Social Epistemology 21 (3):281 – 297 (2007)
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Abstract |
At the intersection of social and virtue epistemology lies the important, yet so far entirely neglected, project of articulating the social dimensions of epistemic virtues. Perhaps the most obvious way in which epistemic virtues might be social is that they may be possessed by social collectives. We often speak of groups as if they could instantiate epistemic virtues. It is tempting to think of these expressions as ascribing virtues not to the groups themselves, but to their members. Adapting Margaret Gilbert's arguments against individualist accounts of collective beliefs, I show that individualist accounts of group virtues are either too weak or too strong. I then formulate a non-individualist account modeled after Gilbert's influential account of collective beliefs. A crucial disanalogy between collective traits and beliefs, I argue, makes the success of this model unlikely. I conclude with some questions with which the future work on collective epistemic virtues should engage.
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Keywords | belief, collective knowledge, epistemology, gilbert margaret, group, individualism, social epistemology, virtue |
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DOI | 10.1080/02691720701674122 |
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References found in this work BETA
Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge.Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski - 1996 - Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior.John M. Doris - 2002 - Cambridge University Press.
Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions.Jonathan M. Weinberg, Shaun Nichols & Stephen Stich - 2001 - Philosophical Topics, 29 (1-2):429-460.
Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error.Gilbert Harman - 1999 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1999):315-331.
View all 44 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Epistemic Paternalism and the Service Conception of Epistemic Authority.Michel Croce - 2018 - Metaphilosophy 49 (3):305-327.
Epistemic Vices in Organizations: Knowledge, Truth, and Unethical Conduct.Christopher Baird & Thomas S. Calvard - 2019 - Journal of Business Ethics 160 (1):263-276.
Just the Right Thickness: A Defense of Second-Wave Virtue Epistemology.Guy Axtell & J. Adam Carter - 2008 - Philosophical Papers 37 (3):413-434.
View all 22 citations / Add more citations
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