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The guiding question of this chapter is whether the concept of intellectual virtue merits a central and fundamental role within traditional epistemology. It is argued, first, that the answer to this question depends on whether the concept of intellectual virtue merits a primary role in an analysis of knowledge. The rest of the chapter is an inquiry into the plausibility of a virtue‐based account of knowledge. The central focus is Linda's Zagzebski's (1996) account, according to which knowledge is (roughly) true belief arising from intellectually virtuous motives and actions. It is argued that Zagzebski's conditions for knowledge are neither necessary nor sufficient, and that the problems with her analysis are likely to plague any virtue‐based analysis of knowledge. It is concluded that the concept of intellectual virtue does not merit a central or fundamental role in traditional epistemology and thus that the stronger version of conservative character‐based virtue epistemology fails.

This chapter explores the problem of what makes knowledge more valuable than mere true belief. Otherwise known as the value problem, it distinguishes four ways a belief can possess value by evaluating its relation to truth: (i) a belief can have value because truth is its consequence; (ii) a belief can have teleological value in the Aristotelian sense — that is, the kind of value attributable to that which is a necessary component of a good natural end; (iii) assuming true beliefs are good, a belief can be valuable in that truth is its end in the sense of an aim; and (iv) a belief can be good in virtue of arising from a good motive — namely, valuing truth or disvaluing falsehood. Ultimately, the fourth way is superior to the first three because a belief that is motivated by valuing truth has the kind of value which makes knowledge better than mere true believing.

The personal worth conception of intellectual virtue introduced and defended in Chapter 6 is contrasted with five other accounts of intellectual or moral virtue in the literature. The accounts of Thomas Hurka (2002) and Robert Adams (2007) are shown to have certain significant similarities to a personal worth account, but also to have certain defects that are not shared by this account. The personal worth account is then contrasted with a naturalistic account of intellectual virtue inspired by Rosalind Hursthouse's (1999) theory of moral virtue, Julia Driver's (2000) consequentialist account of intellectual virtue, and Linda Zagzebski's (1996) motivational account of intellectual virtue. Substantive objections are raised against each of these conceptions. The result is a further defense of the personal worth conception of intellectual virtue.

In Epistemic Authority, Linda Zagzebski argues that members of long-standing religious communities are rationally justified in deferring to the authority of their tradition when asserting certain beliefs or deciding on a course of action. Deferential trust in religious authority, on her account, is a proper expression of a member’s intellectual humility. In this chapter, I argue that Zagzebski has not sufficiently considered the fact that religious traditions may be vehicles of epistemic oppression. Christian communities have a history of hermeneutically marginalizing those whose bodies and gender identities deviate from the so-called ‘able-bodied’ male type. Drawing on the work of Kristie Dotson, Miranda Fricker, and Hermann Cohen, I show that wholesale deference to traditional religious authority would merely perpetuate this marginalization and the ensuing epistemic oppressions. On my account, non-deference to some traditionally authorized beliefs is not indicative of member’s arrogance, but rather an attempt to cultivate the virtue of epistemic justice.

This chapter extends the abductive argument by revealing the inadequacy of naturalistic and secular ethical theories to accommodate intuitions about morality’s demand for radical transformation and, ultimately, moral perfection. Treatment of symptoms of our moral malady isn’t enough to deal with the root of the problem. Using John Hare’s notion of the “moral gap,” the chapter argues that secular ethical theories seem inevitably saddled with an unbridgeable gap between how human beings are and how they ought to be instead. Morality, on a Kantian analysis, requires a revolution of the will, radical transformation, becoming not just better people but new people. Secular theories tend to reduce the moral demand, exaggerate human capacities, or construct a secular substitute for divine assistance to undergo moral transformation. Among secular theories considered are utilitarianism and feminist ethics, and the end of the chapter considers an argument by Linda Zagzebski concerning Humean skepticism and the question of whether it’s rational to try to be moral in the light of our inevitable failures.

This chapter provides a detailed and epistemologically informed defense of the intrinsic value of scientific knowledge and understanding. It responds to Lars Bergström’s criticisms of the value of scientific knowledge. It then devises a naturalistic approach to intrinsic value that is used to argue that true belief (and, in turn, knowledge) is intrinsically valuable because true beliefs are valued for their own sake, and such acts of valuation help to explain the overall scientific worldview. It next considers and rejects Duncan Pritchard’s attempt to show that understanding is more epistemically valuable than true belief, arguing that Pritchard’s view of understanding as a cognitive achievement fails to include anything of epistemic value other than the epistemic value of the true beliefs which are compresent with understanding. Finally, it uses virtue-theoretic approaches to epistemic value to generate prima facie obligations to acquire scientific knowledge and understanding.

What holds the universe together? Is its causal unity intrinsically real; and if so, how can that be? Section 10.1 of this chapter looks at how for the idealist version of an ontology of intrinsic reality (as envisaged in Chapter 6), the relevant relations are among conscious states and events; and there must be a single subject of all the causes and all the effects involved—in a word, God. Section 10.2 offers an occasionalist theory about the nature of the causal connection among those conscious states and events. Malebranche’s version of occasionalism is explored in detail and found, surprisingly, not to be deterministic with regard to the most fundamental choices between good and bad, though deterministic about everything else including the consequences of those choices. But the basic idea of occasional causation is compatible with complete causal determination of everything by God. Section 10.3 discusses the question whether one opts for a form of pantheism in saying what was said in section 10.1 about God’s single-subjecthood. The discussion surveys substantively related but interestingly diverse views on that and similar topics, and concludes that the most important key to the central issue is that (as argued in Chapter 9) the concept of person or self is a concept of social relations and meanings, and not just an ontological concept. I am a subject and owner of my experiences only; God is a subject and owner of all experience. I am responsible for some things, but God is responsible for everything. That can be called panentheism.

Chapter 11 elaborates on and defends the account of knowledge—the Kantian Account—that follows from a right reasons account of the nature of well properties. Knowledge, it is argued, is a special case of a well property—one which requires believing well along both objective and subjective dimensions. This, it is argued, makes knowledge involve a kind of match between internal and external components that explains why it is prime and why it has distinctive explanatory power, as argued by Williamson. It explains why defeaters for knowledge come in objective and subjective pairs—even according to pragmatic encroachers. It explains where earlier generations of defeasibility accounts of knowledge went wrong, by adopting subjunctive rather than categorical accounts of the sufficiency of reasons, and by insufficiently appreciating the generality of the relationship between reasons and their weight. And it explains how to avoid Linda Zagzebski’s diagnosis of the inevitability of Gettier cases.

A. C. Ewing worked on moral goodness; Austin Farrer focused on the value and dignity of persons; George Mavrodes underscored the odd nature of binding moral duties in a naturalistic world. Robert Adams did work in theistic ethics that produced innovative variants of the moral argument; his wife, Marilyn Adams, demonstrated how God’s incommensurable goodness can address versions of the problem of evil. Linda Zagzebski identified three ways we need moral confidence. C. Stephen Evans defended divine command theory and a natural signs approach to apologetics. John Hare did landmark work on moral arguments. William Lane Craig used the moral argument to powerful effect in books and debates. C. Stephen Layman used the overriding reason thesis and conditional thesis in his variant of the argument. Scott Smith, Mark Linville, Angus Menuge, and Angus Ritchie have offered brilliant epistemic moral arguments. Paul Copan has used history to augment the moral argument.