Review of Bob Roberts & Jay Wood, Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology

Intellectual Virtues is a major contribution to the literature in "character-based" virtue epistemology. It is the first book-length monograph on the topic to appear since the publication of Linda Zagzebski's groundbreaking work Virtues of the Mind over a decade ago. And in some ways, it is even more innovative than Zagzebski's book. The focus of the latter is a virtue-based analysis of knowledge, which Zagzebski argues has the resources for overcoming the Gettier problem, rebutting the skeptic, reconciling internalism and externalism, and more. As such, it is largely an attempt to engage and "solve" the problems of traditional or mainstream epistemology by appeal to the concept of intellectual virtue. Roberts and Wood have no such interest. While mainstream analytic epistemology is their starting point, and while its concepts and key players loom in the background throughout the book, they are interested in understanding the intellectual virtues and their role in the intellectual life considered in their own right -- independent of whatever bearing reflection on these traits may (or may not) have on more traditional epistemological pursuits. Thus their book departs even further than Zagzebski's from the status quo in epistemology.