Virtue Epistemology

Virtue epistemology is a collection of recent approaches to the philosophical study of knowledge that give a primary role to the concept of an intellectual virtue. Intellectual virtues are the qualities or capacities of a good thinker or knower. Accordingly, an important feature of virtue epistemology is its immediate focus on the knowing subject or agent.

Virtue epistemology is prefigured in the work of several historical thinkers, including Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, both of whom give intellectual virtues a critical role in their accounts of human cognition. However, these earlier thinkers conceive of intellectual virtues in a way that differs significantly from contemporary conceptions. The central difference concerns which capacities or qualities are identified as intellectual virtues. Aristotle, for instance, thinks of intellectual virtues as “states of the soul … in which the soul arrives at truth by way of affirmation and denial” (NE 1139b 15-16, trans. Crisp). Aquinas likewise describes intellectual virtues as habits that “perfect the speculative intellect for the consideration of the truth” (Summa theologiae I-II, q. 57, a. 2, trans. Fathers of the Dominican English Province). Both authors identify intellect (nous), scientific knowledge (episteme), wisdom (sophia), skill (techne), and practical wisdom (phronesis) as the chief intellectual virtues. By contrast, current defenders of virtue epistemology think of intellectual virtues either as reliable or truth-conducive cognitive faculties like vision, hearing, memory, and introspection or as good intellectual character traits like attentiveness, open-mindedness, and intellectual courage. It is far from clear how, if at all, the Aristotelian and Thomistic list of intellectual virtues is to be harmonized with either of these other lists. For this reason, virtue epistemology is best viewed an extension of earlier theories only in a rather broad sense.

The two contemporary conceptions of intellectual virtue just noted form the basis of two main varieties of virtue epistemology. In the remainder of the entry, these varieties are outlined, and prima facie promising and problematic features of each are identified.