Download or read book Epistemic Situationism written by Abrol Fairweather and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first sustained examination of epistemic situationism: the clash between virtue epistemology and the situationist hypothesis inspired by research in empirical psychology. Situationism began as a challenge to the psychology of character traits, targeting ethical theories that presuppose a trait psychology. Psychological research suggests that (often trivial) environmental variables have greater explanatory power than character traits. Epistemology pursues questions about the nature of knowledge. While there are internal differences within virtue epistemology between responsibilists and reliabilists, they all analyze knowledge in terms of epistemic virtues and vices. However, despite promising normative results, virtue epistemology appears to assume the same character-based psychology as virtue ethics does. Until recently, virtue epistemology and situationism were separate literatures, but philosophers have begun to examine the apparent incompatibility between situationist psychology and virtue epistemology. Much of the psychological research that raises questions about the empirical adequacy of the moral psychology of virtue ethics also appears to raise doubts about the empirical adequacy of the epistemic psychology assumed by virtue epistemology. Responsibilist virtue epistemology appears particularly vulnerable because epistemic virtues like open mindedness, conscientiousness and intellectual courage are traits of intellectual character, but reliabilist virtue epistemology appeals to the psychology of cognitive skills, abilities, and competences that may be similarly vulnerable. The essays in this volume take up this new problem of epistemic situationism from multiple points of view - some sceptical or revisionary, others conservative.
Download or read book Knowledge Dexterity and Attention written by Abrol Fairweather and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title provides the first thorough defense of a naturalized virtue epistemology.
Download or read book Character written by Christian B. Miller and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-12 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection contains some of the best new work being done on the subject of character from the perspectives of philosophy, theology, and psychology. From creating a virtual reality simulation of the Milgram shock experiments to understanding the virtue of modesty in Muslim societies to defending soldiers' moral responsibility for committing war crimes, these 31 chapters break much new ground and significantly advance our understanding of character. The main topics covered fall under the heading of our beliefs about character, the existence and nature of character traits, character and ethical theory, virtue epistemology, the nature of particular virtues, character development, and challenges to character and virtue from neuroscience and situationism. These papers stem from the work of the Character Project (www.thecharacterproject.com) at Wake Forest University, generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation. This collection is truly unique in featuring the work of many young, up-and-coming voices in their fields with new perspectives to offer. Together their work will significantly shape discussions of character for years to come.
Download or read book Virtue Epistemology Naturalized written by Abrol Fairweather and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents four bridges connecting work in virtue epistemology and work in philosophy of science (broadly construed) that may serve as catalysts for the further development of naturalized virtue epistemology. These bridges are: empirically informed theories of epistemic virtue; virtue theoretic solutions to under determination; epistemic virtues in the history of science; and the value of understanding. Virtue epistemology has opened many new areas of inquiry in contemporary epistemology including: epistemic agency, the role of motivations and emotions in epistemology, the nature of abilities, skills and competences, wisdom and curiosity. Value driven epistemic inquiry has become quite complex and there is a need for a responsible and rigorous process of constructing naturalized theories of epistemic virtue. This volume makes the involvement of the sciences more explicit and looks at the empirical aspect of virtue epistemology. Concerns about virtue epistemology are considered in the essays contained here, including the question: can any virtue epistemology meet both the normativity constraint and the empirical constraint? The volume suggests that these worries should not be seen as impediments but rather as useful constraints and desiderata to guide the construction of naturalized theories of epistemic virtue.
Download or read book The Skillfulness of Virtue written by Matt Stichter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-04 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proposes that virtues are skills that we can work on improving, using psychological research on self-regulation and expertise.
Download or read book Epistemology written by Ernest Sosa and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-17 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world's leading epistemologists provides a sophisticated, revisionist introduction to the subject In this concise book, one of the world's leading epistemologists provides a sophisticated, revisionist introduction to the problem of knowledge in Western philosophy. Modern and contemporary accounts of epistemology tend to focus on limited questions of knowledge and skepticism, such as how we can know the external world, other minds, the past through memory, the future through induction, or the world’s depth and structure through inference. This book steps back for a better view of the more general issues posed by the ancient Greek Pyrrhonists. Returning to and illuminating this older, broader epistemological tradition, Ernest Sosa develops an original account of the subject, giving it substance not with Cartesian theology but with science and common sense. Descartes is a part of this ancient tradition, but he goes beyond it by considering not just whether knowledge is possible at all but also how we can properly attain it. In Cartesian epistemology, Sosa finds a virtue-theoretic account, one that he extends beyond the Cartesian context. Once epistemology is viewed in this light, many of its problems can be solved or fall away. The result is an important reevaluation of epistemology that will be essential reading for students and teachers.
Download or read book Vice Epistemology written by Ian James Kidd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-14 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some of the most problematic human behaviors involve vices of the mind such as arrogance, closed-mindedness, dogmatism, gullibility, and intellectual cowardice, as well as wishful or conspiratorial thinking. What sorts of things are epistemic vices? How do we detect and mitigate them? How and why do these vices prevent us from acquiring knowledge, and what is their role in sustaining patterns of ignorance? What is their relation to implicit or unconscious bias? How do epistemic vices and systems of social oppression relate to one another? Do we unwittingly absorb such traits from the process of socialization and communities around us? Are epistemic vices traits for which we can blamed? Can there be institutional and collective epistemic vices? This book seeks to answer these important questions about the vices of the mind and their roles in our social and epistemic lives, and is the first collection of its kind. Organized into three parts, chapters by outstanding scholars explore the nature of epistemic vices, specific examples of these vices, and case studies in applied vice epistemology, including education and politics. Alongside these foundational questions, the volume offers sophisticated accounts of vices both new and familiar. These include epistemic arrogance and servility, epistemic injustice, epistemic snobbishness, conspiratorial thinking, procrastination, and forms of closed-mindedness. Vice Epistemology is essential reading for students of ethics, epistemology, and virtue theory, and various areas of applied, feminist, and social philosophy. It will also be of interest to practitioners, scholars, and activists in politics, law, and education.
Download or read book Character as Moral Fiction written by Mark Alfano and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone wants to be virtuous, but recent psychological investigations suggest that this may not be possible. Mark Alfano challenges this theory and asks, not whether character is empirically adequate, but what characters human beings could have and develop. Although psychology suggests that most people do not have robust character traits such as courage, honesty and open-mindedness, Alfano argues that we have reason to attribute these virtues to people because such attributions function as self-fulfilling prophecies - children become more studious if they are told that they are hard-working and adults become more generous if they are told that they are generous. He argues that we should think of virtue and character as social constructs: there is no such thing as virtue without social reinforcement. His original and provocative book will interest a wide range of readers in contemporary ethics, epistemology, moral psychology and empirically informed philosophy.
Download or read book Rationality in Context written by Steven Bland and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses the psychological literature on rationality to weigh in on the recent debate between virtue epistemologists and epistemic situationists. It argues that both sides have misconstrued the literature and that an interactionist framework is needed to square epistemic theory with empirical facts about reasoning and inference. The explosion of empirical literature on human rationality has led to seismic shifts across a multitude of academic disciplines. This book considers its implications for epistemology. In particular, it critically evaluates the treatment of the rationality literature within the recent controversy between virtue epistemologists, who attempt to ground knowledge in stable epistemic virtues, and epistemic situationists, who claim that such a project is doomed by empirical evidence of widespread irrationality. It links this foundational controversy to two of the most important debates in psychology: the Rationality Wars and the person-situation debate. The book argues that both virtue theorists and epistemic situationists have misunderstood the implications of these debates, leading them to focus exclusively on personal dispositions and situational factors as two independent sources of epistemic success, failure, and improvement. A more accurate reading of the empirical literature implies that interactions between epistemic agents and their social, informational, and institutional environments are the fundamental drivers of both rational and irrational behaviour. An interactionist framework motivated by this insight conceives of epistemic virtues and vices as both responsive to and responsible for the environments in which they’re manifested and cultivated. The central aim of this book is to present and defend this novel type of virtue epistemology. Rationality in Context will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of psychology, cognitive psychology, and social psychology.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Virtue written by Nancy E. Snow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 905 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen a renaissance in the study of virtue -- a topic that has prevailed in philosophical work since the time of Aristotle. Several major developments have conspired to mark this new age. Foremost among them, some argue, is the birth of virtue ethics, an approach to ethics that focuses on virtue in place of consequentialism (the view that normative properties depend only on consequences) or deontology (the study of what we have a moral duty to do). The emergence of new virtue theories also marks this new wave of work on virtue. Put simply, these are theories about what virtue is, and they include Kantian and utilitarian virtue theories. Concurrently, virtue ethics is being applied to other fields where it hasn't been used before, including bioethics and education. In addition to these developments, the study of virtue in epistemological theories has become increasingly widespread to the point that it has spawned a subfield known as 'virtue epistemology.' This volume therefore provides a representative overview of philosophical work on virtue. It is divided into seven parts: conceptualizations of virtue, historical and religious accounts, contemporary virtue ethics and theories of virtue, central concepts and issues, critical examinations, applied virtue ethics, and virtue epistemology. Forty-two chapters by distinguished scholars offer insights and directions for further research. In addition to philosophy, authors also deal with virtues in non-western philosophical traditions, religion, and psychological perspectives on virtue.
Download or read book Naturalizing Epistemic Virtue written by Abrol Fairweather and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-27 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An epistemic virtue is a personal quality conducive to the discovery of truth, the avoidance of error, or some other intellectually valuable goal. Current work in epistemology is increasingly value-driven, but this volume presents the first collection of essays to explore whether virtue epistemology can also be naturalistic, in the philosophical definition meaning 'methodologically continuous with science'. The essays examine the empirical research in psychology on cognitive abilities and personal dispositions, meta-epistemic semantic accounts of virtue theoretic norms, the role of emotion in knowledge, 'ought-implies can' constraints, empirically and metaphysically grounded accounts of 'proper functioning', and even applied virtue epistemology in relation to education. Naturalizing Epistemic Virtue addresses many core issues in contemporary epistemology, presents new opportunities for work on epistemic abilities, epistemic virtues and cognitive character, and will be of great interest to those studying virtue ethics and epistemology.
Download or read book Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility written by James A. Montmarquet and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defending an original conception of our responsibility for belief and of the relation of such responsibility to moral justification for our actions, James Montmarquet advances a detailed account of certain traits of intellectual character-the epistemic virtues-and of their relation to the responsibility for one's beliefs.
Download or read book Epistemic Responsibility written by Lorraine Code and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2020-11-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having adequate knowledge of the world is not just a matter of survival but also one of obligation. This obligation to "know well" is what philosophers have termed "epistemic responsibility." In this innovative and eclectic study, Lorraine Code explores the possibilities inherent in this concept as a basis for understanding human attempts to know and understand the world and for discerning the nature of intellectual virtue. By focusing on the idea that knowing is a creative process guided by imperatives of epistemic responsibility, Code provides a fresh perspective on the theory of knowledge. From this new perspective, Code poses questions about knowledge that have a different focus from those traditionally raised in the two leading epistemological theories, foundationalism and coherentism. While not rejecting these approaches, this new position moves away from a primary concentration on determinate products and towards an examination of ever-changing processes. Arguing that knowledge never exists as an ungrounded abstraction but rather emerges through dialogue between variously authoritative "knowers" situated within particular social and historical contexts, she draws extensively on examples from lived social experience to illustrate the ways in which human beings have long tried to recognize and meet their epistemic responsibilities. This edition of Epistemic Responsibility includes a new preface from Lorraine Code.
Download or read book Intellectual Virtue written by Michael Raymond DePaul and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Virtue ethics has attracted a lot of attention and there has been considerable interest in virtue epistemology as an alternative to traditional approaches in that field. This book fills a gap in the literature for a text that brings virtue epistemologists and virtue ethicists together."-- Back cover.
Download or read book The Theory of Epistemic Rationality written by Richard Foley and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author gives a novel and provocative account of the nature of epistemic rationality.
Download or read book Epistemic Authority written by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski gives an extended argument that the self-reflective person is committed to belief on authority. Epistemic authority is compatible with autonomy, but epistemic self-reliance is incoherent. She argues that epistemic and emotional self-trust are rational and inescapable, that consistent self-trust commits us to trust in others, and that among those we are committed to trusting are some whom we ought to treat as epistemic authorities, modeled on the well-known principles of authority of Joseph Raz. Some of these authorities can be in the moral and religious domains. Why have people for thousands of years accepted epistemic authority in religious communities? A religious community's justification for authority is typically based on beliefs unique to that community. Unfortunately, that often means that from the community's perspective, its justifying claims are insulated from the outside; whereas from an outside perspective, epistemic authority in the community appears unjustified. But as Zagzebski's argument shows, an individual's acceptance of authority in her community can be justified by principles that outsiders accept, and the particular beliefs justified by that authority are not immune to external critiques.
Download or read book To the Best of Our Knowledge written by Sanford C. Goldberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-09 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sanford C. Goldberg argues in this volume that epistemic normativity - the sort of normativity implicated in assessments of whether a belief amounts to knowledge - is grounded in the things we properly expect of one another as epistemic subjects. In developing this claim Goldberg argues that epistemic norms and standards themselves are generated by the expectations that arise out of our profound and ineliminable dependence on one another for what we know of the world. The expectations in question are those through which we hold each other accountable to standards of both (epistemic) reliability and (epistemic) responsibility. In arguing for this Goldberg aims to honor the insights of both internalist and externalist approaches to epistemic justification. The resulting theory has far-reaching implications not only for the theory of epistemic normativity, but also for the nature of epistemic assessment itself, as well as for our understanding of epistemic defeat, epistemic justification, epistemic responsibility, and the various social dimensions of knowledge.
