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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

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182967

Success, minimal agency and epistemic virtue

Carlos Montemayor

pp. 67-81

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss a basic tradeoff that any view of agency and epistemic virtue must address, given the most recent psychological findings: the more minimal the sense of agency, the less plausible the postulation of a reflective requirement for knowledge; and the more enriched the sense of agency, the less epistemically relevant the characterization of "virtue.' Although this may not be a surprising tradeoff, I present new consequences of it, which I believe have not been properly addressed in the literature. In particular, I discuss the role that agential reflection may play in action selection, as opposed to motor control, and why this is crucial to distinguish epistemic virtues for knowledge from other epistemic and pragmatic virtues. More specifically, I argue that if reflection is associated with action-selection, then it can be shown that it is dissociated from apt first level belief formation (what Ernest Sosa characterizes as "animal knowledge'). On the other hand, if introspective forms of conscious reflection, or even unconscious forms of reflection, influence epistemic cognitive processes, then it can be shown that reflection either becomes a source of error or that it is irrelevant for knowledge. Therefore, in a fully naturalized epistemology there seems to be little room for meta-virtues for knowledge that are based on reflective processes.

Publication details

Published in:

Fairweather Abrol (2014) Virtue epistemology naturalized: bridges between virtue epistemology and philosophy of science. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 67-81

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-04672-3_5

Full citation:

Montemayor Carlos (2014) „Success, minimal agency and epistemic virtue“, In: A. Fairweather (ed.), Virtue epistemology naturalized, Dordrecht, Springer, 67–81.