Knowledge, Abilities, and ‘because’-Clauses. A Critical Appraisal of Virtue-Theoretic Analyses of Knowledge

نویسنده

  • Christian Nimtz
چکیده

Virtue-theoretic or “aretaic” theories analyse knowledge in terms of intellectual abilities, virtues, faculties etc. possessed by the epistemic subject (rather than the other way around).1 Recent theories of this variety are persuasively advertised as marking a distinct advance in our quest to understanding what knowledge amounts to. In particular, Greco (2010, 2009) and Sosa (2009, 2007) make a compelling case arguing that their preferred aretaic accounts solve a number of “‘problems for everyone’ (...) perennial problems that any theory of knowledge must say something about” (Greco 2010, 71). Virtue-theorists of course are adamant that their accounts’ success is rooted in the fact that aretaic analyses draw on intellectual abilities etc.2 In other words, proponents of aretaic accounts take it for granted that is the virtue-aspect of their virtue-theories that explains why these arguably are successful theories of knowledge. I will take issue with this presumption. I will argue that in at least one essential dimension, it misidentifies the actual source of success of virtuetheoretic theories of knowledge, and that once we see why that is, we have reason to be rather wary of virtue-theoretic theories. My line of argument is independent of common objections to virtue-theoretic accounts (e.g. Baehr 2011, ch. 3, Cohen 2009, Greco 2010, 80–90). In fact, even if virtueepistemologists convince us that there is nothing wrong with drawing on

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تاریخ انتشار 2012