Abstract
Virtue theories have lately enjoyed a modest vogue in the study of argumentation, echoing the success of more far-reaching programmes in ethics and epistemology. Virtue theories of argumentation (VTA) comprise several conceptually distinct projects, including the provision of normative foundations for argument evaluation and a renewed focus on the character of good arguers. Perhaps the boldest of these is the pursuit of the fully satisfying argument, the argument that contributes to human flourishing. This project has an independently developed epistemic analogue: eudaimonistic virtue epistemology. Both projects stress the importance of widening the range of cognitive goals beyond, respectively, cogency and knowledge; both projects emphasize social factors, the right sort of community being indispensable for the cultivation of the intellectual virtues necessary to each project. This paper proposes a unification of the two projects by arguing that the intellectual good life sought by eudaimonistic virtue epistemologists is best realized through the articulation of an account of argumentation that contributes to human flourishing.
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Notes
- 1.
Virtue epistemologists are often distinguished between responsibilists, whose virtues mostly look like Aristotelian character virtues, and reliabilists, whose virtues are less obviously virtue-like: they are reliable cognitive processes (see, for example, Battaly, 2008, 644).
- 2.
For a discussion of dog whistling in the context of VTA, see (Aberdein, 2018, 20).
- 3.
Brogaard credits versions of this view to numerous epistemologists, including Ralph Wedgwood, Tyler Burge, and Christopher Peacocke.
- 4.
At least if “⇒” is understood as encompassing defeasible as well as deductive inference. I follow Dutilh Novaes in broadening MacFarlane’s definition in this manner (Dutilh Novaes, 2015, 590).
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Aberdein, A. (2020). Eudaimonistic Argumentation. In: van Eemeren, F., Garssen, B. (eds) From Argument Schemes to Argumentative Relations in the Wild. Argumentation Library, vol 35. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28367-4_7
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