Virtue Epistemology: Its Nature, Origin and Approaches

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Qom

Abstract

Virtue epistemology is a class of recent approaches to epistemology
that, in contrast with analytic epistemology, focuses on epistemic
evaluation of persons’ properties, rather than properties of beliefs.
This paper seeks to explain the nature of virtue epistemology as well
as its main approaches. Explaining the nature of epistemic virtue as a
reliable belief-forming faculty and the character traits led to two
approaches in virtue epistemology: reliabilism and responsibilism.
Since the nature of virtue epistemology is better understood according
to the nature of epistemic virtue, this element will be focused more
than the others. This paper first addresses the origin of virtue
epistemology and, finally, after referring to some critiques, including
divergent accounts of epistemic virtue, insists that understanding the
nature, importance and complication of virtue epistemology requires a
more comprehensive, flexible and reasonable definition of epistemic
virtue.

Keywords


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