Re-evaluating the Epistemic Situationist Challenge to Virtue Epistemology

The situationist challenge to virtue theory has recently been extended so that it applies not just to virtue ethics but also to virtue epistemology. Focussing on the most developed version of the situationist challenge to virtue epistemology⎯offered in recent work by Mark Alfano, and applied in different ways to responsibilist and reliabilist virtue epistemology⎯it is argued that this critique of virtue epistemology is ultimately unsuccessful. In particular, it is claimed that the crucial distinction that needs to be marked is not between responsibilist and reliabilist renderings of virtue epistemology, but rather between modest and robust construals of this position. It is shown that the situationist challenge to virtue epistemology at best only impacts on robust virtue epistemology, but since robust virtue epistemology can be shown on independent grounds to be untenable this is not in itself a cause for concern. Moreover, not only is the empirical data appealed to by Alfano in his situationist critique of virtue epistemology compatible with the more plausible modest rendering of virtue epistemology, but it actually lends additional support to the view over its robust counterpart. It is thus concluded that virtue epistemology, at least when properly understood, has nothing to fear from the empirical data offered by situationists against virtue theory. 1. THE SITUATIONIST CHALLENGE TO VIRTUE THEORY The situationist challenge to virtue theory initially arose with respect to virtue ethics. In broad terms, virtue ethicists treat the character traits of the agent⎯specifically, her moral virtues⎯as