Introduction
Virtue Epistemology was once posited as a plausible theory of knowledge according to its supposed ability to circumnavigate the intractable problems of the Traditional-View-of-Knowledge (Sosa, 1980). One such line of endorsement (ibid, 2007: 25-42; Greco, 2003, 2010) is that it purportedly corrects for the Traditional Views’ misattributions of knowledge in Gettier-cases (Gettier, 1963). I will go on to argue, however, that grounds for such a line of endorsement – as construed under the formulation of the Deserving-Credit-View-of-Knowledge (henceforth, DCVK) – are ultimately unwarranted by defending the central thesis of Lackey’s 2007 paper, ‘Why We Don’t Deserve Credit for Everything We Know’, against a series of objections.
I begin by explicating DCVK in order to demonstrate how it yields plausible results, insofar as it excludes the epistemic-luck, in instances of Gettier-cases, as being counted as instances of knowledge. I then present Lackey’s argument, explaining how her counter-example of testimonial knowledge successfully falsifies DCVK. And finally, I defend the success of Lackey’s argument against the following three objections, which attempt to salvage DCVK: (A) weakening credit-theory; (B) a testimonial specific cognitive-faculty (Greco, 2010); and (C), denial of Lackey’s testimony-case as an instance of knowledge (Riggs, 2009). I then conclude that insofar as these three objections fail to yield plausible results, they fail to salvage DCVK, and thus Lackey’s argument against DCVK remains a successful one. What once motivated a Virtue Epistemology as formulated by DCVK therefore has no defensible grounds.
Section 1: Motivating DCVK
Here I begin with an outline of DCVK, and its purported rationale of excluding Gettier-cases. The DCVK intends to prevent the misattribution of knowledge in instances of epistemic-luck, as quintessentially exemplified in Gettier-cases. To circumnavigate such instances, true belief is considered knowledge only if: a subject’s acquisition of that belief is intellectually creditable to that subject’s relevant intellectual virtues. I shall illustrate exactly how this works by the following Gettier-case example:
There is a philosophy party in the university library. Professional philosophers are invited to give talks, and attending philosophy students are required to dress-up as their favourite philosophers. Unbeknownst to student Gary however, he arrives at the library and sees a student dressed as Professor Kelp, bringing him to believe Professor Kelp is in the library. Meanwhile, the real Professor Kelp happens to be giving a talk in the library, one floor above Gary.
While the Traditional-View-of-Knowledge (Plato, [2009]) purports that a justified true belief guarantees knowledge, and thus implausibly credits Gettier-case subjects such as Gary with knowledge, the DCVK does not. This is because according to the DCVK, the acquisition of a true beliefs only constitutes knowledge if it is attributable to the subject’s relevantly reliable intellectual virtues, which in turn, secures them intellectual credit (henceforth, credit).[1] Those who acquire their true beliefs via luck are, reasonably, not compatible with their being held creditable for the truth of their beliefs. Hence, according to DCVK, Gettier-case subjects, like Gary, do not possess knowledge because their true belief is not justified by the intellectual virtues required for such credit. The DCVK yields the right kind of result: whereby credit (i.e. the involvement of subject’s relevantly reliable intellectual virtues) is a necessary condition for knowledge, Gettier-cases are excluded as instances of knowledge. So far, so good. However, as I will proceed to demonstrate, Lackey's (2007) argument against DCVK demonstrates that credit is not always necessary for knowledge, as her counter-example of testimonial knowledge goes to show.
Section 2: Lackey's Argument
In this section, I demonstrate the structure of Lackey’s argument against DCVK via her testimonial knowledge counter-example, which demonstrates that credit is not necessary for knowledge and thus falsifies DCVK. I then explain how this argument generates implausible results for this view of knowledge. Her argument is structured as follows:
P1.
DCVK is true only if credit is a necessary condition for a subject S to know true belief p; such that S deserves credit for p only if S’s relevant virtues – i.e. reliable cognitive-faculties – are the most salient part of the total set of causal factors, that give rise to explaining how S came to believe the truth regarding p. [2]
P2.
Credit is not a necessary condition for S to know p – i.e. a subject S can know p without deserving intellectual credit.
P2.1 Counter-example:
P2 is the case where: there are some cases of testimonial knowledge in which S comes to know p without deserving credit; such as in instances in which S’s relevant reliable cognitive faculties are not the most salient part of the total set of causal factors, that give rise to explaining how S came to believe the truth regarding p. For example:
Tatiana wishes to obtain directions to the Science section at a multi-floor bookstore. She looks around, approaches the first adult passer-by that she sees, and asks how to get to her desired book section. The passer-by, who happens to be a regular who knows this Bookstore extraordinarily well, provides Tatiana with impeccable directions to the Science section by telling her that it is on the back left-corner of the third-floor from the elevator. Tatiana unhesitatingly forms the corresponding true belief. [3]
Conclusion: Therefore, DCVK is false.
The DCVK, prima facie, delivers on what it sets out to do: it is plausible insofar as it does not credit Gettier-case subjects (such as Gary) with knowledge because the most salient explanation of how Gettier-case subjects acquire true beliefs are accounted for by epistemic-luck – and not the subjects’ cognitive-faculties.However, in accepting that Tatiana has acquired knowledge of where the Science section is, Lackey’s counter-example says otherwise where it falsifies DCVK by demonstrating that credit is not necessary for knowledge. Thus, Lackey’s counter-example demonstrates that DCVK is implausible insofar as it is unable to attribute knowledge, via credit, to subjects in ordinarily plausible instances of knowledge-transfer via testimony. This is because the most salient explanation regarding how Tatiana acquires a true belief is that the testifier is a regular of this bookstore – and not via Tatiana’s relevant reliable cognitive-facilities (i.e.¬P2).
Section 3: Accessing the Damage of Lackey's Argument
As expected, there are objections to Lackey’s argument, which I will now go on to present. The first two objections (A)-(B) attempt to salvage DCVK by reformulating the underlying notion of credit, in order to help grant Tatiana the testimonial knowledge-transfer that she is initially denied by: (A) weakening the explanatory-salience credit-theory; or (B), proposing a reliable testimony-specific cognitive-faculty (Greco, 2010). And the final objection-(C) attempts to deny Lackey’s testimony case as a legitimate counter-example to DCVK by denying that Tatiana has acquired any genuine knowledge at all (Riggs, 2009). I will now demonstrate how all three objections fail to generate plausible results, beginning with objection-(A).
Objection-(A) proposes a weakened reformulation of DCVK’s explanatory-salience credit-theory (i.e. P1) as follows:
(P1*): S deserves intellectual credit for p only if S’s relevant reliable cognitive-faculties are at least an important necessary part of the total set of causal factors, that give rise to explaining how S came to believe the truth regarding p.
Under (P1*), Tatiana’s cognitive-facilities are at least an important necessary part in explaining how she acquired a true belief. Thus, Tatiana’s true belief is credited and therefore constitutes knowledge. At first glance, DCVK now generates plausible results in instances of testimonial knowledge; credit remains necessary for knowledge and is no longer vulnerable to Lackey’s argument. However, (P1*) yields implausible results in which, once again, subjects of Gettier-cases are now considered creditable instances of knowledge. For example, Gary’s true belief is creditable as knowledge because his cognitive-facilities (such as perception and memory) are at least an important necessary part in casually explaining his true belief – albeit wholly coming down to luck. Where such implausible misattributions of knowledge follow, objection-(A) fails.
Objection-(B) widens the scope of cognitive-faculties by which credit can be derived from, such that a hearer-of-testimony’s reliably relevant testimonial cognitive-faculties are posited. Such faculties “involve[s] reliable capacities for discriminating reliable sources of testimony from unreliable ones” (Greco, 2010: 81). Accordingly, this suggested testimonial-faculty purports to grant Tatiana the needed credit-condition (P1), demonstrating that credit is necessary for knowledge, therefore saving DCVK from Lackey’s argument. However, this also fails where it does not guarantee the required credit because Tatiana’s so-called testimonial-faculty is still not the most salient explanation regarding how she acquires her true belief. Rather, it is still the testifier’s knowledge via familiarity with the bookstore that most saliently explains why Tatiana acquires a true belief.
Furthermore, even if DCVK could overcome the failure of (A) – such that another formulation of credit-theory does not depend on explanatory-salience conditions, as Riggs (2009) attempts – implausible results remain. That is, ordinarily plausible instances of knowledge by testimony are still excluded as instances of knowledge for less sophisticated cognisors, who do not possess the requisite testimonial-faculties. For instance, suppose Tatiana was replaced by a four-year-old child, called Tatiana-Jr, who did not yet develop such testimonial-facilities. Tatiana-Jr would be excluded from acquiring knowledge in Lackey’s testimony case – despite the fact that children very plausibly do acquire knowledge via testimony. Thus objection-(B) fails to attribute knowledge where it is plausibly acquired.
Finally, objection-(C) attempts to deny that Tatiana has acquired any knowledge at all, thus rendering Lackey’s testimony counter-example impotent (Riggs, 2009: 209). However, this introduces further sceptical resistance to ordinarily plausible instances of knowledge-transfer via testimony, in which witnesses of testimony are instructed not take on a testifier’s beliefs so easily. This implies a reductivist position of testimonial knowledge;such that a hearer-of-testimony can acquire knowledge by testimony, however, only if that hearer has non-testimonial justifications for that testifiers’ true belief (Leonard, 2021). In accordance with DCVK, testimonials are then required to be justified by the first-hand knowledge of a hearer-of-testimony, so that the hearer’s first-hand, non-testimonial cognitive-facilities are the most salient explanation of their coming to believe the truth of a testifiers proposition. As a result, Tatiana can neither take on the testifier’s true belief, nor even any true beliefs she might encounter from her readings in the bookstores’ science section, until such truths are most saliently derived from her own, first-hand credit-earning facilities. Which even if possible, again, implausibly excludes less sophisticated cognisors (such as Tatiana-Jr) from acquiring knowledge via testimony. Objection-(C) thus fails for similar exclusionary reasons as objection-(B).
Concluding Remarks:
In summary, objection-(A)’s weakened credit-theory fails as it re-introduces the problem of epistemic-luck; and objections (B) and (C) both fail where they implausibly exclude knowledge-transfers via testimony to less sophisticated cognisors, albeit for different reasons. After having demonstrated and defended Lackey’s argument, I conclude that the endorsement of Virtue Epistemology, as DCVK, is itself not deserving of the credit with which it was once thought due: it cannot be endorsed as circumnavigating the implausible knowledge attributions of the Traditional View without making some of its own. [i]
Footnotes:
[1] This particular formulation is a modification from Greco’s (2003: 123) credit-theory.
[2] Intellectual virtues are specified as the relevant reliable cognitive-faculties (henceforth, cognitive-faculties) that are used to ascertain true beliefs.
[3] This counter-example is a reformulation of Lackey’s ‘Chicago-visitor’ case (2007; 352).
End-notes:
[i] Consult argument-matrix below for layout of results of objections (A)-(C) to Lackey, compared to plausible results.
References:
Gettier, E. (1963). "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" (PDF). Analysis. 23 (6): 121–23. doi:10.1093/analys/23.6.121.
Greco, J. (2003). “Knowledge as credit for true belief”. In M. DePaul & L. Zagzebski. Intellectual virtue: Perspectives from ethics and epistemology. 111-134 Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Greco, J. (2010). “The Nature of Knowledge”, In: Achieving Knowledge: A Virtue-Theoretic Account of Epistemic Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511844645.
Lackey, J. (2007)."Why We Don't Deserve Credit for Everything We Know." Synthese (Dordrecht) 158, no. 3 (2007): 345-361. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27734349.
Plato. Theaetetus. (2009). Trans. M. J. Levett. London: Hackett Publishers.
Riggs, W. (2009)."Two Problems of Easy Credit." Synthese (Dordrecht) 169, No. 1: 201 – 216m. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-008-9342-6
Sosa, Ernest. (1980). "The Raft and the Pyramid: Coherence versus Foundations in the Theory of Knowledge". Midwest Studies in Philosophy. 5: 3–25.
Sosa, Ernest. (2007). Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, Volume 1: A Virtue Epistemology, New York: Clarendon Press.
Leonard, N. "Epistemological Problems of Testimony", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/testimony-episprob/>. (last accessed: 21/11/22).[i]
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