Virtues and Rules in Epistemology

Abstract

Abstract Virtue theories in ethics are often presented as an alten;1ative to deontological theories such as Kant’s. One important issue here concerns the existence of moral rules and their relation to moral action. Specifically, it is commonly claimed that it is an advantage of virtue theories that they do not commit us to moral rules. The reason this is an advantage, it is argued, is that it is unclear whether such rules play any important role in our moral lives.1 In this essay I want to argue in a similar way with respect to theories of epistemic evaluation. That is, I want to argue that virtue theories in epistemology hold an advantage over deontological theories in epistemology, and precisely because the former need not understand epistemic justification in terms of epistemic rules or norms.