Epistemic virtue

The epistemic virtues, as identified by virtue epistemologists, reflect their contention that belief is an ethical process, and thus susceptible to the intellectual virtue or vice of one's thought life. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the question "How do we know?"

Virtue epistemology refers to any number of modern epistemological approaches which approach contemporary problems by means of the intellectual virtues, either conceived of as faculties or exemplary traits. For example, commonly accepted epistemic virtues include creativity, intellectual humility and objectivity.

Intellectual virtue has been a subject of philosophy since the works of Plato and Aristotle, but lately philosophers in the analytic tradition have sought to solve problems of especial concern to modern epistemology, such as justification and reliabilism, by throwing attention on the knower as agent in a manner similar to virtue ethics.

Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski has proposed a particularly ambitious neo-Aristotelian model of virtue epistemology, emphasizing the role of phronesis as an archetectonic virtue unifying moral and intellectual virtues even more radically than Aristotle proposed.

Some epistemic virtues have been identified by W. Jay Wood, based on research into the medieval tradition. The list below substantially overlaps with his.

• attentiveness
• circumspection
• coachability
• creativity
• curiosity
• discernment
• discretion
• foresight
• intellectual honesty
• intellectual humility
• imaginativeness
• interpretive sensitivity
• objectivity
• perceptiveness
• prudence /practical wisdom
• studiousness
• tenacity
• truthfulness
• understanding
• wisdom
• warrant

Note that in this context curiosity bears the modern connotation ofinquisitiveness, in contrast to the medieval connotation of attraction to unwholesome things.

These can be contrasted to the epistemic vices such as: close-mindedness, curiosity, intellectual dishonesty, dogmatism, epistemic blindness, folly, gullibility, obtuseness, self-deception, superficiality of thought, superstition, willful naïveté, wishful thinking

Note that in this context curiosity bears the medieval connotation of attraction to unwholesome things, in contrast to the positive studious (or perhaps inquisitive).

Virtue Epistemology