Ethical and Epistemic Belief Justification
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2015
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Haverford College. Department of Philosophy
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
This essay seeks to develop a new theory of intellectual virtue. It rejects the popular reliabilist account as a fundamental misunderstanding of the metaphysical nature of virtue. Namely, reliabilism reduces virtues to something akin to mere habits or tendencies when they are in fact normative, fallible capacities. Further work is needed to explain this, however, as the disjunctivist account of capacities suggests that capacities are only relevant when successfully exercised. This leads to the key insight of this new theory of intellectual virtue: the notion of ethical justification for belief as separate from epistemic justification. This notion is essential for explaining why we sometimes praise knowers for their false beliefs and why we can rightfully call these people intellectually virtuous. These knowers are achieving success of a sort which cannot be captured by reliabilist virtue epistemological theories. Armed with this new theory of intellectual virtue as directed at ethically justified beliefs, we are able to answer several problems which have vexed virtue epistemologists, and to which reliabilists have given particularly unsatisfying answers. We are able to explain how historical scientists such as Aristotle who were unreliable in their scientific theories can rightly be called intellectually virtuous, as they certainly seem to be. We are also able to answer Gettier and Gettier-type problems by clarifying that knowledge must be epistemically justified true belief and demonstrating that these cases always involve ethically justified true belief.