John Greco

According to reliabilist virtue epistemology, or virtue reliabilism, knowledge is true belief that is produced by intellectual excellence (or virtue), where intellectual excellence is understood in terms of reliable, truth-directed cognitive dispositions. This essay explains why virtue reliabilism is a form of epistemological externalism, is a moderately naturalized epistemology, and is distinct from virtue responsibilism. We explain virtue reliabilism’s answers to various forms of skepticism, its solution to the Gettier Problem, and its explanation of the value of knowledge. We also describe several varieties of contemporary virtue reliabilism. Finally, we offer replies to two recently prominent objections to virtue reliabilism: that it is committed to an untenable epistemological individualism, and that there are empirical reasons to doubt whether people generally have the kinds of intellectual abilities that virtue reliabilism requires for knowledge.

Virtue epistemology is by now a broad and varied field. Also by now, there are various helpful overviews of the field available, some of which are included in this volume (see especially Battaly 2008 and Baehr 2008).1 This introduction will not provide another. Rather, we will begin with a brief characterization of what virtue epistemology is (Section 1), and then briefly describe some of the topics that are treated in this volume (Section 2). Some of these are topics that have occupied epistemologist in general, while others are raised by virtue epistemology in particular. We end with a summary of the selections that have been collected here (Section 3).

The purpose of this volume is to provide a relatively complete guide to the current state of epistemology. To this end, each essay addresses some important issue in the theory of knowledge. Each provides some historical background or other contextual information so as to orient the reader to the problem at hand and to its current state of development. After this, each author provides an extended defense of his or her own position on the relevant topic. In this way the essays go well beyond simple introductions. They are attempts to (a) locate the current state of an important question in epistemology, and (b) move discussion forward from that point.

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