Evaluating epistemic virtues

Abstract

Epistemic conservatism (EC) says that an agent is in some measure justified in maintaining a belief simply in virtue of the fact that the agent has that belief. In his new book On Evidence in Philosophy (2019), William Lycan argues that there is no special objection to EC that does not also impugn the other epistemic virtues. In a forthcoming Synthese piece, Daniel Coren argues that, for us as we are (as ordinary human beings), EC cannot be evaluated. Coren (Synthese 1:1–14, 2019) does not discuss Lycan (2019), and vice versa. Here I connect these two discussions of EC in order to shed light on the broader nature of epistemic virtues. Does Coren’s argument extrapolate to the other virtues? I argue that both answers to that question yield interesting results. If his argument does not extrapolate to the other virtues, that would show there is something special about EC that Lycan (and others) failed to notice. If, instead, Coren’s argument does extrapolate to the other virtues, then we learn something significant and novel about virtues such as simplicity, namely, simplicity cannot be evaluated. I discuss those results.