Character Virtues, Epistemic Agency, and Reflective Knowledge

Ernest Sosa was the first philosopher to deploy the concept of intellectual virtue in the service of contemporary epistemology.1 His contributions to what has since become a leading approach to epistemology are second to none in volume, quality, and impact. For these and other reasons, it is an honor to have Sosa carefully address some of my own work in virtue epistemology and to engage with him on several matters central to the field.

Per the debate format, I will take aim at what I take to be a couple of the central claims of Sosa’s chapter. However, my criticisms are intended to be constructive and illuminating. Rather than try to uncover any deep flaws in Sosa’s brand of virtue epistemology, my aim is to push him further along what appears to be his present trajectory, that is, toward an even wider embrace of intellectual character virtues like open-mindedness, attentiveness, intellectual carefulness, intellectual thoroughness, and intellectual courage. I argue that Sosa should conceive of intellectual character virtues, not merely as “auxiliary virtues” or as what I shall refer to here as “epistemic enablers,” but also as constitutive elements of knowledge or as “epistemic contributors.”