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The Social Virtues: Two Accounts

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Abstract

Social (epistemic) virtues are the virtues bound up with those forms of inquiry involved in social routes to knowledge. A thoroughly individualistic account of the social virtues endorses two claims: (1) we can fully characterize the nature of the social virtues independent of the social factors that are typically in play when these virtues are exemplified, and (2) even when a subject’s route to knowledge is social, the only epistemic virtues that are relevant to her acquisition of knowledge are those she herself possesses. A social (or anti-individualistic) account of the social virtues, by contrast, denies one or both of these claims. I will offer some reasons for thinking that the individualistic account is not acceptable, and that one or the other social account provides a better understanding of the social virtues. The argument is not decisive, but it does suggest that the social dimension of social epistemic virtues is not fully characterizable in individualistic terms.

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Notes

  1. McDowell 1994 raises a similar issue.

  2. I will use ‘reliability’ to designate the property that explains successfulness in believing truly.

  3. Objection: this assumes the transmission model of testimonial knowledge. Reply: it does not. In cases in which the source’s testimony generated knowledge that she herself lacked, a greater proportion of the cognitive achievement will lie with the hearer. See Goldberg 2007, Chap. 1, for details. (Although I do not there present matters in the language of cognitive achievement or epistemic virtues, the point should be clear.)

  4. Goldman’s use of ‘internal’ here is unfortunate, since it is not meant in the sense in which people speak of ‘internalist’ positions in epistemology these days. But his idea is clear enough.

  5. It is noteworthy that Alston’s actual quote here is susceptible to two very different readings. On one reading, the claim that “we are confined to individual psychology” amounts to the claim every belief-forming process is a process the entirety of which takes place in a single individual subject’s mind/brain. On the other reading, it amounts to the claim that only that which is part of the psychology of some individual or other can be part of the reliabilist assessment of a belief-forming process. But it is clear from the context that Alston has the former, stronger reading in mind.

  6. In the case of Alston matters are more complicated: he endorses an “externalist internalism.” I include him here because he does have a reliability constraint on justification.

  7. (If the signs of insincerity or incompetence are not what she takes them to be, then her testimonial beliefs, formed through her reliance on her ability to detect the signs of insincerity or incompetence, will not be very reliable: insofar as she accepts testimony if and only if she regards it as sincere and competence, if her verdicts regarding sincerity and competence are not themselves reliable, then her testimonial beliefs will be reliable only in proportion to the general reliability of testimony in her community. If there is a lot of unreliable testimony around, her testimonial beliefs will suffer accordingly.)

  8. I defend this contention at great length in Goldberg (forthcoming).

  9. I would like to thank the audience at the 2009 Bled Epistemology Conference for helpful comments.

References

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Correspondence to S. Goldberg.

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Goldberg, S. The Social Virtues: Two Accounts. Acta Anal 24, 237–248 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-009-0059-z

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