Competent Believers. Towards a New Virtue Epistemology

什么是理性的信徒？在一个被广泛接受的观点中，理性的信徒是通过正确地回应他们的认知原因来形成他们的信仰的人，比如他们支持或反对某个命题的证据。但是怎样才能正确地回应一个人的认知理由呢？我的项目的首要目标是发展和捍卫这个问题的一个新颖的答案：正确地回应一个人的认知原因是行使一个人的认知美德的问题。一个理性的信徒因此是一个有道德的信徒。这个答案是新颖的，因为它基于对认知美德的新颖描述。目前占主导地位的美德认识论形式将认知美德视为一种技能（运动技能是最受欢迎的模式）或一种道德美德。但这两种认知美德的概念都不能令人满意地正确回应一个人的认知原因。相比之下，根据我想要阐述的观点，知识美德确实是一种独特的人类卓越：它是一种美德，而不是一种技能，它是一种独特的知识美德，而不仅仅是一种道德美德。我的希望是，发展这种美德认识论的替代形式，不仅会提供对认识论原因的充分解释——反应性，而且还会提供对认识论和伦理学交叉点的一些重要问题的新视角（例如认识论的不公正或认识论与道德美德之间的关系）。

What is it to be a rational believer? On a widely held view, a rational believer is someone who forms their beliefs by correctly responding to their epistemic reasons, such as their evidence for or against some proposition. But what is to correctly respond to one’s epistemic reasons? The overarching aim of my project is to develop and defend a novel answer to this question: correctly responding to one’s epistemic reasons is a matter of exercising one’s epistemic virtue. A rational believer is thus an epistemically virtuous believer. The answer is novel because it’s based on a novel account of epistemic virtue. The currently dominant forms of virtue epistemology conceive of epistemic virtue either as a kind of skill (athletic skills being the favorite model) or as a species of moral virtue. But neither conception of epistemic virtue delivers a satisfactory account of correctly responding to one’s epistemic reasons. By contrast, on the account I aim to develop, epistemic virtue is indeed a distinctive kind of human excellence: it’s a virtue—not a skill—and it’s distinctively epistemic—not simply a species of moral virtue. My hope is that developing this alternative form of virtue epistemology will offer, not just an adequate account of epistemic reasons-responsiveness, but also a fresh perspective on a number of important issues at the intersection of epistemology and ethics (such as epistemic injustice or the relation between epistemic and moral virtuousness).