Virtue Epistemology: Motivation and Knowledge (Continuum Studies in Philosophy)

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Virtue Epistemology: Motivation and KnowledgeBy Stephen Napier | Analysis | Oxford Academic

Some of these problems are referred to as cases of easy knowledge, knowledge without credit, or cases of passive or simple knowledge. The author's nicely organized discussions of these cases, and his replies to critics of responsibilism make up the bulk of the next chapters of the book. Here he further elaborates what responsibilism offers that reliabilist and austere anti-luck epistemologies do not. In cases of perception and memory, he brings together impressive empirical evidence to support the responsibilist's contention that one's emotional-motivational states are in fact implicated in the genesis of knowledge.

In the chapter on perception, Napier argues that perceptual knowledge requires attention and that attention is informed by epistemic motivations. Motivational states direct attention and what results from focused attention is awareness. Forming perceptual beliefs that count as knowledge requires that one be aware of one's perceptual environment, such that perceptual knowledge is mediated by deep-seated motivated actions of the agent; the motivation to be aware is present in most or all cases correctly describable as perceptual knowledge, when we look at these closely and in ways informed by psychology and the special sciences.

The unmotivated belief objection to responsibilism also arises with respect to memorial knowledge, where it claims support from cases in which intuitively either " 1 a veridical memorial belief is preserved but without attention, or 2 even if the preservation of a veridical memorial belief requires attention, the attentional focus itself is not directed by any motivation" Napier's chapter on this develops the "argument from encoding" to show that attention is necessary in memorial knowledge, as in perceptual knowledge, and that one's motivations are necessary to direct one's attention.

Napier's chapter on testimony and cognitive virtue is perhaps his best, as he takes on the challenge of purported cases of testimonial knowledge of no credit to the knower or recipient of the testimony. There are, he holds, three parts to testimony: Responsibilism, insofar as it defines knowledge with reference to a virtuous act, has built into it a contextual sensitivity that helps us clarify the three parts of testimony and the ways they relate to one another.

Account Options

Noting the advantages of taking an actor's motivations as primary over epistemic states and standings, and virtue theory's ability to recognize the social epistemological aspects of testimony, Napier goes on to argue that only the responsibilist versions of virtue epistemology can give a satisfactory account of testimonial knowledge. Thin virtues are intellectual virtues insofar as they possess an epistemic motivation, but such motivations function largely nonconsciously and if acquired are acquired without much conscious effort. Whereas thick intellectual virtues possess a more robust epistemic motivation and acquiring the virtue may take effort and requires consciously repeating, say, fair-minded acts The responsibilist may thus account for low-grade knowledge by noting that it still requires the agent to exude an epistemic motivation, though only one associated with thin, perhaps 'faculty' virtues.

Nevertheless the responsibilist account still maintains its key notion of motivation or intentionality, describing it through the thick intellectual virtues needed to account for personal and doxastic justification with respect to reflective or high-grade knowledge. For "higher-grade knowledge is knowledge which is the result, typically, of extended inquiry", and the reflective virtues are traits that make us good at inquiry.

In this way responsibilism avoids the approach of unreformed internalist epistemologies, while providing a needed corrective as well to contemporary externalist analyses of knowledge that leave intentionality or motivation out of the picture. The author's positive program shines through in two concluding chapters, one on moral expertise and the other applying virtue epistemology to the problem of divine hiddenness. Responsibilists hold that valuable epistemic states like knowledge, understanding, sensitivity, etc. A person's motivation and overall moral character also contributes to the acquisitions of these epistemic goods: In neo-Aristotelian or phronomic virtue responsibilist accounts, like Napier's and Zagzebski's, the judgment of what the phronomos would, might, or would not do often constitutes the best criterion of proper moral reflection and judgment.

On this view, persons of virtue may themselves disagree, but Napier suggests that this isn't particularly troubling to the theory, though it is still an interesting truth indicating that we inhabit "an axiologically deep and complex world" In Napier's final chapter and conclusion he suggests that a virtue epistemology of the responsibilist sort can quite naturally demarcate the limits of human inquiry, with considerable implications for claims about religious and moral knowledge.

Motivation and Knowledge

The frequent impasses between theists and non-theists will enable the person with phronesis to recognize the approaching limits of human knowledge and thereby display appropriate epistemic humility and caution. Napier focuses on the argument for athiesm from divine hiddenness developed by Schellenberg. It is troubling for a theist to acknowledge the apparent fact of reasonable or responsible virtuous or non-culpable non-belief. It is troubling in a way that motivates a concern to explain God's ways to man, or to explain how He remains 'hidden' to many and how the matter of His very existence and nature, in philosophical terms, is epistemically ambiguous.

Napier points out that the concept of a virtuous agent applies to objects that are within the domain of human knowledge, but the counterfactuals of God's freedom that this impasse between theists and atheists presupposes are not the proper objects of human knowledge. The impasse over divine hiddenness is due to each side conducting inquiry that is intuitively outside the boundaries of human insight. Thus the virtuous agent for whom God is hidden should adopt an agnostic position, not atheism as argued by Schellenberg.

The responsibilist virtue epistemology applied to philosophy of religion more generally gives a reason for limiting claims to human knowledge: Thus outlining the boundaries of good inquiry helps dissolve not only the impasse regarding the hiddenness argument, but also the more general claim of individuals or institutions to be holders of religious knowledge. In reflecting on Napier's accomplishment, I find much to admire in the book including his ability to bring empirical support to the contention that recognition of motivation and attention are crucially at work not just in testimonial and memorial knowledge, but in perceptual knowledge as well.

Of the main points he claims responsibilism provides us -- i retention of the idea that a person who knows is personally justified in the sense of being rational, justified, or intellectually good, ii a sound account of the value of knowledge, and iii a Gettier-proof theory of knowledge -- I will pose a question regarding the first and third.

I mentioned earlier the tension between Napier's concern with action rather than conceptual analysis, and his overall argument that responsibilism is a more promising account of knowledge than is offered by virtue reliabilist A. Goldman and austere anti-luck D. Pritchard circa epistemologies.

2009.07.12

Like Zagzebski in Virtues of the Mind , Napier wants to utilize qualities of the agent such as intellectual virtues in defining knowledge, rather than to steer the project of analysis into different projects or interests in the virtues, as internalists like Foley and responsibilists like Lorraine Code describe themselves as doing.

An autonomous or 'two-project' approach leaves the responsibilist to link epistemically-central concerns with responsible habits of inquiry, while not insisting on any conceptual connection between personal justification through the virtues and conditions on propositional knowing. This squashes the perception that the virtues are only of central epistemic interest if their formal definition contributes to a successful analysis of propositional knowledge.

Thus, for those who don't think value of the virtues in epistemology has to do primarily with elucidating what knowledge is, Napier's characterization of virtue responsibilism seems somewhat restricting; it saddles responsibilism into the position of what Jason Baehr calls "Strong Conservative VE" but counts as only one of four main varieties of character-based virtue epistemology.

In some ways, Napier insists on the connection between personal justification and action-in-inquiry, but he doesn't clearly acknowledge the possibilities of strong radical or moderate "autonomous" versions of character epistemology including J. Nor does he clearly acknowledge differences between the internalism in which his approach is steeped and the pragmatism of those I've elsewhere called inquiry-focused or zetetic responsibilists like Code, Chris Hookway, or Axtell and Olson. Hence Napier's responsibilism, a view that utilizes qualities of the agent like intellectual virtues in definition or conceptual analysis of knowledge, represents a Zagzebskian slant that makes it look rather too restrictive.

Considered in another way, however, his characterizations of responsibilism may also be too loose, since Napier includes the self-described "agent reliabilist" John Greco as a responsibilist.

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