John Greco

What is the relationship between virtue and safety? This paper argues that Sosa’s positions in A Virtue Epistemology and in Judgment and Agency regarding this question are, despite appearances to the contrary, in fact consistent. Moreover, Sosa’s position there is well motivated—his Virtue Epistemology explains why knowledge should require apt belief, and why aptness should imply safety. Finally, the paper shows how two kinds of safety are importantly related to Sosa’s response to the Pyrrhonian Problematic. Specifically, reflections on the modal profiles of first-order and second-order safety allow us to answer two prominent objections to Sosa’s position.

According to a popular objection, Hume assumes that only deductive inferences can generate knowledge and reasonable belief, and so Hume’s skepticism can be avoided by simply recognizing the role of inductive inferences in empirical matters. This paper offers an interpretation of Hume’s skepticism that avoids this objection. The resulting skeptical argument is a powerful one in the following sense: it is not at all obvious where the argument goes wrong, and responding to the argument forces us to adopt a substantive and even surprising position regarding the nature of knowledge and evidence. The main strategy is to draw a three way distinction among kinds of inferential support. Thus inferences can be deductive-supportive, inductive-supportive, or non-supportive. Hume does not assume that inductive inferences cannot generate knowledge or reasonable belief. Rather, he makes the more plausible assumption that non-supportive inferences cannot.

Reid thought that the linchpin of his response to\nskepticism was his rejection of the theory of ideas. I\nargue that Reid's assessment of his own work is incorrect;\nthe theory of ideas plays no important role in at least one\nof Berkeley's and Hume's arguments for skepticism, and\nrejecting the theory is therefore neither necessary nor\nsufficient as a reply to that argument. Reid does in fact\nanswer the argument, but with his theory of evidence rather\nthan his rejection of the theory of ideas

Epistemic value is a kind of value possessed by knowledge, and perhaps other epistemic goods such as justification and understanding. The problem of explaining the value of knowledge is perennial in philosophy, going back at least as far as Plato’s Meno. One formulation of the problem is to explain why and in what sense knowledge is valuable. Another version of the problem is to explain why and in what sense knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief or opinion. This article looks at various formulations of the value problem and various accounts of the value of knowledge in ancient and modern philosophy. The article then considers some contemporary discussions of the value problem, including the charge that reliabilist accounts cannot account for the value of knowledge over mere true belief. Various virtue-theoretic accounts of epistemic value are discussed as possible improvements over process reliabilism, and the epistemic value of understanding (as compared to knowledge) is considered.

[From SEP]: Contemporary virtue epistemology (hereafter ‘VE’) is a diverse collection of approaches to epistemology. At least two central tendencies are discernible among the approaches. First, they view epistemology as a normative discipline. Second, they view intellectual agents and communities as the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, with a focus on the intellectual virtues and vices embodied in and expressed by these agents and communities. This entry introduces many of the most important results of the contemporary VE research program. These include novel attempts to resolve longstanding disputes, solve perennial problems, grapple with novel challenges, and expand epistemology’s horizons. In the process, it reveals the diversity within VE. Beyond sharing the two unifying commitments mentioned above, its practitioners diverge over the nature of intellectual virtues, which questions to ask, and which methods to use. It will be helpful to note some terminology before proceeding. First, we use ‘cognitive’, ‘epistemic’ and ‘intellectual’ synonymously. Second, we often use ‘normative’ broadly to include not only norms and rules, but also duties and values. Finally, ‘practitioners’ names contemporary virtue epistemologists.

The central concern of the dissertation is the debate in epistemology between foundationalism and coherentism. However, my working assumption is that progress in this debate can be made only after an extended investigation into epistemic justification and its relation to knowledge. ;My strategy is to defend a picture of knowledge in which two kinds of virtue are required. First, in order for p to be knowledge for S, S must be justified in believing p in the sense that S's believing p is epistemically responsible. The second way in which knowledge is virtuous is that it is belief tied to truth in a non-accidental manner. Thus knowledge requires that belief be arrived at through processes which are objectively reliable. ;The picture of knowledge which is defended, then, maintains a conception of epistemic justification which may be properly labeled internalist. However, it adds an externalist condition to knowledge which is typically absent from traditional analyses. This approach, it is argued, satisfies the best intuitions of the internalist while sufficiently addressing the original motivations for externalism. ;The dissertation divided into two parts. The first part is a defense of the accounts of justification and knowledge described above. The second part uses these accounts in order to evaluate different arguments which have been offered for and against foundationalism and coherentism. ;In part two a distinction is made between a priori and a posteriori objections against foundationalism or coherentism. The thesis is defended that in principle, both theories are successful in describing sufficient conditions for justification and knowledge. The question then remains as to which theory more satisfactorily accounts for the justified beliefs of beings like us. The thesis is defended that foundationalism best explains the justification we have for our beliefs. It is argued that coherentist theories fail to account for the role which experience plays in justification. ;Finally, it is asked whether coherentism might be successful in accounting for evaluative knowledge, where the role of experience seems less prominent. However, it is concluded that even evaluative knowledge rests on foundations

This article reviews some recent history of epistemology, focusing on ways in which the intellectual virtues have been invoked to solve specific epistemological problems. It gives a sense of the contemporary landscape that has emerged, and clarifies some of the disagreements among those who invoke the virtues in epistemology. Furthermore, it explores some epistemological problems in greater detail. It also defends a particular approach in virtue epistemology by displaying its power in addressing these problems. It pursues the idea that a minimalist, reliabilist notion of the intellectual virtues is useful for constructing an account of knowledge. It sets out to support this on the ground that this approach to intellectual virtue can adequately address three major problems in the theory of knowledge: Humean skepticism, the Gettier problem, and the problem of showing that knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief.

This paper advocates for a “social turn" in religious epistemology. Part One reviews some familiar skeptical arguments targeting religious belief (the argument from luck, the argument from peer disagreement, Hume's argument). All these skeptical arguments say that testimonial evidence cannot give religious belief adequate support or grounding, especially in the context of conflicting evidence. Part Two considers some recent work in social epistemology and the epistemology of testimony. Several issues regarding the nature of testimonial evidence are considered, and an account of testimonial evidence as a means of distribution of information through the system is defended. Part Three uses the results of Part Two to reconsider the skeptical arguments in Part One.

Contemporary virtue epistemology (hereafter ‘VE’) is a diverse collection of approaches to epistemology. At least two central tendencies are discernible among the approaches. First, they view epistemology as a normative discipline. Second, they view intellectual agents and communities as the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, with a focus on the intellectual virtues and vices embodied in and expressed by these agents and communities. This entry introduces many of the most important results of the contemporary VE research program. These include novel attempts to resolve longstanding disputes, solve perennial problems, grapple with novel challenges, and expand epistemology’s horizons. In the process, it reveals the diversity within VE. Beyond sharing the two unifying commitments mentioned above, its practitioners diverge over the nature of intellectual virtues, which questions to ask, and which methods to use. It will be helpful to note some terminology before proceeding. First, we use ‘cognitive’, ‘epistemic’ and ‘intellectual’ synonymously. Second, we often use ‘normative’ broadly to include not only norms and rules, but also duties and values. Finally, ‘practitioners’ names contemporary virtue epistemologists.

This paper addresses two worries that might be raised about contextualism in epistemology and that carry over to its moral analogues: that contextualism robs epistemology (and moral theory) of a proper subject-matter, and that contextualism robs knowledge claims (and moral claims) of their objectivity. Two theses are defended: (1) that these worries are appropriately directed at interestdependent theories in general rather than at contextualism in particular, and (2) that the two worries are over-stated in any case. Finally, the paper offers some considerations in favour of attributor contextualism over 'subject-sensitive invariantism', both in epistemology and in moral theory. But here we note an interesting result: the very considerations that support contextualism as a semantic thesis, threaten to rob that position of its anti-sceptical force.

This paper responds to Sven Bernecker’s argument that agent reliabilism cannot accommodate internalist intuitions about clarvoyance cases. In section 1 we clarify a version of agent reliabilism and Bernecker’s objections against it. In section 2 we say more about how the notion of cognitive integration helps to adjudicate clairvoyance cases and other proposed counterexamples to reliabilism. The central idea is that cognitive integration underwrites a kind of belief ownership, which in turn underwrites the sort of responsibility for belief required for subjective justification. In section 3 we say more about what cognitive integration amounts to, drawing on some recent accounts of desire ownership from the literature on autonomy and moral responsibility.

When we say that someone knows something we are making a value judgment—we are saying that there is something intellectually good or right about the person’s belief, or about the way she believes it, or perhaps about her. We are saying, for example, that her belief is intellectually better than someone else’s mere opinion. Notice that we might make this sort of value judgment even if the two persons agree. Suppose that two people agree that the earth is the third planet from the sun. Nevertheless, we might think that one person knows this while the other person merely believes it. If so, we are making a value judgment—we are saying that there is something intellectually better going on in the case of knowledge. Another way to put the point is to say that knowledge is a normative notion. There is something normatively better about the case of knowledge, as opposed to the case of mere opinion, or even the case of true opinion. Finally, saying that someone knows something is not the only sort of value judgment we can make about her belief. Even if we agree that some belief falls short of knowledge, we might nevertheless judge that it is justified, or rational, or reasonable, or responsible. In each such case, we are saying that there is something normatively better about the case in question, as opposed to the case of mere opinion, or even the case of true opinion.