Intellectual Virtue

Abstract Virtues have always been vital to the work of ethicists, but only recently have been analyzed and employed by epistemologists. By shifting the loci of analyses from properties of beliefs to intellectual traits of agents, a formidable epistemological movement has birthed into what has been called virtue epistemology. Ironically, although virtue epistemology got its inspiration from virtue ethics, this is the first book that brings virtue epistemologists and virtue ethicists together to contribute their particular expertise, and the first that is devoted to the topic of intellectual virtue. Virtue epistemology has received considerable interest as an alternative to traditional approaches in epistemology. This book provides different accounts of what is an intellectual virtue — why it is epistemically valuable — and how intellectual virtues can provide greater clarity in understanding the traditional targets of analysis: namely, knowledge, rationality, and justification. For example, some accounts take knowledge or justified beliefs to be a reliable belief-forming process or faculty or agent. Other accounts take a more robust form of virtue epistemology wherein the fundamental bearer of epistemic value is an intellectual virtue akin to the kinds of virtues used in ethics. Still other accounts model the structure of an epistemic theory on virtue ethics. The aim of this book, then, is to provide a collective effort that helps resolve some of the vexing problems in epistemology by understanding how virtue ethics and the concept of a virtue can do significant epistemological work. What is more, this book aims to bring together both the knowledge and perspectives of virtue ethicists and virtue epistemologists so as to advance the contributions each discipline provides to the other.