The intellectual virtues include two seemingly quite different types of traits: reliable faculties on the one hand and inquiry-regulating traits of intellectual character like conscientiousness and openmindedness on the other. Extant virtue theories do not appear to have provided a single account that adequately covers both types of virtue. In this paper, I examine the different ways in which a trait or disposition can contribute to our cognitive goal of acquiring significant true beliefs. I propose that the two types of (...) virtues can be understood as contributing in different ways to our cognitive goal, and develop a general framework for understanding their value. (shrink)

Ernest Sosa’s virtue perspectivism goes beyond standard reliabilism by requiring that agents with justified beliefs not only derive their beliefs from virtuous cognitive faculties but have an epistemic perspective that explains the origin of the beliefs and makes their belief-set coherent. I argue that Sosa’s account of the epistemic perspective does not ensure that the perspective will confer justification. An adequate epistemic perspective must establish a non-accidental connection between an agent’s use of a faculty in certain circumstances and its reliability (...) in those circumstances. An agent who is capable of judging the reliability of her faculties in different situations will have a perspective that meets this requirement. Revising virtue perspectivism in this way also permits a stronger response to doxastic ascent arguments against the theory. (shrink)

Reliabilist theories of knowledge face the “generality problem”; any token of a belief-forming processes instantiates types of different levels of generality, which can vary in reliability. I argue that we exploit this situation in epistemic evaluation; we appraise beliefs in different ways by adverting to reliability at different levels of generality. We can detect at least two distinct uses of reliability, which underlie different sorts of appraisals of beliefs and believers.

Table of Contents -/- Introduction: Epistemic Situationism by Abrol Fairweather -/- 1. Is Every Epistemology A Virtue Epistemology? by Lauren Olin -/- 2. Epistemic Situationism: An extended prolepsis by Mark Alfano -/- 3. Virtue Epistemology in the Zombie Apocalypse: Hungry Judges, Heavy Clipboards and Grou Polarization by Berit Brogaard -/- 4. Situationism and Responsibilist Virtue Epistemology by James Montmarquet -/- 5. Virtue Theory Against Situationism by Ernest Sosa -/- 6. Intellectual Virtue Now and Again by Chris Lepock -/- 7.Responsibilism (...) Out of Character by Kurt Sylvan -/- 8. Epistemic Situationism and Cognitive Ability by John Turri -/- 9. Epistemic Situationism, Epistemic Dependence and the Epistemology of Education by J. Adam Carter and Duncan Pritchard -/- 10. The Situationist Challenge to Educating For Intellectual Virtues by Jason Baehr -/- 11. Feminist Responsibilism, Situationism and the Complexities of the Virtue ofTrustworthiness by Heidi Grasswick -/- 12. Moods and Their Unexpected Virtues by Nicole Smith . (shrink)

Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 1 Abrol Fairweather Part I Epistemic Virtue, Cognitive Science and Situationism The Function of Perception 13 Peter J Graham Metacognition and Intellectual Virtue 33 Christopher Lepock Daring to Believe: Metacognition, Epistemic Agency and Reflective Knowledge 49 Fernando Broncano Success, Minimal Agency and Epistemic Virtue 67 Carlos Montemayor Towards a Eudaimonistic Virtue Epistemology 83 Berit Brogaard Expanding the Situationist Challenge to Reliabilism About Inference 103 Mark Alfano Inferential Abilities and Common Epistemic Goods (...) 123 Abrol Fairweather and Carlos Montemayor Part II Epistemic Virtue and Formal Epistemology Curiosity, Belief and Acquaintance 143 Ilhan Inan Epistemic Values and Disinformation 159 Don Fallis Defeasibility Without Inductivism 181 Juan Comesaña Part III Virtues of Theories and Virtues of Theorists Acting to Know: A Virtue of Experimentation 195 Adam Morton Is There a Place for Epistemic Virtues in Theory Choice? 207 Milena Ivanova Bridging a Fault Line: On Underdetermination and the Ampliative Adequacy of Competing Theories 227 Guy Axtell Epistemic Virtues and the Success of Science 247 D Tulodziecki Experimental Virtue: Perceptual Responsiveness and the Praxis of Scientific Observation 269 Shannon Vallor A Matter of Phronesis: Experiment and Virtue in Physics, A Case Study 291 Marilena Di Bucchianico Part IV Understanding, Explanation and Epistemic Virtue Knowledge and Understanding 315 Duncan Pritchard Understanding as Knowledge of Causes 329 Stephen R Grimm Knowledge, Understanding and Virtue 347 Christoph Kelp. (shrink)

"A lively discussion of the life and writings of one of the premier revolutionaries of the eighteenth century. [Ayer's] chapters alternate between the externals of Paine's life and career in England, America, and France and analyses of Common Sense, The Rights of Man, The Age of Reason, other significant but less well known writings, and Paine's anticipations of the welfare state."--History: Reviews of New Books "[An] exciting book about Paine's life and principles."--Christoper Hitchens, Newsday.

In 2004, Sam Harris published The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason which became a major bestseller. This marked the first of a series of series of bestsellers that took a harder line against religion than has been the custom among secularists: Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris (2006), The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006), Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett (2006), God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science (...) Shows That God Goes Not Exist by Victor J. Stenger (2007), and God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007) by Christoper Hitchens. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: Major Problems with Trait Ascriptions The Logic of Intellectual Trait Ascription and the Generality Problem The Logic of Moral Trait Ascription and the Global Trait Problem The Common Structure of the Two Problems Acknowledgments References.