User:ShayMTR/sandbox/Epistemology/Virtue responsibilism

In response to Sosa's formulation of a virtue epistemology that rested on the virtuous use of reliable faculties, other philosophers began to formulate their own versions. Some thought that although Sosa had been right to bring attention to intellectual virtues, that he was wrong in not conceptualising intellectual virtues as praiseworthy character traits more akin to the virtues of virtue ethics. The contributions of this group of philosophers led to the birth of virtue responsibilism. Although virtue epistemologists had many different motivations for developing this theory, such as to better understand our intellectual responsibilities to others or as a way of guiding intellectual practice, in this chapter we will be focusing on the work of Linda Zagzebski whose project was focused on the use of virtue responsibilism to provide the proper analysis of knowledge. Zagzebski defines knowledge simply: knowledge is "belief arising out of acts of intellectual virtue". However, this simplicity hides a complex theory of intellectual virtues that at once attempts to solve the Gettier problem in a way similar to Sosa, whilst at the same time explaining the acquisition of high-level knowledge such as that acquired by a brilliant scientist or genius detective.

Acts of intellectual virtue
Acts of intellectual virtue have three components.

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 * 1) When people have virtues such as generosity, compassion, kindness and so on, they are motivated to make the world a certain way. For example, a compassionate person seeing somebody in pain would want to relieve there suffering and so would act to make the person feel better. The first component of a virtuous act then, is that a virtuous act must arise from a certain motivational component of a virtue. In the case of compassion, we have seen that the motivational component is a desire to relieve the suffering in the world. But not only moral virtues motivate us to act in specific ways when faced with a certain situation; intellectual virtues also motivate us. For example, curiosity may motivate us to discover new things or come to deeper understandings of the things we already know, intellectual humility may motivate us to hear out other perspectives before we come to a judgement on a certain question, and intellectual courage may motivate us to propose creative solutions to problems even if they seem outlandish to others.
 * 2) Virtuous motivations are part of what makes an act praiseworthy but it isn't the whole story. Even people who are not virtuously motivated can do the "right" thing and there is a certain sense in which the value of an act can come simply from the fact that it is the right thing to do regardless of motivation. The second component of virtuous acts accounts for this value by requiring that virtuous acts are the type of act that a virtuous person would do given the circumstances.
 * 3) Finally, virtuous acts are not only virtuously motivated and the kind characteristic of virtuous people, they are also successful in meeting the ends of the virtuous motivation because of these features. In the compassionate person case described previously, the motivational component of compassion is the desire to relieve the suffering in the world and the end of this motivational component in the given scenario is to make the hurting person feel better. For acts of intellectual virtues, the truth is the end that must be successfully achieved and it must be achieved due to the first two components. The reason that it must be achieved due to the other two components is so that the truth of the belief must be tied up with the virtuousness of the act to avoid Gettier cases (similarly to Sosa's aptness condition).

Gettier strikes again
A Gettier counterexample to Zagzebski's virtue responsibilism provided by Heather Battally is shown below:


 * Brenda is a detective investigating the murder of an accountant for a big corporation
 * There are 2 suspects: the CEO of the corporation and the accountant’s husband – there is evidence against both of them and they both have a motive
 * Brenda considers the evidence and comes to the conclusion that, although it’s mixed, it points more towards the CEO than the husband
 * Out of intellectual humility, Brenda is motivated to hear out the opinions of her investigative team so that she can feel more certain that she has come to the truth (virtuous motivation)
 * The CEO of the company knows the evidence against him is strong, so he uses his massive amount of money to hire a hypnotist to brainwash the investigative team into believing that the accountant’s husband committed the murder
 * After listening to her investigative team (the kind of act an intellectually humble person would do), Brenda is convinced and forms the belief that the husband is the murderer
 * It turns out that the murderer actually was the accountant’s husband
 * If Brenda hadn't been virtuously motivated and acted as an intellectually humble person would do, she would not have believed that the husband committed the murder
 * Therefore, Brenda is successful in reaching the truth due to the appropriate features of her actions and so according to virtue responsibilism has knowledge
 * BUT we would never really consider this knowledge because the investigative team was brainwashed - Brenda only has knowledge through luck!