Abstract
I argue that virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism are complementary. They do not give competing accounts of epistemic virtue. Rather they explain the excellent functioning of different parts of our cognitive apparatus. Reliabilist virtue designates the excellent functioning of fast and context-specific Type 1 cognitive processes, while responsibilist virtue means an excellent functioning of effortful and reflective Type 2 cognitive processes. This account unifies reliabilist and responsibilist virtue theory. But the virtues are not unified by designating some epistemic norm that both aim at. Instead, I unify them through their cognitive foundations. Because Type 1 and Type 2 cognition are complementary, reliabilist and responsibilist virtues are complementary. Thereby, this dual-process theory of epistemic virtue gives a naturalised account of virtues as well as an explanation of how reliabilism and responsibilism relate. This approach offers a solution for both the generality problem and the situationist challenge to virtue epistemology; additionally it preserves the epistemological autonomy of each virtue type.
Highlights
Virtue epistemology is split down the middle
In order to see this, we need to look at the foundations of the two kinds of virtue. These foundations explain how reliabilism and responsibilism do not compete as accounts even though they appear to be incompatible
What are the cognitive foundations for our epistemic virtues? By cognitive foundations, I mean the substrate in which our epistemic virtues are anchored, for example the foundation of a diamond’s hardness is its molecular structure
Summary
Virtue epistemology is split down the middle. On the one hand, we have virtue reliabilism, arguing that epistemic virtues are faculties that reliably deliver the truth. There is virtue responsibilism, arguing that virtues are habits which guarantee that we are intellectually responsible These two things seem to be of entirely different sorts, and often they are taken to be incompatible. I argue that, despite the appearance of incompatibility, reliabilist virtues and responsibilist virtues are complementary. In order to see this, we need to look at the foundations of the two kinds of virtue These foundations explain how reliabilism and responsibilism do not compete as accounts even though they appear to be incompatible. The appearance of incompatibility of the virtue accounts arises out of the different nature of the two process types. Instead of looking at the normative profile of the virtues, reliabilist and responsibilist virtues are distinguished by their different cognitive foundations. My goal is to propose how reliabilist and responsibilist virtue can be brought to work together in a unified naturalised system (cf. Turri et al, 2019)
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