knowledge
It is clear that dependency-relationships obtain among some of our epistemic values. For
instance, whether an agent’s belief counts as an instance of knowledge depends upon
whether the agent is justified in believing what she believes. If her belief is justified, then
it is a candidate for knowledge. If it is not justified, then it is not a candidate for
knowledge. And whether an agent is to be considered wise depends upon whether she
knows something. If she knows something—even if it is that she knows nothing—then
she is a candidate for the attribution of wisdom. If she knows nothing whatsoever, then
she is not a candidate for that attribution.
However, it is not so clear whether dependency-relationships obtain between
certain other epistemic values. For instance, some epistemologists insist that whether a
person knows something does not depend upon whether she is articulately reflective (i.e.,
whether she is able to give reasons for believing that which she rightly believes). To
know something it is sufficient that the would-be knower satisfy some set of epistemic
criteria of which articulate reflection is not a member. Thus, an agent can rightly be said
to know something even if she is unable to give reasons for believing that which she
knows.
Other epistemologists argue that the criteria for knowledge must include
articulate reflection. That is, an agent can rightly be said to know only if she can give
reasons for believing that which she knows—regardless of whatever else is epistemically
required of her.
4
Whichever side anyone takes in this disagreement, everyone acknowledges that
knowledge is valuable, and that articulate reflection (i.e., the ability to provide reasons
for believing the things one rightly believes) is valuable too. It is valuable (i.e., pleasant,
useful or rewarding, depending on the circumstance) to know that the music playing on
the radio is in fact the music of Beethoven—regardless of whether one likes Beethoven’s
music. It is also valuable to be able to give one’s reasons for believing that this piece was
written by Beethoven.
But must knowing depend upon whether one is articulately
reflective?
At the heart of the disagreement regarding the relationship between knowledge
and articulate reflection lays a concern for the value of knowledge. Those who defend the
claim that the value of knowledge derives—at least in part—from the knower’s being
articulately reflective have the weight of history on their side. Socrates defended such a
claim in the Meno.
True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their
place, but they will not stay long. They run away from a man’s mind; so they are
not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason . . . . Once they
are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable. That is why knowledge is
something more valuable than right opinion. What distinguishes one from the
other is the tether.2
Ever since Socrates, philosophers have made various attempts to explain what this tether
is made of and what it is tied to at the other end; for it is through the tethering that beliefs
become justified, and it is only through justification that the value of knowledge can
2
Plato. Meno. Trans. W. K. C. Guthrie. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Ed.
Hamilton and Cairns. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963]. 97e-98a.
5
accrue to beliefs. Despite their disagreements about the overall fabric of this tether, the
vast majority of philosophers have agreed that articulate reflection must be included
among its threads. That is to say, in order for the value of knowledge to accrue to one’s
beliefs, one must be able to give good reasons for believing what one believes.
Relatively recently, however, some philosophers of knowledge have begun to
challenge this tradition, urging that a tether of equal strength can be woven without that
thread. The justification needed for knowledge, they argue, does not require that the
knower be articulately reflective. Although early versions of this new kind of tether
failed to secure the value of knowledge, subsequent efforts have proven more promising
(as we will see), giving us persuasive reasons to believe that the value of knowledge is
not dependent upon articulate reflection.
Those who advocate this new kind of tether have come to be known as
“externalists,” for they argue that the factors that justify a knower’s belief may be
external to the knower’s cognitive perspective. That is, the reasons that justify the
knower’s belief need not be cognitively accessible to the knower.
The value of
knowledge can accrue to someone’s beliefs even if she is unable to articulate those
reasons. Those who defend the more traditional kind of tether have come to be known as
“internalists,” for the knower must be able to articulate (and therefore must have
cognitive access to) the reasons that justify her beliefs. That is, the reasons must be
internal to the knower’s cognitive perspective.
The basic insight of externalist epistemology is that the question of the value of
knowledge is divorceable from the question of the value of articulate reflection (and
perhaps additional but related epistemic goods).
One can account for the value of
6
knowledge independently of any account of the value of articulate reflection. Likewise,
one can account for the value of articulate reflection independently of one’s account of
the value of knowledge.
However, since the central concern of externalist
epistemologists is to defend their alternative accounts of the value of knowledge, its
advocates fail to give much (if any) attention to the independent value of articulate
reflection. Advocates of internalism, on the other hand, give a great deal of attention to
the value of articulate reflection; but since they do not accept the externalist insight their
accounts of its value remain wedded to their conceptions of the value of knowledge. That
is to say, internalists subordinate the value of articulate reflection to the value of
knowledge—the latter value being that for the sake of which we value the former.
The unfortunate result of externalists’ and internalists’ concentration on the value
of knowledge is that the value of articulate reflection, in its own right, has gone largely
underexplored. Both sides of the internalist/externalist divide fail to give an account of
the independent value of articulate reflection. Nevertheless, externalists and internalists
each make a significant contribution to the study of epistemic value.
Externalists
contribute the insight that the values of knowledge and articulate reflection are
divorceable from one another. The internalists’ contribution lies in their continuing
efforts to explain the value of articulate reflection—despite the fact that their explorations
are mistakenly undertaken in the service of knowledge.
To appreciate the contribution of externalist epistemology, let us briefly survey
the epistemological problems that motivated it, as well as the first attempts to construct a
new kind of tether. Early versions of this tether were too weak to secure the value of
7
knowledge. But as we shall see in the subsequent section, the basic design has been
taken up and successfully reinforced by contemporary virtue epistemologists.
III. The Rise of Externalism
Can someone legitimately claim to know, for example, that a piece of music was written
by Beethoven if she can give no reasons for believing that Beethoven wrote it? Suppose
you are listening to a piece of music with a friend who correctly identifies Beethoven as
the composer (for it is true that Beethoven composed the music), but who later confesses
that she had only guessed at the composer. Whether or not you initially thought that your
acquaintance knew who composed the music, her confession would probably convince
you that she did not. Whatever else you might think about knowledge, you will probably
agree that lucky guesses are not instances of it. One reason for your reluctance to
attribute knowledge to your friend might be that her confession indicates that she did not
believe that Beethoven composed the music. She merely guessed that he did. Surely, one
must believe that which one would know.
But imagine that your guessing friend
somehow gets herself to believe that the composer is in fact Beethoven. If this scenario
seems odd, it does for good reason. After all, even though guessing might explain why
your friend identified Beethoven as the composer, guessing does not give anyone a
reason to believe anything—not even if the guess hits the mark! To put it another way,
guessing does not justify your friend’s belief. Thus, the fact that your friend’s belief is
not justified by her guess gives you still another reason to be reluctant to attribute
knowledge to her.
8
The point of the forgoing example is to make explicit three common intuitions
about who deserves to be credited with knowledge. To know something one must 1)
believe that which one would know, 2) be justified in believing that which one would
know, and 3) one’s belief must be true.
Considerations such as these led many
epistemologists to define knowledge as justified, true belief. This definition was widely
accepted until E. L. Gettier pointed out (quite convincingly) that not all instances of
justified, true belief are instances of knowledge.
Gettier argues for this last point in his very short but very influential article, “Is
Justified True Belief Knowledge?”3 There, Gettier points out that some instances of
justified true belief do not satisfy our intuitions about whether a person’s reasons for
believing something that is in fact true justify the attribution of knowledge to that
person—even though the person’s belief is justified by those reasons. Gettier illustrates
his claim with two examples. In each of them “Smith” has a justified, true belief that we
would be reluctant to call knowledge—on the grounds that the considerations that justify
Smith’s beliefs are only accidentally connected to the conditions that make Smith’s
beliefs true.
Gettier’s counterexamples (and variations thereof) demonstrate that justified, true
beliefs do not guarantee knowledge. And although it may be tempting to respond to
Gettier’s argument by further qualifying the definition of knowledge in response to
particular Gettier-style counterexamples, this ad hoc, patchwork strategy treats only the
symptoms of a problem, not the root problem itself. Gettier-style cases are problematic
because the conception of justification used to define knowledge is unsatisfactory. The
3
This essay was originally published in Analysis, vol. 23 (1963), pp. 121-123.
9
tether is too weak. Gettier’s argument does not challenge the claim that only justified
beliefs are candidates for knowledge. (We still need a tether to secure the value of
knowledge.) But for a belief to be an instance of knowledge, there must be some stronger
connection between truth and justification.
An early attempt to strengthen the faulty tether was made by Alvin Goldman in
his 1967 essay, “A Causal Theory of Knowing.”4 According to Goldman, we can avoid
Gettier-style counterexamples by reducing the epistemic dialectic between justification
and knowledge to non-epistemic, causal processes. To know, he says, is to have a belief
that is caused by the very conditions that make that belief true. I know, for example, that
the table in front of me is brown because the fact that I am looking at a brown table in
front of me causes me to believe it.5 Thus, what justifies my belief is my belief’s causal
connection to that which makes my belief true. What makes Goldman’s account an
externalist account is that the knowing subject need not be able to give an account of the
causal processes that justify her belief. A knowing subject need not be able to justify her
belief by citing the relevant causal processes as reasons for believing what she believes.
The factors that justify a knowing subject’s beliefs may be external to the subject’s
cognitive perspective—that is, they need not be cognitively accessible to her.
Despite the advantages that the causal theory has in the way of circumventing
Gettier-style counterexamples, Goldman’s proposal was not satisfactory—not even to
Goldman himself. Thus, in 1976 Goldman attempted to buttress his causal theory of
4
Originally published in The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 64, no. 12 (June, 1967), pp.
357-372.
5
Goldman’s theory is not restricted to perceptual knowledge. He cites memory and
“correctly-reconstructed” inferences as other instances of “knowledge-producing causal
processes” (see Goldman 1967, p. 369), and leaves open the possibility that other such
processes might be identified.
10
knowledge against the pressure of its critics. One problem with Goldman’s original
proposal was that its criteria for knowledge attribution were too liberal. That is to say,
beliefs that we have reason not to consider instances of knowledge would, according to
Goldman’s old theory, count as knowledge. To illustrate this point, Goldman presented
the now-famous “barn-façade county” example.6
The example describes a situation in which a person’s belief that the object in
front of him is a barn is caused by his perception of what any person with normal vision
would take to be a barn. The problem is that the person (Henry) is driving through a
county in which there are many objects made to look like barns, but which are not in fact
barns. It just so happens, however, that the particular object that Henry calls a barn is in
fact a real barn. Here we have a true belief that is justified in such a way that the
justification is causally connected to that which makes the belief true. Nevertheless, we
are unwilling to call this a case of knowledge because the causal connection is, once
again, only accidentally connected to the truth. That is, if Henry were looking at one of
the fake barns he would call it a barn for the same reasons.
To remedy the problem of “accidentality,” Goldman adds that the beliefproducing causal mechanisms (in the foregoing case a perceptual mechanism) must be
“in an appropriate sense, ‘reliable’” (Goldman 1976, p. 771).
To be reliable, the
mechanism must “enable a person to discriminate or differentiate between incompatible
states of affairs” (ibid. [emphasis original]). In Henry’s case, the perceptual mechanism
must enable Henry to distinguish between real barns and fake barns. Goldman’s solution
to the accidentality problem is to define knowledge as follows: “A person knows that p
6
Alvin Goldman. “Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge,” The Journal of
Philosophy, vol. 73, no. 20 [November 18, 1976], pp. 771-791, pp. 772-773.
11
. . . only if the actual state of affairs in which p is true is distinguishable or discriminable
by him from a relevant possible state of affairs in which p is false” (ibid., p. 774).7 Henry
knows whether what he is seeing is a real barn only if 1) when there is a real barn in front
of him Henry believes that what he is seeing is a real barn, and 2) when there is a fake
barn in front of him Henry does not believe that what he is seeing is a real barn. Henry’s
belief-forming mechanisms (or processes) reliably get him to the truth and reliably keep
him from error, and it is this reliability that justifies his beliefs.
Goldman’s revised causal theory has come to be known as a “reliabilist” theory
because, according to that theory, the value of knowledge accrues to a belief by way of
the reliability of the mechanisms or processes through which that belief is generated.
Reliable mechanisms or processes provide the tether that secures the value of knowledge.
Note, however, that Goldman never stipulates that the person whose beliefs are reliably
generated must be aware that these mechanisms or processes are functioning reliably.
The knower need not be able to cite those mechanisms or processes as reasons for
believing what she rightly believes; it is enough that they are reliable. This is true even
of beliefs that are formed by mechanisms that Goldman calls “reasoning mechanisms.”
A reasoning mechanism is reliable “to the extent that its functional procedures would
generate new true beliefs from antecedent true beliefs” (Goldman 1976, p. 772). These
antecedent beliefs must issue, of course, from more basic reliable mechanisms (e.g.,
mnemonic or perceptual mechanisms). Goldman’s reliabilism is therefore a variety of
7
Goldman cites Peter Unger’s “non-accidentality analysis” and Keith Lehrer and Thomas
Paxson’s “indefeasibility” thesis as previous attempts to solve the accidentality problem,
both of which are inferior to Goldman’s reliabilism. According to Goldman, Unger’s
analysis fails to provide an adequate account of the “non-accidentality” condition for
knowledge, while Lehrer and Paxson’s solution is too strict. [See Goldman 1976, pp.
773-774.]
12
foundationalism. The reliability of a “reasoning mechanism” will generate true beliefs
only if the beliefs that it generates are founded on true beliefs that have been generated by
other reliable mechanisms, of which perceptual mechanisms are the most basic. The
reasoning mechanism may function beneath the level of conscious awareness—being
cognitively inaccessible to the knower—and still reliably generate true beliefs and not
generate false ones. Thus, according to Goldman’s reliabilist theory, articulate reflection
is not a necessary condition for knowledge.8
Reliabilist epistemology thus overcomes the accidentality problem that was raised
through Gettier’s counterexamples and which continued to plague Goldman’s earliest
causal theory of knowing. The reliability of a belief-forming mechanism provides the
connection between justification and truth, for what justifies the beliefs generated by such
mechanisms is precisely their tendency to get us to the truth. It is on account of the
reliability of a belief-forming mechanism that the value of knowledge accrues to beliefs
formed through that mechanism. Reliabilism does not require, however, that the knower
be able to articulate (i.e., to give an account of) the factors that justify her belief. It is
enough that her beliefs are reliably true. Thus, reliabilism provides us with an externalist
8
In Articulating Reasons (2000), Robert Brandom identifies as the “Founding Insight” of
reliabilism something similar to what I have called the insight of externalism: “What I
call the ‘Founding Insight’ of reliabilist epistemologies is the claim that true beliefs can,
at least in some cases, amount to genuine knowledge even where the justification
condition is not met (in the sense that the candidate knower is unable to produce suitable
justifications), provided the beliefs resulted from the exercise of capacities that are
reliable producers of true beliefs in the circumstances in which they were in fact
exercised” (Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism [Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2000], p. 97). Reliabilism is a form of externalist epistemology in that
the reliable capacities that justify the knower’s belief need not be cognitively accessible
to the knower. Brandom does not imply that justification conditions are not a part of
reliabilist epistemologies. Rather, justification does not necessarily require that the
knower be able to “produce” justifications (i.e., to be consciously aware of her reasons
for believing what she rightly believes and able to state those reasons).
13
tether by which the value of knowledge can be secured. 9 That is, it provides us with a
tether that does not include articulate reflection among its threads.10
The reliability of a belief-producing mechanism certainly does not entail the
infallibility of that mechanism. A reliable mechanism might on occasion generate a false
belief. But in such instances it is not necessary to impugn the truth-conduciveness of the
mechanism. Rather than deny that the value of knowledge accrues to any of the beliefs
generated by the reliable but fallible mechanism, we might instead try to identify factors
that can explain the mistake(s). Dependence upon such explanations would not betray a
weakness of reliabilist epistemology; in fact, such explanations could strengthen
reliabilist accounts by further specifying the conditions under which a given mechanism
is reliable. Fallibility is a small price to pay for an epistemology that does not demand
the impossible, namely, that knowledge accrues only to infallibly certain beliefs.
Moreover, it is unclear how internalism could guarantee infallible certainty simply by
stipulating that the knower must be articulately reflective.
The knower’s articulate
reflection, too, must be reliable. If a would-be knower correctly guesses at the reasons
9
In addition to his arguments for reliabilism, Goldman also offers arguments against
internalist epistemology. See, for example, “Internalism Exposed” in Knowledge, Truth,
and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue, ed. Matthias
Steup [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001], Chapter 7, pp. 115-133. There,
Goldman’s critique targets internalist accounts of knowledge and its justification. It does
not challenge the claim that the ability to give an account of one’s knowledge has
epistemic value independent of its (alleged) contribution to knowledge and its
justification.
10
As Brandom points out in Articulating Reasons, “ . . . supplying evidence for a claim,
offering reasons for it, justifying it, are not the only ways in which to show that a belief
is, if true, not true merely by accident” (Brandom 2000, p.98). In other words, reliabilism
demonstrates that internalist tethers are not the only kinds by which we can secure the
value of knowledge. Note, once again, that Brandom does not imply that justification is
not a necessary condition for knowledge. A belief may be justified even if the knower is
unable herself to justify it by providing her reasons for believing what she rightly
believes.
14
that would justify her belief, her belief is not justified by the reasons that she gives. Nor
is the would-be knower justified if her articulate reflection misrepresents11 her real
reasons for believing what she believes. In the first case, the reasons she gives are
unreliable by virtue of their instability; in the second case they are unreliable by virtue of
their infidelity.12
Since 1976, Goldman has frequently revised his epistemology in response to
various objections.13 But he continues to defend a reliabilist-externalist approach. Most
recently, he has joined a small but increasingly influential group of epistemologists who
have taken a renewed interest in the very old idea of epistemic (or intellectual) virtue. To
understand why Goldman (and many others) has come to take the idea of epistemic virtue
seriously, it will be helpful to briefly chart the early development of virtue epistemology.
IV. The Rise of Virtue Epistemology
In “The Raft and the Pyramid” (1980)—the essay universally credited with launching the
virtue revival in epistemology—Ernest Sosa advocates a “reliabilist” conception of virtue
epistemology, which he affiliates with externalist, causal theories of knowledge like
11
Misrepresentation could take the form of lying about one’s reasons for believing what
one believes, but bullshitting, too, is a form of misrepresentation. (For a nice account of
the difference between bullshitting and lying, see Harry Frankfurt’s Bullshit [Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2005].)
12
I will say more about infidelity later on in this dissertation. One of the weaknesses of
Brandom’s “inferentialism” is its inability to distinguish clearly between rationalizing
and reasoning. The difference becomes clear, however, when one recognizes that
rationalization is a kind of infidelity.
13
For a brief but clear and illuminating survey of Goldman’s various reliabilisms, see
Ernest Sosa’s Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in Epistemology [New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1991], pp. 131-145.
15
Goldman’s.14 Sosa suggests that we make intellectual virtues, that is, “stable dispositions
for belief acquisition,”15 rather than individual beliefs, the primary objects of epistemic
justification.
On this view, epistemic justification attaches primarily to qualities of
cognizing persons and secondarily to the individual beliefs that issue from the person’s
virtues.
In this way, Sosa envisions an epistemic approach that parallels virtue
approaches in ethics.16 According to Sosa, the value of intellectual virtues consists
primarily in their stability or reliability, which makes a “greater contribution toward
getting us to the truth” (Sosa 1991, p. 189). In one sense, Sosa’s intellectual virtues play
a role similar to Goldman’s reliable mechanisms. Indeed, Sosa includes good vision and
a good memory—which would certainly count as reliable mechanisms—among the
virtues.17 But whereas Goldman’s reliabilism is a kind of foundationalism in which
perception is basic, Sosa conceives of his virtue epistemology as “an alternative to
foundationalism of sense experience” and to coherentism as well (Sosa 1991, p. 191).
According to Sosa, individual beliefs are not ultimately justified by other, noninferentially justified beliefs, nor are they justified by way of their coherence or “fitness”
14
See Sosa 1991, p. 189, footnote 7.
Ernest Sosa, “The Raft and the Pyramid: Coherence versus Foundations in the theory
of Knowledge” reprinted in Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in Epistemology
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 165-191] p. 189.
16
As Roger Crisp and Michael Slote describe it, virtue ethics is in part characterized by
“its focus on moral agents and their lives, rather than on discrete actions . . . construed in
isolation from the notion of character, and the rules governing these actions” (Crisp and
Slote, Virtue Ethics [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000] p. 3).
17
See, for example, “Reliabilism and Intellectual Virtue” (Sosa 1991), Chapter 8, p. 138139. Sosa’s virtue reliabilism has been criticized for including such faculties among the
virtues (see Linda Zagzebski’s Virtues of the Mind [Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996], p. 9). But Sosa acknowledged in 1980 that “there is reason to think that the
most useful and illuminating notion of intellectual virtue will prove broader than our
tradition would suggest . . .” (Sosa, 1991, p. 190). For the time being I will leave aside
questions regarding the (alleged) differences between faculties and virtues.
15
16
within a system of mutually justifying beliefs; rather, individual beliefs are justified by
way of their issuance from virtue (i.e., stable dispositions of cognizing subjects). Thus, it
is not beliefs (or properties thereof) that serve as the basis for justification; instead, as
Sosa would write nearly two decades after “The Raft and the Pyramid,” “[v]irtue
epistemology is distinguished by its emphasis on the subject as seat of justification.”18
Sosa’s 1980 essay does not provide a rich account of intellectual virtue, nor does it
develop a full-blown virtue epistemology; rather, it merely suggests that the study of
knowledge (and its justification) could benefit from taking the idea of intellectual virtue
seriously.
A number of philosophers began to follow Sosa’s suggestion. Inspired by the
promise of an epistemological approach that avoids the long-standing problems plaguing
foundationalism and coherentism, some epistemologists (including Sosa) began to
develop full-bodied virtue epistemologies.
As growing numbers of epistemologists
began to plumb the notion of intellectual virtue it became clear that a virtue approach
promises more than an attractive alternative to foundationalism and coherentism. Some
contemporary epistemologists have argued that the idea of intellectual virtue can be used
to answer skeptical challenges.19 Others argue that virtue is either a necessary condition
for knowledge and its justification,20 or the most fundamental of all epistemological
18
Ernest Sosa. “Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles.” The Journal of Philosophy,
XCIV, no. 8 (1997), pp. 410-30. Reprinted in Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on
Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue. Ed. Matthias Steup [Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001, pp. 187-203], p. 193.
19
Most notably, John Greco. (See Putting Skeptics in their Place [Cambridge:
Cambridge University press, 2000].)
20
See, for example, Sosa, 1991: Chapter 8, “Reliabilism and Intellectual Virtue” (pp.
131-145).
17
concepts.21 Still others contend that virtue epistemology redefines the central problems
of contemporary epistemology by de-emphasizing knowledge and epistemic justification
and drawing our attention to other intellectual virtues (e.g., wisdom and understanding)22
or to the ways in which we go about deliberating and inquiring. 23 Moreover, growing
numbers of virtue epistemologists are interested in establishing connections between the
intellectual virtues and their well-received ethical counterparts, namely, the moral
virtues.24
These considerations are far from exhaustive of the interests of virtue
epistemologists.
Nor are these interests exclusively the interests of virtue
epistemologists. Alvin Plantinga’s notion of “proper function”25 assigns to correctly
functioning faculties a role very similar to that which virtue epistemologists assign to the
virtues. Although Plantinga denies that he is a virtue epistemologist, his epistemological
21
See, for example, Linda Zagzebski’s Virtues of the Mind [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996].
22
Notably Lorraine Code, Epistemic Responsibility [Hanover: University press of New
England, 1987] and Zagzebski 1996.
23
See Christopher Hookway’s “How to be a Virtue Epistemologist” in Intellectual
Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, ed. Michael DePaul and Zagzebski
[Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003], pp. 183-202; “Epistemic Akrasia and Epistemic Virtue”
in Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, ed. Abrol
Fairweather and Zagzebski [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001], pp. 178-199;
“Regulating Inquiry: Virtue, Doubt, and Sentiment” in Knowledge, Belief, and
Character, ed. Guy Axtell [Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000], pp. 149-160.
24
See Zagzebski 1996. In the Fall of 2000 a conference on the role of intellectual virtue
in both virtue ethics and virtue epistemology was held at the University of Notre Dame.
A number of the papers given at that conference (along with a few others) have been
published in Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2003].
25
See Plantinga’s Warrant: The Current Debate [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993]
and Warrant and Proper Function [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993].
18
interests are nonetheless closely allied with those of virtue epistemologists.26 Keith
Lehrer, too, emphasizes the epistemic importance of a particular character trait, namely
“self-trust” or “trustworthiness.”27
Furthermore, some philosophers argue that the
empirical study of human cognition should be central to epistemological inquiry. The
empirical researches of several experimental psychologists note the important roles that
motivation and individual abilities and dispositions play in problem solving processes—
particularly the processes of problem recognition, definition and representation.28 This
interest in individual abilities and dispositions is of course shared by virtue
epistemologists, and at least one virtue epistemologist (Christopher Hookway) has argued
that the virtues play an important role in processes integral to problem solving—namely,
the processes by which the objects of inquiry get defined.29 Moreover, Richard Foley’s
theory of “epistemic rationality” shares with some virtue epistemologists the suspicion
that epistemologists have attached too much importance to notions such as knowledge,
warrant and justification.30 Foley’s theory of epistemic rationality is not virtue-based,31
26
Sosa claims that Plantinga is in fact a virtue epistemologist because any epistemology
“which puts the explicative emphasis on truth-conducive intellectual virtues of faculties
. . . is properly termed ‘virtue epistemology’” (see “Three Forms of Virtue Epistemology”
[reprinted in Axtell (ed.) Knowledge, Belief, and Character (2000), pp. 33-40], p. 39.
27
See Lehrer’s Theory of Knowledge (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990) and Self Trust: A
Study of Reason, Knowledge, and Autonomy [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997].
Lehrer has also contributed an essay, “The Virtue of Knowledge” to Fairweather and
Zagzebski’s (eds.) Virtue Epistemology (2001).
28
See The Psychology of Problem Solving, Ed. Janet Davidson and Robert Sternberg,
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003]. Davidson and Sternberg identify
several studies regarding abilities and dispositions (MacLeod, Hung & Mathews 1978;
Sternberg & Weil 1980; Torrance & Ball 1984; Ennis 1987; Sternberg & Lubart 1995;
Jay & Perkins 1997; etc.). On the subject of motivation, Davidson and Sternberg note the
work of Amabile and Colins (Amabile 1996 and Collins and Amabile 1999).
29
See Hookway 2001.
30
See Foley’s The Theory of Epistemic Rationality [Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1987].
19
but he explicitly acknowledges that “[t]he cultivation of intellectual virtues is important”
in the cognitive lives of rational creatures.32
The point I wish to glean from the foregoing remarks is that the concerns of virtue
epistemologists are not tangential to the concerns of contemporary epistemology; rather,
they are among the central concerns that contemporary epistemologists must take
seriously and are taking seriously. In short, consideration of the role of intellectual virtue
in our cognitive lives has transformed—and continues to transform—the epistemological
landscape.
V. Virtue Epistemology and the Internalism/Externalism Debate
But how has virtue epistemology transformed the debate between epistemic internalists
and externalists? The revival of interest in epistemic virtue has not resolved or dissolved
the debate—nor should it have been expected to do so. After all, Sosa introduced virtue
epistemology as a form of externalism (specifically, virtue reliabilism). And while some
virtue epistemologists—notably Sosa, Goldman, and Greco—continue to advance
externalist virtue epistemologies, others have taken up the virtue cause under a different
banner. Still inspired by the idea that epistemologists ought to focus on qualities of
subjects rather than qualities of individual beliefs, internalist virtue epistemologists (e.g.,
Loraine Code and Linda Zagzebski) argue that a would-be knower’s satisfaction of
virtue-reliabilist criteria does not always warrant the attribution of knowledge. Seeking
31
Note, however, that in Working Without a Net: A Study of Egocentric Epistemology
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993] Foley suggests that a “virtue-based approach” to
the study of rationality could be made plausible, though it would “have problems of [its]
own” (p. 5).
32
See Foley’s “The Foundational Role of Epistemology in a General Theory of
Rationality” in Fairweather and Zagzebski’s (eds.) Virtue Epistemology (2001).
20
stronger connections between virtue epistemology and virtue ethics, many internalist
virtue epistemologists stress the importance of preserving the irreducible, normative
aspect of epistemology,33 some by insisting upon the importance of epistemic
responsibility, which they link to factors “internal” to the agent (e.g., the agent’s
motivations, the coherence of the agent’s beliefs, or the agent’s ability to reflect
articulately). Internalist virtue epistemologists readily acknowledge that reliability is a
necessary component of intellectual virtue. (Indeed, it would be difficult to defend the
claim that a person is intellectually virtuous if his cognitive processes always or almost
always lead to false or highly dubitable beliefs.)
However, they insist that the
intellectually virtuous are more than “merely” reliable.
Notice that the internalist objection to virtue reliabilism really consists of two
separate objections. The first is that the reliability component of virtue is not by itself an
adequate basis for all knowledge attributions. That is to say, the value of knowledge does
not accrue to a person’s beliefs solely or primarily on the basis of the reliability of the
person’s cognitive faculties.
As Zagzebski puts it, “[o]ne of the problems with
reliabilism is that it does not explain what makes the good of knowledge greater than the
good of true belief.”34 This objection is directed against virtue-reliabilist accounts of
knowledge and its justification. The second is that reliability is not the sole or primary
value of intellectual virtue. This objection is directed against reliabilist accounts of
intellectual virtue. It is important to distinguish between these two objections, for they
are often confused and their confusion obscures an important contribution that virtue
33
Recall that causal theories of knowing, and the reliabilist theories allied with them,
reduce normative, epistemic concepts to naturalistic, causal processes.
34
See Zagzebski’s “From Reliabilism to Virtue Epistemology,” [reprinted in Axtell (ed.)
Knowledge, Belief, and Character (2000), pp. 113-122], p. 113.
21
epistemology can make to the debate between epistemological internalists and
externalists.
What is the contribution that virtue epistemology can make? This is too passive,
not aggressive enough. Minimall, I’m telling you this. There’s no inconsistency
btwn internalism/externalism. But what I’m up to is more than just that. STATE,
IN THE END WHAT I’M AFTER, AND WHAT I WANT THE READER TO GET
AFTER. The idea of intellectual virtue provides epistemologists with a means by which
to shift the focus of the internalism/externalism debate away from its narrow concern
with knowledge and its justification, and to reorient it on the wider field of epistemic
value. As we have already seen, some contemporary epistemologists—not just virtue
epistemologists—recommend the de-emphasizing of knowledge and the emphasizing of
other epistemic values (e.g., epistemic rationality, wisdom, understanding, and virtuous
deliberation and inquiry).
Adopting this approach does not entail abandoning
epistemology—even if one accepts the highly contentious claim that epistemology is
simply the study of knowledge and its justification.35
Rather, by focusing on the
epistemic value of virtue, epistemologists can position their accounts of knowledge
within a more extensive domain of cognitive achievements or excellences. Such an
approach can indeed transform the debate between epistemological internalists and
externalists. One can adopt an externalist, virtue-reliabilist account of knowledge and
35
As Christopher Hookway wisely points out, “[e]ven if it transpires that the concepts of
knowledge and justified belief are as important as most philosophers suppose, this is an
epistemological conclusion rather than being something which is definitive of the
discipline from the beginning.” [see “How to be a Virtue Epistemologist” in DePaul and
Zagzebski (eds.) Intellectual Virtue (2003), p. 201]. Extrapolate on this a bit more.
Show its significance. What does this amount to? Put this in the text! Give a more
concrete explanation.
22
still defend the claim that articulate reflection is necessary for the achievement of other
epistemic goods. The epistemic value of virtue exceeds its reliability. And if reliability
gives us an adequate basis for knowledge attributions (which I think it does), then the
value of virtue exceeds its contribution to the value of knowledge. Intellectual virtue can
therefore function as the unifying consideration in the study of a plurality of epistemic
values.36 Both internalist and externalist virtue epistemologists have taken steps toward
transforming the internalism/externalism debate along these lines.
However, their
contributions remain obscured by their apparent reverence to the traditional terms of the
debate. That is to say, they have confused the subject of the epistemic value of virtue
with the subject of knowledge and its justification.
Consider, for example, the internalist virtue epistemologies of Code and
Zagzebski.
Code distinguishes between two kinds of knowledge, “knowing” and
“knowing well.” She is willing to attribute knowledge (in some minimal sense) to
reliable agents who do not satisfy internalist criteria, insisting that “there are degrees of
knowledge, ways of knowing more or less well, that still qualify as knowledge” (Code
1987, p. 11).37 However, she urges “that there is often a responsibility to know better
than one does” (ibid.), that “cognitive activity should be performed as responsibly as
possible” (ibid., p. 70 [emphasis original]). A central thesis of Code’s book is that agents
should aspire to epistemic virtues that are more valuable than knowledge, namely
wisdom and understanding. To possess these superior epistemic goods is to “know well”;
and these goods are available only to reflective cognizers—that is, cognizers who are able
36
By “plurality” I mean that the value of virtue is not reducible to any one of virtue’s
values—no more than the value of gold is reducible to its excellent conductivity.
37
According to Code, “a ‘reliable’ knower could simply be an accurate, and relatively
passive, recorder of experience” (Code 1987, p. 51).
23
to critically evaluate the cognitive structures and processes that inform their beliefs and
direct their actions.38 To “know well,” a cognizer must be able to give reasons for
believing what she believes.
Like Code, Zagzebski draws a qualitative distinction between two kinds of
knowledge: “low-grade” and “high-grade” knowledge (Zagzebski 1996, pp. 273-283).
According to Zagzebski, each virtue has a component of reliable success. 39 Although she
is willing to attribute low-grade knowledge to people who are not clearly articulately
reflective (provided that their true beliefs arise out of acts of intellectual virtue), she
maintains that high-grade knowledge “is something toward which we ought to aspire”
(p. 277). High-grade knowledge demands more than externalist-reliabilist epistemology
requires.
Zagzebski insists that the satisfaction of internalist requirements is more
obviously demanded by high-grade knowledge, which she (following Code) identifies
with wisdom and understanding.40 To possess high-grade knowledge (i.e., wisdom and
understanding) one must be articulately reflective.
In Sosa’s “virtue perspectivism” (the more mature version of his externalist virtue
epistemology, which he continues to defend) a distinction is drawn between two kinds of
38
Indeed, this is the primary reason for Code’s insistence on the importance of selfknowledge. “Hence,” says Code, “my position is predicated upon the assumption that
reflexivity is characteristic of human cognitive capacity, that it is something that can be
cultivated, and that there is a cognitive imperative to do so” (Code 1987, p.93n).
39
Zagzebski defines a virtue as “a deep and enduring acquired excellence of a person,
involving a characteristic motivation to produce a certain desired end and reliable success
in bringing about that end” (Zagzebski 1996, p. 137).
40
“The neglect of understanding in the recent past has probably contributed to the
success of reliabilism and other popular forms of externalism. The need for consciously
accessible processes in attaining understanding is more obvious than is the need for
consciously accessible processes in attaining truth. Understanding in antiquity included
the ability to explain or to give an account of the truth known. It is difficult to see how
such an ability could be the result of processes external to the subject’s consciousness”
(Zagzebski 1996, p. 332).
24
knowledge: “animal” knowledge and “human” or “reflective” knowledge.41 Animal
knowledge requires only that the knower’s beliefs, judgments or responses to stimuli
issue from reliable faculties (virtues). One can possess animal knowledge “with little or
no benefit of reflection or understanding” (Sosa 1991, p. 240 [emphasis added]). Human
or reflective knowledge, however, “is on a higher plane of sophistication . . . precisely
because of its enhanced coherence and comprehensiveness and its capacity to satisfy selfreflective curiosity” (Sosa 1991, p. 95). In addition to reliability, this kind of knowledge
requires “understanding of [the known’s] place in a wider whole that includes one’s
belief and knowledge of it and how these come about” (Sosa 1991, p. 240 [emphasis
added]). Thus, according to Sosa, “[p]ure reliabilism is questionable as an adequate
epistemology for [human or reflective] knowledge” (Sosa 1991, p. 95). Like Code and
Zagzebski, Sosa claims that certain epistemic goods (e.g., understanding and coherence)
are available only to those who are able to reflect on their own cognitive activities.42
41
To obviate an understandable misinterpretation, Sosa notes: “In distinguishing between
‘animal’ and ‘reflective’ knowledge and justification, I do not mean to suggest that the
former is restricted to lower animals, or brutes, and the latter to human beings” (Ernest
Sosa, “Replies” in Sosa and his Critics [Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 275-325], p. 290.
42
Hilary Kornblith points out that “Sosa’s virtue perspectivism is itself a kind of middle
ground between uncompromising externalism and uncompromising internalism” (see
“Sosa on Human and Animal Knowledge” in Ernest Sosa and His Critics, ed. John Greco
[New York: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 126-134], p. 126. It is unclear, however, whether
Sosa’s virtue perspectivism acknowledges the epistemic value of the ability to account
for one’s knowledge. Sosa seems to acknowledge its value in the following remark: “A
belief constitutes not just animal but reflective knowledge . . . only under a supporting
perspective by the subject, who must have some awareness of the source of that belief
and the reliability of that source . . . . And it will do so through a kind of distinctive
explanatory coherence, as it comes in tandem with the subject’s ability to explain how the
relevant belief is bound to be true, given its source (Sosa 2004, p. 313 [emphasis added]).
But in another passage (from the same volume) Sosa claims, “[c]onscious reflection on
the spot is not required [for reflective knowledge] . . . since a second-order perspective
can work beneath the surface of consciousness” (Sosa 2004, p. 292).
25
Each of these three writers recognizes that the value of intellectual virtue consists
in more than its reliability, but each uses these additional values to distinguish between
two kinds of knowledge: one which defines the minimal (roughly externalist/reliabilist)
conditions for knowledge, and another that defines the more demanding (and roughly
internalist) conditions for a better kind of knowledge to which even minimal knowers
ought to aspire. By doing so, each of these authors fails to keep the subject of the
epistemic value of intellectual virtue separate from the subject of knowledge and its
conditions. In turn, this failure prevents epistemologists from recognizing an important
contribution that virtue epistemology can make to the internalist/externalist debate.
The significance of this failure has not been lost on one of Sosa’s critics, Hilary
Kornblith.
In response to Sosa’s remarks about animal and reflective knowledge,
Kornblith writes:
There is no ground, I believe, for regarding reflective knowledge and animal
knowledge as two different sorts of knowledge, nor is there adequate ground for
thinking that knowledge which is produced or sustained by means of reflection is,
eo ipso, better knowledge than knowledge which does not draw upon reflection.
The epistemic utility of reflection is, to my mind, an interesting and important
topic, but it is most clearly addressed directly. Insisting on a distinction between
animal knowledge and reflective knowledge gets in the way of, rather than aids,
such an assessment.43
Kornblith makes two points here. The first is that, as far as the value of knowledge goes,
the possessor of animal knowledge is no worse off than the possessor of human or
43
Hilary Kornblith, “Sosa on Human and Animal Knowledge” in Ernest Sosa and His
Critics (ed. Greco) (2004), p. 132.
26
reflective knowledge. Reflective knowers do not know better than unreflective knowers.
Kornblith is not saying that those with animal knowledge are cognitively just as well off
as those who are both knowledgeable and reflective. There are other epistemic goods to
which people can aspire only by virtue of their reflexivity; but there is “no ground” for
thinking that the value of these goods must consist in their contribution to knowledge.
Essentially, Kornblith aims to remind Sosa of the insight of externalism, which we might
rephrase as follows: the question of the value of knowledge is divorceable from the
question of the value of epistemic goods achievable through reflection. Although Sosa
acknowledges that reflection makes possible the achievement of unique epistemic goods,
he re-embeds the value of reflection in a claim about of the value of knowledge—and he
does this for no good reason.44
Kornblith’s second point is that the value of reflection is an “interesting and
important topic” that deserves to be “addressed directly.”
According to Kornblith,
distinguishing between kinds of knowledge gets in the way of this worthy project. But
how does it get in the way? Although Kornblith does not himself explain precisely how
Sosa’s distinction between animal knowledge and reflective knowledge inhibits the study
of reflection, it is not difficult to see how it does so. Sosa addresses the question of the
value of reflection only indirectly—that is, from the point of view of an overall
44
In his reply to Kornblith, Sosa insists that “reflective knowledge is indeed one more
sort of knowledge to be listed alongside these others. Among these it deserves a special
place, however, or so I will now argue” (Greco 2004, p. 291). In the ensuing argument,
Sosa defends the importance of his distinction between animal and reflective knowledge
against Kornblith’s claim that that distinction is no better than the equally unhelpful
distinction between “consultative” and “non-consultative” knowledge (see Greco 2004,
pp. 131-132). But Sosa misses Kornblith’s deeper objection. For even if Sosa is right
that reflection is of greater value than consultation, he has given us no reason to think that
the value of reflection must consist in its contribution to any kind of knowledge.
27
externalist account of knowledge.
As a result, Sosa’s externalist roots make him
reluctant to admit that being articulately reflective is part of what it means to have human
or reflective knowledge. But being able to give an account of one’s knowledge is
certainly among the values of reflection, and if we divorce the question of the value of
reflection from the question of the value of knowledge, there is no good reason for any
externalist to deny that articulate reflection is among the epistemic values worth
exploring in a study of reflection.
Kornblith’s objections to Sosa’s distinction between kinds of knowledge can also
be applied to Code and Zagzebski’s similar distinctions. Code’s distinction between
knowing and knowing well and Zagzebski’s distinction between low-grade and highgrade knowledge also get in the way of a direct discussion of the value of reflection.
Like Sosa, they address the question of the value of reflection only indirectly—albeit
from the point of view of an internalist account of knowledge. By continuing to embed
the question of the value of articulate reflection in the question of the value of
knowledge, Code, Zagzebski and Sosa fail to transform the internalism/externalism
debate in the way that virtue epistemology can profitably transform it.
This
transformation can be accomplished only if the question of the value of articulate
reflection is divorced from the question of the value of knowledge.
It is easy to see why Kornblith’s objections might appeal to someone who, like
Sosa, is working within an overall externalist framework. But I have also claimed that
Kornblith’s objections should be taken to heart by internalist epistemologists as well.
Why, one might ask, should the latter want to acknowledge the insight of externalism? It
would seem, after all, that such a concession would spell the end of internalist
28
epistemology. Happily, however, the internalist can concede knowledge to the externalist
and still insist upon the epistemic importance of the value of articulate reflection. Here,
emphasize the strong point. What’s the main issue(s)? State them. What we
REALLY care about in the debate is the status of articulate reflection.
If we shift our focus away from the subject of knowledge to the wider subject of
epistemic value, we can rephrase the central concern of internalist epistemology as
follows: At the heart of internalist epistemology lays the claim that agents who are not
articulately reflective lack something epistemically valuable. The internalist can still
make this claim even if he is willing to attribute knowledge and its requisite justification
to reliable cognizers who are not articulately reflective. The internalist could define the
value of articulate reflection in terms of some epistemic value other than knowledge and
its justification.
Moreover, there are good reasons why the internalist should do so.
First, internalists’ lack of success in convincing their externalist rivals is uninspiring, and
there is no foreseeable end to their disputes. Second, there is no good reason why we
should [make this point more consistently throughout] place as high a premium on
knowledge and its justification as internalists typically place on them. Knowledge is
certainly valuable, but if internalists abandon their claims on knowledge, they do not lose
much by doing so. After all, they can still claim that knowers who are not articulately
reflective lack something valuable, something to which knowers ought to aspire—even if
that “something” is not a necessary condition for epistemic justification or knowledge.45
45
Richard Foley makes a similar point in A Theory of Epistemic Rationality (1987).
According to Foley, justification and knowledge have been given too much prominence
throughout the history of epistemology, while the concept of “epistemic rationality” has
been much neglected. Despite his insistence on the relative unimportance of epistemic
justification, Foley nevertheless stakes a claim for himself in the internalist camp. Foley
29
In other words, articulate reflection can function as an independent normative injunction
in the cognitive lives of otherwise knowledgeable people. One way to formulate this
injunction is to say that knowers who are articulately reflective are epistemically better
off than knowers who cannot. The challenge facing internalist epistemologists is to
explain why people are thereby better off.
VI. Virtue and Inquiry
I have argued that epistemologists should accept the insight of externalism:
epistemologists should divorce the question of the value of articulate reflection from the
question of the value of knowledge. I have also argued that virtue epistemologists can
make an important contribution to the internalism/externalism debate by shifting the
focus of that debate away from its narrow concern with knowledge and its justification
argues that his internalist theory of rationality is compatible with externalist theories of
epistemic justification. That is, while a theory of epistemic justification need not require
that the cognizer be able to give an account of his knowledge, a theory of epistemic
rationality requires just that. “I will claim,” writes Foley, “that an adequate theory of
epistemic rationality, roughly speaking, implies that it is epistemically rational for an
individual to be persuaded of the truth of just those propositions that are the conclusions
of arguments that he would regard as likely to be truth preserving were he to be reflective
and that in addition have premises that he would uncover no good reasons to be
suspicious of were he to be reflective” (Foley, The Theory of Epistemic Rationality
[Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987], p. 5 [emphasis added]). So conceived, the
value of articulate reflection consists not in its contribution to the definition of
knowledge, but rather in its contribution to the definition of epistemic rationality. Foley
goes on to say that his theory of rationality is “Aristotelian” in that it is a “goal-oriented”
conception of rationality, “one that understands rationality in terms of a person carefully
deliberating about how to pursue his goals effectively and then acting accordingly”
(ibid.). In many ways, my project is continuous with Foley’s. However, my work differs
from Foley’s in two important ways. First, I place a great deal more emphasis on virtue
than Foley does. Second, by specifying that the goal-oriented activities of flourishing
rational agents are problem solving activities (i.e., inquiries), I give more attention to the
status of goals (or ends). (For the institution and evaluation of ends are parts of the
process of inquiry.)
30
and reorienting it on the wider field of epistemic value. Knowledge is one such value,
and reliabilist virtue epistemology provides an adequate account of its conditions.
However, the virtuous person is able to achieve more epistemic goods than just
knowledge and justified belief. Articulate reflection is among these goods.
Intellectual virtue, I have claimed, can function as the unifying consideration in
the study of a plurality of epistemic values. But for intellectual virtue to function in this
way, virtue epistemologists must not conceive of the value of intellectual virtue as
restricted to its usefulness in clarifying the concepts of knowledge and its justification. In
a very clear-headed essay Christopher Hookway identifies two sorts of responses to the
question: “what is the task or goal of epistemological inquiry?”46
The first is that
epistemology aims “to explain what knowledge and justified belief are, and to investigate
how far we are able to possess states of knowledge and justified belief,” while the second
states that the aim of epistemology is “to describe and explain our practice of epistemic
evaluation; to investigate how far our epistemic goals are appropriate and how far our
evaluative practice enables us to achieve our epistemic ends. (This may also involve
proposing amendments to our evaluative practices)” (Hookway 2003, p. 192). According
to Hookway, the first response is far too parochial, ignoring “a wider range of issues
about epistemic evaluation than those formulated in [the terms of knowledge and justified
belief]” (ibid., p. 193). The concepts of knowledge and justified belief certainly have a
place in our epistemic evaluations, but Hookway draws attention to the activities (or
practices) of deliberation and inquiry in which the concepts of knowledge and
46
Christopher Hookway, “How to be a Virtue Epistemologist” in Intellectual Virtue:
Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology (eds. Michael DePaul and Linda Zagzebski).
[Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. pp. 183-202], p. 192.
31
justification play their (rather limited) part. Hookway’s claim makes good sense when
we consider how little our cognitive growth depends upon the clarification of the concept
of knowledge. When we are gathering information, learning about some subject matter
or other, or trying out ideas—in short, when we are engaging in inquiry or “trying to find
things out”47—we seldom concern ourselves directly with questions about whether our
cognitive states are instances of knowledge or justified belief; and when we do concern
ourselves with such things, “they do not,” as Hookway points out, “threaten our
confidence in our ability to inquire successfully” (Hookway 2003, p. 202).
Hookway goes on to suggest that virtue epistemology may supply important (if
not indispensable48) norms for the governance of well-conducted inquiry. If we attend to
epistemic values other than just knowledge and its justification, Hookway claims,
we find room for another kind of ‘virtue epistemology’. The notions of a ‘wellconducted inquiry’ or of a ‘well-managed system of opinions’ emerge as
important foci for what seems to be a form of epistemic evaluation. And . . . such
states as virtues may well have an important role in the evaluations we make use
of when ordering inquiries and managing our beliefs . . . . Thus virtue
epistemology might fall into place as an account of the evaluations required for
well-regulated inquiries and theoretical deliberations (Hookway 2003, p. 194).
There are good reasons to pursue the form of virtue epistemology that Hookway here
envisions. First, by focusing on inquiry, virtue epistemologists can make an important
47
This is Hookway’s phrase (see Hookway 2003, p. 202). As I will explain below, this
characterization of inquiry is inadequate though not always inaccurate.
48
In another essay, Hookway boldly asserts that “[w]ithout . . . virtues . . . rational
deliberation and inquiry would be impossible” (“Epistemic Akrasia and Epistemic
Virtue” in Virtue Epistemology, 2001, pp. 178-199), p. 197, note 1.
32
contribution to the internalism/externalism debate. Knowledge is certainly one of the
goods of inquiry, for well-conducted inquiries do build a body of knowledge. But the
generation of a body of knowledge is not the end of inquiry. The ends of inquiry are
lushly varied. Very often, the goal of inquiry is to not to “find things out” but rather to be
able to do something—to act, to organize or to inquire better in the future. The body of
knowledge generated through inquiry may become part of the subject matter of future
inquiries. It may be used to establish the goals of those inquiries, to monitor their
progresses and to assess their outcomes with respect to their proximate and far-ranging
objectives.
Thus, the preservation and intelligent use of knowledge to achieve the
various aims of inquiry are goods internal to inquiry. In the next chapter I will argue that
those who are articulately reflective can best achieve these goods; and on this point
Hookway and I disagree. According to Hookway, one of the values of inquiry-focused
virtue epistemology is that it assuages skeptical concerns that “emerge when our practice
of epistemic evaluation imposes burdens of reflection” (Hookway 2003, p. 197).
Hookway may be right that the skeptical concerns of professional philosophers “do not
threaten our [everyday] confidence in our ability to inquire successfully.” But these
skeptical concerns are the products of a certain kind of reflection—one that can but does
not always serve the ends of inquiry. In other words, reflection per se is not the carrier of
skepticism. As we will see in the next chapter, articulate reflection plays an important
role in all successful inquiries. Thus, by focusing on inquiry virtue epistemology can
account for both the value of knowledge and the independent value of articulate
reflection.
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Second, a focus on inquiry allows us to uncover deep and enduring connections
between virtue epistemology and virtue ethics. Virtue theorists working in both ethics
and epistemology have long sought to establish connections between the moral and
intellectual virtues, some by reducing moral virtues to intellectual virtues (or vice versa),
others by annexing normative epistemology to ethics, and still others by pointing out
structural similarities between the moral and intellectual virtues. All these approaches
share the assumption that our ethical and epistemological concepts and norms arise from
different sources, that they are originally distinct subject matters. But as we have seen,
the aims of inquiry include both finding things out and becoming able to do things. That
is to say, the aims of inquiry are both cognitive and active. By focusing on inquiry, virtue
epistemologists can identify a common source for all the virtues—be they intellectual,
moral, or virtues of some other sort.
If virtue theorists focus their attentions on inquiry, they will find that the
connections between intellectual and moral virtue run deeper than they have suspected.
If the virtues are those character traits that enable us to conduct inquiry well, and if the
ends of our inquiries are variously moral, epistemic, political, aesthetic, etc., then each of
the virtues shares a common source with the others. That is not to say that the distinction
between kinds of virtues is unwarranted or unnecessary; it is as warranted and as
necessary as our determination of the ends of our inquiries. It is important to realize,
however, that identifying the kind of inquiry one is engaged in is a part of the process of
inquiry.
In other words, the distinction between “subject matters” such as ethics,
epistemology, politics, aesthetics, etc. is a product of inquiry. These distinctions serve as
a precondition for inquiry only insofar as they are required for conducting future
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inquiries well. The same goes for the distinction between kinds of virtues. Whether a
particular character trait is an intellectual virtue, a moral virtue, or a virtue of some other
sort depends upon the kind of inquiry it facilitates. From this point of view, it is not the
unification of the moral and intellectual virtues that demands justification but rather their
distinction.
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