The Curious Case of the Excellent Gossiper

Abstract

My main aim in this paper is to examine whether gossip should be categorized as an epistemically valuable character trait. Gossip satisfies the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for an acquired character trait to be classified as an intellectual virtue under the responsibilist understanding of the concept of virtue. The excellent gossiper is (i) motivated to acquire epistemic goods through gossiping, (ii) reliably successful in acquiring epistemic goods through gossiping, (iii) competent at the activity of gossiping and (iv) good at judging when, with whom and what to gossip. Nonetheless, I show that the excellent gossiper inflicts (knower-initiated) epistemic wrong on others. The excellent gossiper comes to intentionally acquire another person’s private information (e.g., their sexual preferences) without their consent. This leaves virtue responsibilists with three options: (a) resist my argument that gossip qualifies as a responsibilist virtue and/or that excellent gossiping inflicts epistemic wrong, (b) bite the bullet and argue that the intellectually virtuous agent sometimes inflicts epistemic wrong on other agents intentionally, (c) develop a no-wrong principle that disqualifies gossip from being categorized as an intellectual virtue.