Critical Notices

This is an ambitious book, in two ways. First, it advocates a drastic transformation of contemporary epistemology’s scope and method. Second, it exemplifies a new way of doing epistemology, plumbing the depths of epistemic psychology by subtly characterizing the nature of, and interrelations among, a host of intellectual traits. Part I critiques standard ‘‘analytic’’ epistemology and expounds the authors’ alternative vision of epistemology’s scope and method. Part II consists of admirably nuanced and intriguing discussions of several intellectual virtues (and many corresponding vices), most notably: love of knowledge, firmness, courage, caution, humility, autonomy, generosity, and practical wisdom. Analytic epistemology, according to our authors, is generally in a sorry state. Too narrowly focused, equipped with a flawed methodology, and having grown increasingly ‘‘irrelevant to broader philosophical and human concerns’’ (6), it requires transformation to become ‘‘the serious and important discipline that it can and ought to be’’ (34). Analytic epistemologists restrict their focus to propositional knowledge. Our authors seem to agree, following Plantinga, that propositional knowledge is warranted true belief. But whereas warranted true belief is an intellectual good worth having, we also prize understanding and acquaintance, which, our authors argue, differ from propositional knowledge (42–55). Understanding is ‘‘an ability to recognize things,’’ and differs from propositional knowledge ‘‘in not being necessarily propositional’’ (47). Acquaintance is ‘‘experiencing for oneself,’’ and has epistemic value beyond its potential for grounding propositional knowledge (51). Indeed, propositional knowledge is a mere ‘‘abstraction from knowledge,’’ where by ‘knowledge’ our authors mean a ‘‘richly intertwined bundle of understanding, acquaintance, and propositional knowledge’’ (153). Even restricting attention to propositional knowledge, our authors argue, we should abandon analytic epistemology’s misguided aims and methodology. Analytic epistemology’s primary aim is to produce an accurate ‘‘e-definition’’: a formula stating the individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for propositional knowledge (and often also justification, warrant, and rationality). They deny this can be done, because knowledge is a family-resemblance concept, characterized by ‘‘a fund of properties some of which will be necessary, and enough of which will be sufficient, in any given case’’ (56). Our authors also reject the analytic methodology of ‘‘regimenting’’ concepts ‘‘in a monistic, reductive, hierarchical, or derivational style.’’ Anything less, analytic philosophers think, is ‘‘weak’’ and ‘‘impure’’ theorizing (23). Monistic reduction occurs when we derive ‘‘all the concepts in a given field from some single, key concept’’ (23). A proper hierarchical structure requires that if you explain B in terms of A, then you do not explain A in terms of B (25). Our authors eschew this approach, its characteristic ‘‘neatness compulsion’’ and the ‘‘confusing and pedantic analyses’’ it spawns, opting instead for ‘‘multidirectional’’ explanations of key epistemological concepts and a ‘‘messy, nonhierarchical logic’’ that better reflects ‘‘the concepts that govern’’ human life (26).