Dani Pino

En la epistemología contemporánea, dos influyentes corrientes han evolucionado en paralelo: el fiabilismo de virtudes y la epistemología colectiva o de grupos. Pese a los intentos por integrar ambas (Carter, 2022; Đorđević y Berber, 2025; Greco, 2021; Harris, 2025; Jarczewski, 2024; Jarczewski y Riggs, 2025; Palermos, 2022; Palermos y Pritchard, 2016), la versión más robusta del fiabilismo de virtudes (Sosa, 1991, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2015, 2021), ofrece una doble resistencia a dicho proyecto. Por un lado, niega su compatibilidad con la epistemología colectiva (Sosa, 2007, pp. 94-95); por otro, reduce esta última a un caso marginal dentro del propio marco sosiano (Kallestrup, 2020). Este artículo analiza las condiciones que sustentan ambas estrategias—identificadas como Incompatibilidad y Excepcionalidad— para someterlas a revisión crítica desde una alternativa positiva, Compatibilidad, que busca mostrar cómo la noción de virtud epistémica puede extenderse de manera coherente a agentes irreductiblemente colectivos. El resultado es una propuesta de fiabilismo de virtudes colectivas robusto, capaz de reconciliar la normatividad individual y la grupal sin sacrificar el realismo epistémico propio del modelo de Sosa.

A number of problems motivate research in so-called hinge epistemology. Two of these concern questions about the nature of hinges as foundations or presuppositions that underpin our practical and theoretical justification at a collective level, as well as about the dynamics between different types of hinges that regulate our practices, such as global and local hinges (Moyal-Sharrock, 2004). In turn, group epistemology also focuses on some disputes about the nature of collective epistemic justification (Pettit, 2001; List & Pettit, 2011) and the character of group epistemic properties that are not reducible to individual properties (Gilbert, 1987, 1992; Tuomela, 2004; Tollefsen, 2013, 2015; Palermos, 2016; Palermos & Pritchard, 2016). In this paper, we propose a new approach to addressing both sets of problems by integrating insights from each framework. We argue that hinges share dominance with distinctive features of group epistemology, motivating a novel hypothesis about their epistemic role.

This paper presents the debate between two types of virtue reliabilists: robust reliabilists, who envision knowledge as apt belief resulting from the manifestation of the epistemic agent’s reliable cognitive competences, and modest or anti-luck reliabilists, who argue that, in addition to competence, knowledge requires an additional condition, which they identify as the safety condition. After presenting the terms of the debate, an argument is put forth to challenge modest reliabilism: the safety condition is already embedded in two fundamental aspects assumed in the concept of competence inherent to robust reliabilism through its situational condition, rendering the safety condition somewhat trivial.

Is it correct to accept an anthopological dimension in Baruch Spinoza’s doctrine? Regardless of the answer we may suggest for this point, how could be this connected to the prevailing Humanism of the immediately previous period in which our author lived? Our proposal points to a positive stance in relation to the presence of an anthropological perspective in Spinoza’s thought; perspective that may be seen as a reaction to that kind of Renaissance humanism that sees the human being in Nature a privileged kind. Therefore, in this paper we are going to analyse the way the concept of man evolves from this to the Spinozian formulation as a foundation in which it can be possible to accept the study of a certain Anthropology in his work.

Virtue Epistemology, as developed over the last 43 years by Ernest Sosa (1980, 2007, 2009, 2015, 2021), known as virtue reliabilism, has proven to be a highly explanatory account. This model posits that knowledge should be understood as, not mere true belief, but apt belief, to the extent that it is attained through the manifestation of epistemic virtues or competencies of the agent. However, it faces challenges when applied to the analysis of irreducibly collective knowledge, that is, the type of knowledge attributed to groups understood as a whole over and above of its members, as described by non-summativist group epistemology (Gilbert, 1987, 1989, 2013, 2023; Tollefsen, 2004, 2015; Lackey, 2021). These problems can be summarized in what Jesper Kallestrup has identified as a crucial disanalogy (2020): groups, unlike individuals, lack their own seat, in Sosa’s terms, upon which cognitive competence is based. In this work, I develop a solution to the problem posed by this disanalogy, focusing on the relationship between the concept of virtue and the sources of normativity that provide judgments with substantial content, both moral and practical, and epistemic. My strategy at this point consists of two steps. The first is to analyze the family of constitutivist strategies within metaethical constructivism. Despite the virtues of the models analyzed, none seem to offer conceptual tools that comprehensively resolve the relationship between the manifestation of virtue and the normative content open to evaluation. Therefore, secondly, I develop, based on the structure that underpins the constitutivist strategy presented in the previous section, an original model, virtue constitutivism drawn on Spinoza, whose result is promising for the proposed task. Thus, after applying the conceptual framework of my virtue constitutivism to virtue reliabilism, we find that the latter retains its explanatory power, despite revising the conceptual structure of the notion of epistemic virtue on which it is based. Having done this, I apply the obtained result to the problem of the crucial disanalogy to resolve it, thereby showing that non-summativist group epistemology is open to future developments.

According to Sosa (2015, 2021), the domain of epistemic normativity divides into gnoseology and intellectual ethics, a boundary that results from the key notion that gnoseological assessments are telic. We share this view here and highlight the implications that the telic claim has for different debates in contemporary epistemology. However, we also raise the complaint that Sosa’s analogy of the archer has suggested that this boundary aligns with those of the instant of cognitive performance and its attributability to an individual, as featured in the Cartesian fundamental epistemic question: _What should I believe now?_ Against this Cartesian imprint, we claim that temporality and sociality may be constitutive features of gnoseology. In order to show this, we introduce alternative analogies of belief formation processes that illustrate how cognitive achievements may be collectively attained across time, features that may manifest as an epistemology of conversation.

Ernesto Sosa tiene el mérito de haber sido pionero en lo que podría describirse, quizás sin demasiada exageración, como un cambio de paradigma en la epistemología contemporánea: el que supuso el tránsito desde una epistemología centrada en el problema de la estructura de la justificación hasta una nueva concepción del conocimiento enfocada en la naturaleza del agente epistémico. Un aspecto de este cambio que conviene no tratar con negligencia es el cambio de las analogías fundamentales, que pasaron de ser arquitectónicas a ser deportivas o prácticas, entre las que destaca la analogía del arquero. Nuestro objetivo en este capítulo es describir someramente dicho cambio para apuntar dos sentidos en los que creemos que la propuesta de Sosa podría «deslimitarse», es decir, desprenderse de límites que él mismo ha impuesto a su planteamiento. Un primer límite está relacionado con la dimensión temporal de la gnoseología (que, a diferencia de la ética de la creencia, habría de adoptar, según Sosa, un planteamiento esencialmente instantáneo o sincrónico). Un segundo límite es relativo a la identidad del agente epistémico, en la medida en que el planteamiento de Sosa parece asumir un enfoque individualista de difícil aplicación en casos de agentes colectivos. Sostendremos que ambos límites aparecen si mantenemos la analogía del arquero con el agente de conocimiento, al ser la suya una actividad instantánea y radicalmente individual. Si en su lugar adoptamos otras analogías para la acción epistémica, como las que aquí proponemos, salta a la vista que la sincronía y la individualidad son limitaciones contingentes para una epistemología de virtudes télica. En nuestra opinión, el abandono de esos dos límites podría abrir nuevos y prometedores horizontes para la epistemología social.

In this paper, I present an account of group competence that is explicitly framed for cases of epistemic performances. According to it, we must consider group epistemic competence as the group agents’ capacity to produce knowledge, and not the result of the summation of its individual members’ competences to produce knowledge. Additionally, I contend that group competence must be understood in terms of group normative status. To introduce my view, I present Jesper Kallestrup’s denial that group competence involves anything over and beyond the aggregation of individual competences. I have divided my response into two parts. First, I compare two conceptions of competence from Ernest Sosa’s reliabilist virtue epistemology, Thinking about oneself: The place and value of reflection in philosophy and psychology, Springer, 2019) and David Löwenstein’s account of know-how. Second, I take the results from this comparison and apply them to the issue of group know-how, by the hand of Orestis Palermos and Deborah Tollefsen’s twofold approach to the topic Socially extended epistemology, Oxford University Press, 2018). Finally, I return to Kallestrup’s denial to make my point in favour of the conception of genuine group competence as the group normative status to achieve success.

Baruch Spinoza's thought has been the most fruitful of modernity in the analysis of emotions and human passions. In all, fear is one of the key. From here, we propose to remove the conditions of legitimacy to analyze two films which, by their codes textual and narrative, with laxity could be included within the horror genre or horror. With this, we hope to argue that the work of art in general and cinema in particular can operate as a space for reflection according to Spinoza commitment: the liberation of the individual through knowledge.