Green Adam - The Social Contexts of Intellectual Virtue

This book reconceives virtue epistemology in light of the conviction that we are essentially social creatures. Virtue is normally thought of as something that allows individuals to accomplish things on their own. Although contemporary ethics is increasingly making room for an inherently social dimension in moral agency, intellectual virtues continue to be seen in terms of the computing potential of a brain taken by itself. Thinking in these terms, however, seriously misconstrues the way in which our individual flourishing hinges on our collective flourishing.

Greens account of virtue epistemology is based on the extended credit view, which conceives of knowledge as an achievement and broadens that focus to include team achievements in addition to individual ones. He argues that this view does a better job than alternatives of answering the many conceptual and empirical challenges for virtue epistemology that have been based on cases of testimony. The view also allows for a nuanced interaction with situationist psychology, dual-processing models in cognitive science, and the extended mind literature in the philosophy of mind. This framework provides a useful conceptual bridge between individual and group epistemology, and it has novel applications to the epistemology of disagreement, prejudice, and authority.

Adam Green is an assistant professor of philosophy at Azusa Pacific University. His work ranges over epistemology, the philosophy and cognitive science of religion, and philosophical psychology. His previous work on social epistemology has appeared in American Philosophical Quarterly, Synthese, Episteme, and Philosophical Explorations.

Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

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89The Social Contexts of Intellectual Virtue

Knowledge as a Team Achievement

Adam Green

First published 2017

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The right of Adam Green to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Names: Green, Adam, 1981 author.
Title: The social contexts of intellectual virtue : knowledge as a team
achievement / by Adam Green.
Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series:
Routledge studies in contemporary philosophy ; 89 | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016038389 | ISBN 9781138236356 (hardback :
alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Virtue epistemology. | VirtueSocial aspects.
Classification: LCC BD176 .G74 2016 | DDC 121dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038389

ISBN: 978-1-138-23635-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-30259-1 (ebk)

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To Monica

La bellezza chio vidi si trasmoda

non pur di l da noi, ma certo io credo

che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda.

(Dante, Paradiso XXX: 1921)

In a book on social dependence and virtue, it is only fitting to include a full list of those from whom I have benefited over the years this project has developed and to acknowledge that whatever defects there may be in these pages, they have been in spite of some very generous and able assistance. Unfortunately, my list will be very imperfect.

Those who through either comments on the text or conversation have improved and refined the work done here include: Charity Anderson, Marco Benasso, Matthew Benton, Katherine Dormandy, Julien Dutant, Christian Feldbacher, Georg Gasser, Sanford Goldberg, John Greco, Johannes Groessl, Thomas Grundmann, Joachim Horvath, Christoph Jaeger, Jens Kipper, Lukas Kraus, Winfried Loeffler, Anne Sophie Meincke, Teri Merrick, Bruno Neiderbacher, Dennis Okholm, Josef Quitterer, Joshua Rasmussen, Jonathan Reibsamen, Anna Rosenbaum, Edmund Runggaldier, Kent Staley, Eleonore Stump, Patrick Todd, Rico Vitz, Woldai Wagner, Steve Wilkens, Daniel Wehinger, Lars Weisbrod, David Woodruff, Linda Zagzebski as well as a couple of exceptionally generous and helpful referees. For hosting talks related to what would become this project, I would also like to thank audiences at the University of Amsterdam, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Bentley University, Bogazici Unviersity, the University of Cologne, the University of Innsbruck, the University of Nancy, and Western Washington University.

I would like to thank Andrew Beck, Andrew Weckenmann, and their team at Routledge for their invaluable assistance in shepherding this manuscript to publication.

Material from the following four essays reappears in chapters of this book. All is reprinted with permission.

feature material drawn from Extending the Credit Theory of Knowledge. Philosophical Explorations 15 (2012): 135146.

is based on Deficient Testimony Is Deficient Teamwork. Episteme 11 (2014): 213227.

is largely comprised of Monitoring, Testimony, and a Challenge from Social Psychology. American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2014): 2738.

Finally, contains Evaluating Distributed Cognition. Synthese 191 (2014): 7995.

The original research for this book was conducted as part of a postdoctoral research fellowship through the Analytic Theology project hosted by the University of Innsbruck. I am wowed by the generosity of the selection committee for awarding the St Lewis candidate a fellowship despite my John Wayne accented Kinder-Deutsch. The postdoc was funded by the Templeton Foundation to whom I am likewise deeply indebted. The opinions expressed in this book are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Templeton Foundation.