Christoph Kelp

Defeat is the loss of justification for believing something in light of new information. This Element mainly aims to work towards developing a novel account of defeat. It distinguishes among three broad views in the epistemology of defeat: scepticism, internalism, and externalism and argues that that sceptical and internalist accounts of defeat are bound to remain unsatisfactory. As a result, any viable account of defeat must be externalist. While there is no shortage of externalist accounts, the Element provides reason to think that extant accounts remain unsatisfactory. The Element also explains the constructive tasks of developing an alternative account of defeat and showing that it improves on the competition.

In this paper, I aim to develop a novel virtue reliabilist account of justified belief, which incorporates insights from both process reliabilism and extant versions of virtue reliabilism. Like extant virtue reliabilist accounts of justi- fied belief, the proposed view takes it that justified belief is a kind of competent performance and that competent performances require reliable agent abilities. However, unlike extant versions of virtue reliabilism, the view takes abilities to essentially involve reliable processes. In this way, the proposed takes a leaf from process reliabilism. Finally, I will provide reason to believe that the view compares favourably with both extant versions of virtue reliabilism and process reliabilism. In particular, I will show that in taking abilities to essentially involve reliable processes, the view has an edge over extant versions of virtue reliabilism. Moreover, I will argue that the proposed view can either solve or defuse a number of classical problems of process reliabilism, including the new evil demon problem, the problem of clairvoyant cases and the generality problem.

Evidence matters for responsibility. This paper investigates implications of this insight for group responsibility and the literature on group belief. In particular, we will be focusing on the transmission of group responsibility from group to individual. We will argue that there are cases in which responsibility transmits fully (to all members of the group), partially (to some but not all of its members), or not at all (to none of its members), and we will explore some implications of these observations for accounts of group belief and evidence in the literature on social epistemology. More specifically, we will provide reason to think that these observations provide support for an account of group belief that we favour over its main rivals in the literature.

In a number of recent pieces, Duncan Pritchard has used cases with the structure of Goldman’s infamous fake barn case to argue against a promising virtue epistemological account of knowledge and a promising knowledge-based account of understanding. This paper aims to defend both of these views against Pritchard’s objections. More specifically, I outline two ways of resisting Pritchard’s objections. The first allows for knowledge in fake barn cases and explains the intuition of ignorance away. In contrast, the second response appeals to a plausible alternative account of understanding. Each of the resulting views is shown to be epistemologically viable and preferable to the alternative Pritchard’s offers.

This paper critically assesses Sosa’s normative framework for performances as well as its application to epistemology. We first develop a problem for one of Sosa’s central theses in the general theory of performance normativity according to which performances attain fully desirable status if and only if they are fully apt. More specifically, we argue that given Sosa’s account of full aptness according to which a performance is fully apt only if safe from failure, this thesis can’t be true. We then embark on a rescue mission on behalf of Sosa and work towards a weakened account of full aptness. The key idea is to countenance a distinction between negligible and non-negligible types of risk and to develop an account of full aptness according to which even performances that are endangered by risk can be fully apt, so long as the risk is of a negligible type. While this alternative account of full aptness solves the problem we developed for Sosa earlier on, there is also bad news for Sosa. When applied to epistemology, the envisaged treatment of barn façade cases as cases in which the agent falls short of fully apt belief will no longer work. We show that, as a result, Sosa faces a new version of a familiar dilemma for virtue epistemology. Either he construes full aptness as strong enough to get barn façade cases right in which case his view will run right into the problem we develop. Or else he construes full aptness as weak enough to avoid this problem but then he will not be able to deal with barn façade cases in the way envisaged.

Virtue epistemology is the view that beliefs are attempts at truth (or perhaps knowledge) and, as a result, can be assessed as successful, competent, and apt. Moreover, virtue epistemology identifies central epistemic properties with normative properties of beliefs as attempts. In particular, knowledge is apt belief and justified belief is competent belief. This paper develops a systematic virtue epistemological account of defeat (of justification/competence). I provide reason to think that defeat occurs not only for beliefs but for attempts more general. The key constructive idea is that defeaters are evidence that attempting (in a certain way) isn't successful and that defeaters defeat the competence of an attempt when one stands in a certain normative relation to the defeater. I argue that while this account handles paradigm cases of defeat both within epistemology and beyond nicely, cases of external (sometimes also ‘normative’ or ‘propositional’) defeat continue to cause trouble. To handle these cases, I develop a distinctively functionalist version of virtue epistemology. This functionalist version of virtue epistemology allows me to countenance proficiencies, that is, roughly, abilities that have the function to produce successes under certain conditions. It is the normative import of proficiencies that delivers the normative relation that serves to explain defeat in cases of external defeat. In this way, the functionalist version of virtue epistemology ushers the way towards a satisfactory account even of external defeat.

This paper aims to develop a novel account of the normativity of assertion. Its core thesis is that assertion has an etiological epistemic function, viz. to generate knowledge in hearers. In conjunction with a general account of etiological functions and their normative import, it is argued that an assertion is epistemically good if and only if it has the disposition to generate knowledge in hearers. In addition, reason is provided to believe that it makes sense to regulate the practice of assertion by a speaker rule—and, more specifically, by a knowledge rule—as so regulating assertion contributes to ensuring that assertion fulfils its etiological function reliably.

Virtue epistemology is one of the most flourishing research programmes in contemporary epistemology. Its defining thesis is that properties of agents and groups are the primary focus of epistemic theorising. Within virtue epistemology two key strands can be distinguished: virtue reliabilism, which focuses on agent properties that are strongly truth-conducive, such as perceptual and inferential abilities of agents; and virtue responsibilism, which focuses on intellectual virtues in the sense of character traits of agents, such as open-mindedness and intellectual courage. This volume brings together ten new essays on virtue epistemology, with contributions to both of its key strands, written by leading authors in the field. It will advance the state of the art and provide readers with a valuable overview of what virtue epistemology has achieved.