Philosophy
Virtue Epistemology and Intellectual Virtues as Knowledge Sources
Quick fact
Virtue epistemology, championed by Ernest Sosa and Linda Zagzebski, argues that knowledge is not just a justified true belief but a success attributable to the knower's intellectual virtues—like a skilled archer hitting the target because of their skill, not luck.
Why this is interesting
You know more when you're open-minded, humble, and careful—but why do these character traits count as sources of knowledge?
Read the full explanation
Understanding Virtue Epistemology and Intellectual Virtues as Knowledge Sources
Imagine two people believe the same true proposition. One believes it because they carefully weighed evidence and avoided biases. The other believes it because they got lucky—maybe a misleading but accidentally reliable source. Philosophers like Ernest Sosa and Linda Zagzebski argue that only the first person has knowledge, because their belief stems from intellectual virtue. Virtue epistemology shifts the focus from individual beliefs to the cognitive character of the knower. It distinguishes between virtue reliabilism, which emphasizes reliable faculties like perception and memory, and virtue responsibilism, which stresses character traits like open-mindedness and intellectual humility. For reliabilists, knowledge arises when a belief is formed by a reliable cognitive process—one that tends to produce true beliefs. For responsibilists, the agent must actively exercise intellectual virtues, meaning they are motivated by the love of truth and are responsible in their inquiry. This approach neatly handles Gettier cases: in a Gettier example, the person's belief is true and justified, but it's true by accident, not because of their intellectual competence. Virtue epistemology says that's not knowledge because the success isn't attributable to the agent's virtue.
A deeper explanation
The mechanism of virtue epistemology is the attribution of epistemic credit. Just as a successful archery shot only counts as a skillful shot if the archer's skill explains the success, a true belief counts as knowledge only if the agent's intellectual virtue explains the truth of the belief. This is often captured by Sosa's notion of 'apt belief'—belief that is true because of the agent's competence. The key is the causal and explanatory link between the virtue and the truth. For example, if you have excellent eyesight and use it carefully, your perceptual beliefs are apt—they are true because of your reliability. In contrast, a Gettier case defeats that link: the belief is true by luck, not by virtue. This externalist element—that the virtue must actually be reliable—makes virtue epistemology sensitive to the world. Yet responsibilism adds an internalist flavor by requiring that the agent be praiseworthy for their inquiry. This dual nature allows virtue epistemology to bridge the internalism/externalism debate. Moreover, intellectual virtues are not just about avoiding error; they actively promote the acquisition of truth. They include traits like curiosity, carefulness, and intellectual courage. By focusing on character, virtue epistemology also provides a richer account of the knower, connecting epistemology to ethics and the good intellectual life.