The Cognitive Demands of Intellectual Virtue

My plan in this paper is to defend a “cognitive requirement” on intellectual virtue. I shall argue that part of what is involved with possessing an intellectual virtue is having a certain cognitive perspective on or belief about the disposition in question. This strikes me as an argument worth making in its own right, for it stands to illuminate the positive psychological substance of intellectual virtue and thus to deepen our understanding of its precise character. The discussion is also aimed, however, at providing a deeper account of the relation between the cognitive dimension of intellectual virtue and various other widely acknowledged features of virtue proper. In this respect, the paper sheds light, not merely on the cognitive dimension of intellectual virtue, but also on the broader content and structure of intellectual virtue as a whole.