Marcelo Cabral

Doxastic conflicts are a pervasive feature of modern human experience. We form beliefs on various interrelated subjects that, not rarely, conflict with each other. In this paper, I argue that when an individual experiences a crisis between doxastic attitudes toward science and religion, there may be a deeper issue than just a disharmony among beliefs. There may be a higher-order clash between two distinct norms of rationality, which provides a robust account for why doxastic conflicts of this nature are widespread and challenging to resolve. I employ concepts from social epistemology to elucidate the nature of the epistemic clash and to explore possible resolutions. First, I characterize a hypothetical conflict between an agent's scientific and religious beliefs. Second, I introduce three categories from contemporary debates in social epistemology: epistemic dependence, expertise, and epistemic community. Third, employing these categories, I characterize the high-order conflict that an agent may experience between two distinct norms of rationality. Fourth, I describe four asymmetries between scientific and religious doxastic attitudes that bear importance to rationality. Fifth, from these asymmetries, I suggest a course of action that an agent may take to mitigate their cognitive uneasiness and move towards a more integrated rational profile.

Given the inevitability of our social dependencies, some social epistemologists have defended that dogmatism, rather than open-mindedness, is the more appropriate cognitive habit for laypeople to acquire good beliefs in specialized like the sciences. They claim that dogmatically relying on experts’ deliverances, rather than exercising one’s own intellectual virtues, like open-mindedness, is the best epistemic strategy for maximizing the acquisition of true beliefs and avoiding false ones. In this paper, I challenge this view by arguing that open-mindedness is a valuable epistemic trait for laypeople who seek an appropriate pattern of epistemic dependence concerning scientific theories. While laypeople are generally incapable of fully understanding and evaluating scientific theories – an effort that only properly trained experts can undertake – they can still achieve some level of understanding of these theories. Such understanding is impeded by habits like dogmatism. Conversely, open-mindedness proves beneficial in these contexts as it disposes individuals to engage with and incorporate cognitively challenging ideas, such as many scientific theories.

This paper aims to offer an Aristotelian critique of virtue epistemology, particularly of the way virtue epistemologists use the concept of intellectual virtue in their definitions of knowledge. I engage with David Bronstein’s thesis that virtue reliabilists, despite claims of being contemporary representatives of Aristotle’s epistemology, construct their key epistemic categories in ways that fundamentally deviate from Aristotle’s own virtue epistemology. In addition to Bronstein’s argument, I will argue that a similar critique applies to the other main branch of virtue epistemology – namely, Zagzebski’s responsibilism. I intend to clarify both the gist of contemporary virtue epistemologists and the motivation behind their approaches, highlighting that, not only do they differ from Aristotle, but also that their theories run the risk of vicious circular reasoning. I conclude by proposing alternative options, within virtue epistemology, that may avoid the problems I identify in mainstream virtue reliabilism and responsibilism.

The complex relations between Christianity and science seem to present a critical point in evolutionary theory, especially for the challenges it poses to the doctrine of original sin. I investigate the precise senses in which evolution threatens the Augustinian/Reformed formulation of original sin, analyzing each of the six tenets of the doctrine vis a vis nine evolutionary claims, as well as the supposed clash between the narratives of evolution and Christianity. I show that the threat is less impressive than it is usually assumed, and I highlight where the conflict really lies. I defend that it is possible to remain faithful to the core of the doctrine of original sin and to accept the reliability of evolution as a scientific theory. I present three scenarios for “Adam and Eve” and interpret them using two different models. I favor the understanding of Adam and Eve as the whole initial human bottleneck viewed through the lens of a multilevel model.

In this paper I offer a characterization of the intellectual virtue of social inquisitiveness, paying attention to its difference from the individual virtue of inquisitiveness. I defend that there is a significant distinction between individual and social epistemic virtues: individual epistemic virtues are attributed to individuals and assessed by the quality of their cognitive powers, while social epistemic virtues are attributed to epistemic communities and are assessed by the quality of the epistemic relations within the communities. I begin presenting Lani Watson's characterization of the (individual) practice of questioning and its related intellectual virtue, inquisitiveness. While she does not employ normative language, I show that her description can be constructed through four norms. Then, based on an account of epistemic communities, I defend that, while epistemic virtues attributable to individuals have norms regulating cognitive powers, epistemic virtues attributable to epistemic communities have norms regulating social epistemic interactions and shared epistemic responsibility. I then present a robust characterization of the epistemic virtue of social inquisitiveness through its social epistemic norms: DISTRIBUTION, ACCESSIBILITY, SOCIAL SINCERITY, SOCIAL CONTEXT, and FREQUENCY. I respond to two possible objections to my account and conclude by offering suggestions to broaden the scope of the epistemology of questioning.