PHIL 350A: Study Questions for Week #9

1. What is virtue epistemology?

2. What is virtue reliabilism? Explain the analogy to virtue utilitarianism.

3. According to virtue reliabilism, what are intellectual virtues? Explain and give examples.

4. Why is virtue reliabilism regarded as an improvement over simple reliabilism as an account of epistemic justification?

5. According to Sosa's virtue perspectivism, what is an intellectual virtue? Why does he regard this account as an improvement over virtue reliabilism?

6. A Chicken-Egg Problem: Which have logical priority for understanding epistemic justification, virtues or principles? (Should we understand justification in terms of the intellectual virtues or should we understand the intellectual virtues in terms of justification)?

7. Is virtue epistemology better understood as an account of epistemic justification or as a potential replacement for epistemic justification in the analysis of knowledge?