Epistemic Situationism and Cognitive Ability

Turri, J. (2017). Epistemic situationism and cognitive ability. In M. Alfano & A. Fairweather (Eds.), Epistemic situationism (pp. 158–167). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Leading virtue epistemologists defend the view that knowledge must proceed from intellectual virtue and they understand virtues either as refined character traits cultivated by the agent over time through deliberate effort, or as reliable cognitive abilities. Philosophical situationists argue that results from empirical psychology should make us doubt that we have either sort of epistemic virtue, thereby discrediting virtue epistemology’s empirical adequacy. I evaluate this situationist challenge and outline a successor to virtue epistemology: abilism. Abilism delivers all the main benefits of virtue epistemology and is as empirically adequate as any theory in philosophy or the social sciences could hope to be.