What is Virtue Epistemology? :: Philosophy Virtues Ethics Papers

What is Virtue Epistemology?This paper functions as a brief launch to virtue epistemology, a topic that has enjoyed a recent gain in popularity among uninflected philosophers. Here I maintain that the defining feature of virtue epistemology is its heighten on the intellectual virtues and vices rather than the evaluation of belief. What constitutes such a focus? And, what are the intellectual virtues? In the first section, I enumerate five antithetical ways in which virtue epistemologists might focus on the virtues. In the second, I discuss four topics pertaining to the nature of the intellectual virtues themselves (1) are the virtues natural or acquired? (2) are they skills? (3) are they instrumentally, constitutively, or intrinsically valuable? and (4) what relation do they bear to truth? Throughout the paper, I identify which virtue epistemologists are partial to which views, and in this manner, catalog much of the recent debate. In conclusion, I suggest some topics for future study.I necessitate no answer to these arguments, but am finally compelled to admit that there is non one of my former beliefs about which a doubt may not properly be raised and this is not a flippant or ill-considered conclusion, but is based on powerful and well thought-out reasons. So in future I must obey my assent from these former beliefs just as carefully as I would from obvious falsehoods, if I want to discover any certainty. Rene Descartes (1) Much of contemporary analytic epistemology is still steeped in a vigorous form of Cartesianism. Granted, there are some analytic epistemologists who have denied Descartes foundationalism, and others who, in preserving foundationalism, have rejected the infallibility of foundational beliefs. Still others have attacked his internalism, doubted the seriousness of the threat of skepticism, or attempted to eradicate the abstract, isolated I of the Meditations. But, despite this seemingly comprehensive critique of Cartesianism, one of its essential elements has escaped far-flung criticism and currently operates as a background assumption in much of contemporary epistemology. This element is the basic Cartesian framework itself, which dictates the primary objects of epistemic evaluation, and in so doing, directs the course of epistemological inquiry. As indicated by the passage above, Cartesian systems focus on the evaluation of beliefs or propositions believed. A perfunctory take after of current epistemological theory will confirm its focus on the evaluation of beliefs. For, even those who reject other facets of the Cartesian program routinely subdue on justification and knowledge.