The internalist virtue theory of knowledge
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The internalist virtue theory of knowledge Ralph Wedgwood1
Received: 3 August 2017 / Accepted: 29 January 2018 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Here is a definition of knowledge: for you to know a proposition p is for you to have an outright belief in p that is correct precisely because it manifests the virtue of rationality. This definition resembles Ernest Sosa’s “virtue theory”, except that (a) on this definition, the only virtue that must be manifested (at least to some degree) in all instances of knowledge is rationality, and (b) no reductive account of rationality is attempted—rationality is assumed to be an irreducibly normative notion. This definition is compatible with “internalism” about rationality, and with a form of “pragmatic encroachment” on the conditions of rational outright belief. An interpretation is given of this definition, and especially of the sense of ’because’ that it involves. On this interpretation, this definition entails that both safety and adherence are necessary conditions on knowledge; it supports a kind of contextualism about terms like ‘knowledge’; and it provides resources to defend safety, adherence, and contextualism, against some recent objections. Keywords Ernest Sosa · Knowledge · Virtue · Rationality · Safety · Adherence · Contextualism
1 “The aim of belief” revisited Many philosophers have claimed that beliefs aim at the truth. We can raise many questions about how to understand this claim. For example, Sosa (2015, p. 24) has argued that it is literally true that beliefs aim at the truth: at the level of what Sosa calls
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Ralph Wedgwood [email protected] School of Philosophy, University of Southern California, 3709 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0451, USA
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“functional” belief, he suggests that this aim is “teleological, like that of perception”— while at the level of what he calls “judgmental” belief, he suggests that “the aim … is like that of intentional action’ (25). I have myself also defended the claim that belief aims at the truth, but only if the claim is understood as a metaphorical way of conveying an essentially normative point—the point that whenever someone has a belief, that belief is correct if and only if the proposition believed is true (Wedgwood 2002). In this discussion, however, I shall not worry about how best to interpret the use of the term ‘aim’ in this claim. I shall simply assume that some reasonable interpretation of this occurrence of the term can be found. Moreover, to keep things simple, I shall here ignore partial beliefs or levels of credence or confidence, and restrict my attention here to full or outright beliefs.1 So, I shall focus on the following version of this claim: whenever you rationally have a full or outright belief in a proposition p, your aim is to believe p if and only if p is true. As I shall put it, when you rationally believe p, your aim is to have a belief that is correct, or gets things right, about p. Among those who accept that in some sense be
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