Agent reliabilism, subjective justification, and epistemic credit

Southern Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 44, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 489-508

  McKinnon, Christine ^a  

^a TRENT UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949192720     PISSN: 00384283     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.2041-6962.2006.tb00015.x     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. See John Greco, "Agent Reliabilism," in Philosophical Perspectives in Epistemology 13, ed. by James Tomberlin (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 273-96
2. John Greco, Putting Skeptics in Their Place (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ch. 7
3. and John Greco, "Further Thoughts on Agent Reliabilism: Replies to Kvanvig, and Schmitt and Lahroodi Cohen, Geivett, Kvanvig, and Schmitt and Lahroodi," Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 66, no. 2 (2003): 466-80
4. Linda Zagzebski suggests that unless the value of agents' characters is more than the value of the reliability of their dispositions, Greco's agent reliabilism may fail to avoid the value problem. See Linda Zagzebski, "From Reliabilism to Virtue Epistemology," in Knowledge, Belief, and Character, ed. by Guy Axtell (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 118
5. John Greco, "Virtues and Rules in Epistemology," in Virtue Press Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, ed. by Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 137
6. See also John Greco, "Further Thoughts on Agent Reliabilism: Replies Kvanvig, and Schmitt and Lahroodi to Cohen, Geivett, Kvanvig, and Schmitt and Lahroodi," 475
7. John Greco, Putting Skeptics in Their Place, 192. (Part of chapter 7 of earlier Agent Reliabilism. Page references will be to Putting Skeptics in Their Place) Putting Skeptics in Their Place is a version of the earlier "Agent Reliabilism." Page references will be to Putting Skeptics in Their Place.)
8. See Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 199
9. See Laurence Bonjour, "Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge," Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5 (1980): 53-73
10. Stewart Cohen, Jonathan Kvanvig, and Reza Lahroodi and Frederick Schmitt all object to Greco's handling of the imagined examples of agents arriving at their beliefs through strange and fleeting processes. See Stewart Cohen, "Greco's Agent Reliabilism," Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 65, no. 2 (2003): 437-41
11. Jonathan Kvanvig, "Simple Reliabilism and Agent Reliabilism," Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 65, no. 2 (2003): 451-56
12. Reza Lahroodi and Frederick Schmitt, "Comments on John Greco's Research Putting Skeptics in Their Place," Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 65, no. 2 (2003): 457-63
13. Greco seems to want to accord knowledge to idiot savants; Zagzebski does Research not. It is not clear that Greco's agent reliabilism should consider the true beliefs of idiot savants to be knowledge claims. See John Greco, "Two Kinds of Intellectual Virtue," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60, no. 1 (2000): 182
14. See Linda Zagzebski, "Responses," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60, no. 1 (2000), 208
15. John Greco, "Virtue and Luck, Epistemic and Otherwise," Metaphilosophy 34, no. 3 (2003): 353-66
16. See also John Greco, "Further Thoughts on Agent Reliabilism: Replies Kvanvig, and Schmitt and Lahroodi to Cohen, Geivett, Kvanvig, and Schmitt and Lahroodi," 474
17. See, for example, Joel Kupperman, Character (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)
18. Christine McKinnon, Character, Virtue Theories, and the Vices (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1999)
19. Edmund Pincoffs, Quandaries and Virtues (Lawrence, KS: The University Press of Kansas, 1986)
20. In his earlier works, Greco spoke of cognitive agents countenancing norms or rules of good reasoning. See John Greco, "Internalism and Epistemically Responsible Belief," Synthese 85 (1990): 250-51
21. John Greco, "Virtues and Vices of Virtue Epistemology," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23, no. 3 (1993): 423-29
22. James Montmarquet is one who warns of the potential fanaticism of agents motivated by a conscientious pursuit of the truth. He argues that conscientiousness as a virtue needs to be regulated by other virtues. See James Montmarquet, "Epistemic Virtue," Mind 96 (1987): 483
23. Christopher Hookway brought to my attention the way in which the protagonist in Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2003) illustrates a way in which a relentless pursuit of the truth can be inconsistent with good cognitive agency
24. This would seem not to be an instance of the conditional fallacy identified by Robert K. Shope in "The Conditional Fallacy in Contemporary Philosophy," Journal of Philosophy 75, no. 8 (1978): 397-413. The claim is not that cognitive agents aspiring to be better ought to have just those beliefs that excellent cognitive agents have, but that aspiring cognitive agents want to be motivated by dispositions and faculties that characterize and motivate excellent cognitive agents. Aspiring cognitive agents will have different beliefs, will stand in different evidential relations to the world, and, most importantly, will have different dispositions than do excellent cognitive agents. Until aspiring cognitive agents succeed in instilling the dispositions by which they wish to be motivated, they may well have to use tricks to induce them to believe well, tricks that excellent cognitive agents would not use. And beliefs may be subjectively justified for excellent cognitive agents when those same beliefs are not subjectively justified for aspiring cognitive agents. Pursuing the overall goal of becoming an excellent cognitive agent is consistent with holding beliefs or adopting strategies that excellent cognitive agents do not hold or do not have to adopt
25. Ernest Sosa distinguishes animal knowledge and reflective knowledge arguing that animal knowledge can be apt, whereas reflective knowledge is the sort of knowledge that can be subjectively justified. See, for example, Ernest Sosa, "Intellectual Virtues in Perspective," in Knowledge in Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 270-93. As is apparent, I am tempted by the claim that many cases of animal knowledge are merely apt, and not subjectively justified. My position differs from Sosa's in that I do not require for subjective justification that agents grasp that any particular belief they have be grounded in one of their reliable cognitive dispositions. The beliefs about cognitive dispositions and faculties that character reliabilism requires are beliefs that inform the development of cognitive character in maturing cognitive agents. They are not beliefs about the origin of particular beliefs in particular dispositions. One consequence of this is that, over the course of becoming a mature cognitive agent, the kind of true beliefs that an agent once had as apt knowledge may well become subjectively justified for that agent
26. Linda Zagzebski, "From Reliabilism to Virtue Epistemology," 118
27. I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments on earlier versions of anonymous referees this paper by John Greco, Christopher Hookway, Wayne Riggs, Neil Tennant, Jay Wood, and three anonymous referees