Reliabilism focuses on the reliability of belief-forming processes, while virtue epistemology focuses on the character traits of the knower. Virtue epistemology subsumes and addresses issues with foundationalism, coherentism, and reliabilism by defining knowledge as true belief arising from intellectual virtues like sound reasoning, perception, and memory. It explains why Gettier cases and unreliable beliefs are not knowledge. However, virtue epistemology is criticized for not precisely specifying how to justify beliefs and for potentially changing standards of knowledge over time and circumstances.

1. Starter: Reliabilism
1. What key difference is there between
reliabilism and the standard JTB account?
2. What is Alvin Goldman’s further refinement
to reliabilism?
3. Why does he propose it?
4. What strengths does reliabilism have that
infallibilism does not?

2. From Reliabilism to
Virtue Epistemology
Or: how to be
EXCELLENT AT KNOWING

3. The concept of virtue in epistemology
• Virtue = ‘habitual excellence’
• So intellectual virtues:
– Broad cognitive abilities or powers – ‘innate
faculties or acquired habits that enable a person
to arrive at truth and avoid error’ – such as sound
reason, accurate perception, reliable memory
– Or, alternatively, personality traits, such as
intellectual courage, open-mindedness, resilience
etc

4. Recent Virtue Epistemologists
• Ernest Sosa’s 1980 ‘The Raft and the
Pyramid’
• introduces the notion of virtue
epistemology
• to tackle the debate between
– foundationalism (a ‘pyramidal’
approach to knowledge’, where a solid
foundation of knowledge grounds the
entire structure)
– and coherentism (a ‘raft’, in Sosa’s
account) where a structure is tied
together simply by relations of mutual
support

5. Sosa’s arguments for VE –
It’s better than the alternatives
• ‘Epistemic justification’ – the property that turns true belief into
knowledge
• Can coherentism provide this property alone?
– Issue: highly coherent belief systems can be totally divorced from
reality (Santa Claus, the Evil Demon Hypothesis).
– Issue: experience obviously plays a role in epistemic justification, not
just relations between beliefs. (e.g. I believe I see my hand, not a
collection of tentacles)
• Can foundationalism provide this property alone?
– The priority of direct experience would explain e.g. why my belief in
my hand being at the end of my arm is epistemically justified.
• How do rational certainties get us back to worldly knowledge? (Cogito
problems etc)
• Such sensory experiences can be mistaken (Descartes)
• And there are many such directly justified experiences. Is direct experience
fundamental, or is it an instance of some more general principle?

6. Virtue Epistemology in Standard Form
• S knows that P iff
– P is true
– S believes P
– This belief in P is produced by one or more intellectual virtues of S
• Replaces justification condition with account of intellectual virtue.
• So: focus on the nature of the knower rather than the knowledge
itself.
• And! (Strength!) ‘intellectual virtue’ can mean all of the kinds of
intellectual excellences that are attractive in other theories.
• But (Weakness!) might look as if ‘intellectual virtue’ is therefore
rather ‘underdetermined’ – it means all things to all men, perhaps…
• Key question (Michael Lacewing): is this knowledge that is claimed
‘apt, adroit, accurate’.
– Alliterative, so memorable. But what exactly is being explained?...

7. A strength of VE: it
subsumes foundationalism
• provides general account of epistemic justification
• Sosa: ‘a belief B (p) is epistemically justified for a person S iff B
(p) is produced by one or more intellectual virtues of S.’
• So retains power of intellectually virtuous dispositions such
as:
– Empiricism: perceptual ability to reliably form beliefs
about the environment on the basis of sensory inputs
– Rationalism: Faculties of memory, introspection, logical
inference
• ‘By defining epistemic justification in terms of intellectual
virtue we get a unified account of all the sources of
justification traditionally recognised by foundationalism’ (John
Greco)

8. A strength of VE: it
subsumes coherentism
• as now coherentism can also make claim to be intellectual
virtue.
• Intellectual Virtue = ‘disposition that reliably gives rise to true
belief under relevant circumstances and in a relevant
environment’
• So: coherence-seeking reason is therefore a reliable source of
true belief and hence another source of epistemic
justification.
• Sosa: animal knowledge or true beliefs produced by epistemic
virtue can then lead to reflective knowledge ‘when
coherent perspective on true beliefs and their origin in
intellectual virtue is superadded’

9. A strength of VE:
it subsumes reliabilism
• Subsumes reliabilism (= ‘a belief B (p) is epistemically justified
for S iff B (p) is the outcome of a sufficiently reliable cognitive
process i.e. a process that is sufficiently truth-conducive.’)
• Generic reliabilism
– Has explanatory power about correctness of beliefs caused
by e.g. perception, memory, logic etc
– Explains why beliefs based on hallucination, wishful
thinking etc are wrong
– Cuts off sceptical arguments which trade on assumption
that processes must be 100% correct – ‘de facto reliability
rather than vindicated reliability’

10. A strength of VE:
it answers a key issue with reliabilism
• Brain lesion example, Barn County example, show that highly
reliable cognitive processes are insufficient for epistemic
justification  problem for reliabilism.
• However, VE denies that these beliefs were epistemically
justified: they’re just false beliefs, not knowledge.
– True that they show that not all reliable cognitive processes give rise to
epistemic justification.
– but belief about brain lesion does not arise out of knower’s intellectual
virtues, but from an organic illness.
– but belief about barns does not arise out of intellectual virtues (how?)
– So, these beliefs aren’t knowledge.

11. • ‘New Evil Demon problem’: ‘according to simple reliabilism, epistemic
justification is entirely a matter of reliability. But the demon victim’s
beliefs are not reliably formed…they are nevertheless justified.’ (Greco)
• Virtue epistemology’s answer to ‘new evil demon problem’
– Beliefs of sufferer are not reliably formed
• Not ‘from the skin inward’ – she does reason appropriately from her sensory experiences.
• But ‘from the skin outward’ – her cognitive facilities are not fitted to detect the issue with her
environment.
– Yet they are internally justified, as they are beliefs that result from intellectual
virtues.
• So whether a cognitive faculty counts as virtuous is relative to its
environment.
– The demon victim’s perception and reasoning powers are not reliable in the
demon world, so are not virtues there.
– But these same faculties are reliable, and therefore do count as virtues, in the
actual world.
A strength of VE:
it answers another key issue with reliabilism

12. • To societal circumstances.
• So knowledge might ‘flex’ or
change over time?
• for example
– unusual powers of
concentration might be
socially disabling OR excellent.
– unusual arithmetical ability
might not be always useful OR
it could be very handy
– an unusual memory could be
disabling OR brilliant
• Is this a strength, or a
weakness of virtue
epistemology?
A strength of VE:
Epistemic Virtue is relative!

13. A strength of VE:
deals with Gettier cases plausibly
• In Gettier cases, S believes the truth by accident. So
these cases are not epistemically virtuous: she doesn’t
believe the truth because of habitual excellence in her
knowledge-claims.
• In cases of knowledge, S believes the truth, and her
epistemic virtues are a ‘salient part of the causal story
regarding how S came to have true belief’.
• ’S has knowledge regarding P iff S believes the truth
regarding P because S believes P out of intellectual
virtue’  her knowledge is aptly formed…

14. A strength of VE:
notion of acquired traits is plausible
• Follows Aristotle in arguing that virtues can be
taught and developed
– Just as in the case of other virtues, epistemological
virtues are acquired traits of character.
– You can be taught them, you can learn them.
– Their acquisition is something at least partly
controlled.
– Possessing and exercising them are praiseworthy.
– Not acquiring and exercising them are blameworthy.

15. A strength of VE:
idea of balanced character development
• Intellectual virtues can be developed during a
lifetime.
• A properly virtuous knower might aim to be
‘rounded’.

16. Issues with Virtue Epistemology
• The account is wishy-washy: it doesn’t precisely specify
how you justify any knowledge-claim.
• How would you know if your knowledge was apt?
– (You’d have confidence because of your honed intellectual
discipline...is this enough?)
• Are virtues of intellect or character most relevant?
• What is the relationship between these? Could they be
in tension? (Rational psychopaths etc)
• Why should a virtuous knower be rounded? What of
autists etc?
• If virtuous qualities change, doesn’t knowledge itself
change?