Virtue Epistemology and Intellectual Virtues
Summary
Virtue epistemology conceives knowledge as the outcome of intellectual character traits rather than the mere aggregation of justified beliefs. Tracing its roots to classical philosophy, this approach distinguishes between reliabilist virtues—stable cognitive faculties reliably producing truth—and responsibilist virtues, which encompass motivational and ethical dimensions such as intellectual honesty, perseverance and humility. Together, these frameworks foreground the agent’s dispositions in generating, sustaining and transmitting knowledge. Recent discourse has expanded the field to embrace the politicisation of epistemic practices, underlining how virtues like open-mindedness and critical inquiry serve democratic deliberation and counteract misinformation. Educational research has translated these insights into curricular interventions that cultivate questioning skills and reflective judgement. At a global level, intellectual virtues inform practices ranging from scientific collaboration to algorithmic design, underscoring their role in fostering resilient inquiry, guiding responsible innovation and sustaining the social integrity of knowledge across diverse contexts.
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Virtue Epistemology and Intellectual Virtues publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in virtue epistemology and intellectual virtues across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Virtue epistemology: A discipline that evaluates knowledge and belief by reference to intellectual character traits and dispositions.
Intellectual virtues: Stable excellences of the mind, such as open-mindedness and perseverance, that support the acquisition, retention and transmission of knowledge.
Episteme: A deep cognitive achievement or understanding that is not attributable to luck or mere testimony.
Knowledge indicators: Evidential, probability-increasing facts signalling that an agent is in a position to know a proposition.
Resistance to evidence: A failure to integrate available evidence, construed as an input-level epistemic malfunction undermining rational inquiry.
References
- Resistance to evidence and the duty to believe. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2023).
- Educating for Good Questioning: a Tool for Intellectual Virtues Education. Acta Analytica (2018).
- The Platonic conception of intellectual virtues: its significance for virtue epistemology. Synthese (2019).
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