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Virtue Epistemology - Coggle Diagram
Virtue Epistemology
The philosopher Ernest Sosa illustrates virtue epistemology with the following archery analogy: A virtuous shot in archery has the following three properties:
• Accurate, i.e. it hits the target
• Adroit, i.e. the archer is skillful and shoots the arrow well
• Apt, i.e. the arrow hit the target because it was shot well
This last condition – aptness – is the difference between reliabilism and virtue epistemology. It’s not enough for a belief to be true and for the believer to be intellectually virtuous. For something to qualify as knowledge, the belief must be true as a consequence of the believer exercising their intellectual virtues.
So, virtue epistemology could (correctly) say Henry’s belief that “there’s a barn” in fake barn county would not qualify as knowledge – despite being true and formed by a reliable method – because it is not apt. Yes, Henry’s belief is accurate (i.e. true) and adroit (i.e. Henry has good eyesight etc.), but he only formed the true belief as a result of luck, not because he used his intellectual virtues.
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Intellectual virtues are traits that lead you to reliably form true beliefs. For example, good memory, accurate vision, and the ability to think rationally could be considered intellectual virtues.
But where virtue epistemology differs from reliabilism is that it specifies the true belief must be a direct result of exercising intellectual virtues. It’s not enough for the method used to form the belief to be generally reliable (as reliabilism claims) because that doesn’t rule out lucky cases such as fake barn county
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