Education and "thick" epistemology

Educational Theory

Volumn 61, Issue 5, 2011, Pages 549-564

  Kotzee, Ben ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 80053082870     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2011.00420.x     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. David Carr and Jan Steutel, eds., Virtue Ethics and Moral Education (London: Routledge, 1999).
2. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985), 129.
3. The example, minus the filling in about Amsterdam, is borrowed from Catherine Elgin. See Catherine Elgin, "Williams on Truthfulness,"Philosophical Quarterly 55, no. I make no claim that Amsterdam is, in fact, sleazy.219 (2005): 343-352
4. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 128-140.
5. Samuel Scheffler, "Morality Through Thick and Thin: A Critical Notice of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy,"Philosophical Review 96, no. , for a thorough discussion of the thin/thick distinction and an influential criticism.3 (1987): 411-434
6. I thank Stefaan Cuypers for this point.
7. Ben Kotzee and Jeremy Wanderer, "A Thicker Epistemology?"Philosophical Papers 37, 3 (2008): 337-343
8. Catherine Elgin, "Trustworthiness,"Philosophical Papers 37, 3 (2008): 371-387
9. Guy Axtell and J. Adam Carter, "Just the Right Thickness: A Defense of Second-Wave Virtue Epistemology,"Philosophical Papers 37, 3 (2008): 413-434.
10. Jonathan Kvanvig, The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind: On the Place of the Virtues in Contemporary Epistemology (Savage, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992)
11. Linda Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
12. Ernest Sosa, A Virtue Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
13. Edmund Gettier, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?"Analysis 23, 6 (1963): 121-123.
14. For an introduction, see Heather Battaly, "Virtue Epistemology,"Philosophy Compass 3, 4 (2008): 639-663.
15. For specific suggestions involving the value of "understanding," see, for instance, Jonathan Kvanvig, The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
16. Catherine Elgin, "Education and the Advancement of Understanding," in Philosophy of Education, ed. Randall Curren (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).
17. James Montmarquet, For a suggestion involving "conscientiousness," Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993).
18. Kvanvig, The Intellectual Virtues and the Life of the Mind, 7.
19. Duncan Pritchard, "Recent Work on Epistemic Value,"American Philosophical Quarterly 44, 2 (2007): 85-110.
20. John Greco, "Knowledge as Credit for True Belief," in Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, ed. Michael DePaul and Linda Zagzebski (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007).
21. Linda Zagzebski, "For discussion, see The Search for the Source of the Epistemic Good,"Metaphilosophy 34 1-2, (2003): 12-28.
22. Elgin, "Trustworthiness," 371.
23. The attitude has been called "veritism." See Axtell and Carter, "Just the Right Thickness."
24. Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).
25. Elgin, "Trustworthiness," 373.
26. This point derives from Williams's work. A complexity in Williams's account is that how we want our beliefs to be for the sake of others eventually shapes how we want them to be for ourselves - this is part of what is involved in valuing truthfulness.
27. Elgin, "Trustworthiness," 380.
28. Michael Slote, "Self-Regarding and Other-Regarding Virtues," in Virtue Ethics and Moral Education, ed. Carr and Steutel, 99-110.
29. Harvey Siegel, "Is Education a Thick Epistemic Concept?"Philosophical Papers 37, 3 (2008): 466.
30. Michael Katz, "R.S. Peters's Normative Conception of Education,"Journal of Philosophy of Education 43, 1 (2009): 97-108.
31. Siegel, "Is Education a Thick Epistemic Concept?" 460.
32. Carr and Steutel, eds., Virtue Ethics and Moral Education, for a discussion centered on moral education.
33. Battaly's "Virtue Epistemology" contains a splendid discussion of this issue.648-649.
34. For Zagzebski's position, see Virtues of the Mind, chap. 2.
35. That is, through practice, copying, and teaching. See Heather Battaly, "Teaching Intellectual Virtues,"Teaching Philosophy 29, 3 (2006): 191-222.
36. Battaly, "Virtue Epistemology," 646. For Sosa's position, see A Virtue Epistemology, 86.
37. Duncan Pritchard, "Virtue Epistemology and the Acquisition of Knowledge,"Philosophical Explorations 8, 3 (2005): 229-243.
38. Battaly, "Teaching Intellectual Virtues," 203.
39. The point that children becoming intellectually virtuous may presuppose too sophisticated a cognitive apparatus on their part owes much to Wittgenstein's discussion in the Philosophical Investigations of how one cannot presuppose that someone who is learning to follow a rule already knows what it is to follow a rule. Wittgenstein's solution to how one can come to follow a rule, of course, also centers on education and training. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (New York: Macmillan, 1965).
40. Whether one should be accorded the same or a different level of credit for possessing the intellectual virtues as for learning the virtues is an interesting question. Either way, that there is a connection and that credit for the one may depend on the other should be clear.
41. Harvey Siegel, "Truth, Thinking, Testimony and Trust: Alvin Goldman on Epistemology and Education,"Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71, 2 (2005): 345-366.
42. Alvin Goldman, Knowledge in a Social World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999).
43. In fact, the question arises whether many in the educational mainstream have a thick conception of education at all as opposed to a thin, or even emaciated, conception: in other words, is the value-ladenness of education not perhaps stressed to such an extent that what is considered "education" is seen as purely a matter of preference? This sort of thinking seems to be present in many postmodernist or relativistic accounts.
44. Michael Young, Bringing Knowledge Back In (London: Routledge,). Young's work, too, draws on Williams, Truth and Truthfulness. 2007