Paul Poenicke

Virtue theory has long recognized the significance of emotion for cognition, yet little philosophical research has been dedicated to identifying an intellectual virtue related to emotion. Applying recent work in virtue epistemology reveals emotional intelligence (EI) to be an intellectual virtue, as analysis demonstrates EI’s ability to enhance cognition. High EI persons better attend to epistemically-significant features of the environment, which could explain the significance of stakes for knowledge attribution. While testing did not confirm higher EI with stakes sensitivity (the hypothesis), study methods, including stakes vignettes, inadvertently caused the hypothesis to be disconfirmed.

This paper investigates whether practical interests affect knowledge attributions in cases of testimony. It is argued that stakes impact testimonial knowledge attributions by increasing or decreasing the requirements for hearers to trust speakers and thereby gain the epistemic right to acquire knowledge via testimony. Standard, i.e. invariantist, reductionism and non-reductionism fail to provide a plausible account of testimony that is stakes sensitive, while non- invariantist versions of both traditional accounts can remedy this deficiency. Support for this conceptual analysis of stakes is found through a review of the experimental philosophy literature on stakes effects on knowledge attribution. Finally, a diagnosis is offered for what is needed to provide a more robust defense of the paper’s primary claims in terms of future experimental study.