Epistemic virtue

In Byron Willston’s essay, Epistemic Virtue and the Ecological Crisis, Williston goes into Joel Kovel’s ideas of what it takes to get ahead in a capitalist society: “To succeed in the marketplace and to rise to the top, one needs a hard, cold, calculating mentality, the ability to sell oneself, and a hefty dose of the will to power. None of these traits is at all correlated with ecological sensibility or caring, and all are induced by the same force field that shapes investment decisions.” (Kovel, quoted in Williston, p. 250;252). Kovel’s ideal businessman is one that is always looking for self-serving deeds, and one’s traits are epistemic vices. The person must be willfully ignorant, arrogant, reckless, and timid when it comes to economic…

Rich or poor, male or female, everyone was only concerned with his or her own desires during the Progressive Era, and although this may be considered a negative attribute, it was not in all cases A rich, powerful man in this time period was exceptionally egocentric; however, it is an easy misconception that only these men that this trait. Egocentrism was not only for the rich because the poor’s mentality was self-centered as well. Their social status may have been different, but they thought…

My goal in this paper is to analyze compassion, selfishness, and gullibility in an epistemic context. Specifically, how one’s level of compassion influence how they weigh evidence and knowledge – and how being compassionate, at least intellectually, can be considered an important epistemic virtue. Compassion, outside of an epistemic context, is generally viewed as a desirable character trait. I say generally, because no two individuals have exactly the same sense of what the word compassion…

A Comparison of Medina and Nietzsche’s Philosophy The philosophies of Jose Medina and Friedrich Nietzsche differ in the sense that Medina focuses on the epistemic injustice while Nietzsche focuses on deconstructing morality. Medina explores injustice in society with the goal of finding factors that contribute to its existence. In essence, the philosopher believes morality to be a noble human virtue, and a factor that can be used to eliminate social injustices. However, due to social beliefs that…

VI. The Wider Picture Institutional Inaction, Bullshit, and Lying do not exist in a vacuum. Frustratingly, their effects are have ramifications for our understanding of truth far outside of the immediate 'truth value of X'. Indeed, when we make epistemic missteps, it can affect our entire worldview, degrade the assurances we have of knowledge, and provoke disaster far down the line. William Clifford showed us the danger of a boat captain ignoring good epistemic virtues, but what of an entire…

ourselves with knowledge is crucial to everyone and therefore, must be properly understood by all. The puzzle of self-knowledge could be solved by disciplining our motivations and maxims to choose actions that uphold duty which are in accordance with virtue. Owen Ware begins his exposition of Kant’s the duty of self-knowledge by citing Kant’s writings that make the claim that we are unable to know our dispositions. In actual fact it is absolutely impossible for experience to establish with…

If we accept that most intellectual virtues have truth as their ultimate end; then it follows that our disposition in arriving at true knowledge is truth-driven. Zagzebski defines knowledge as, “cognitive contact with reality arising out of acts of intellectual virtue.” Arriving to moral and intellectual virtues is based on circumstance and motivation. Virtues are properties that add to the characteristics of a person. Virtuous motivation that results with an act can result from epistemic…

This article talks about a man who was convicted of raping and kidnapping two young girls, ages 14 and 11. I believe that this story displays loss of innocence when talking about the young girls. Rape is a crime that takes a personal toll on its victims. It limits the amount of trust the person is able to have, and keeps them living in constant fear. Children are able to function, knowing that adults are safe, and trustworthy. So when someone defies that trust is makes it hard to respect adults…

the play of Othello. There is also now justification for attempting to explain the play as in the main the tragedy of the Moor in his new home in Venice. In our attempt to find the explanation of the tragedy in the hero, as assigned by the dramatist, we seem forced to say that now at last, when a crisis comes upon him, the great Moorish general, transplanted from the wilds of his African or Spanish home into the cultured and refined life of Venice, finds himself unable to bear honorably all the…

I was faced with an ethical dilemma that I will never forget. I was 11-years old, and my best friend Hollie and I wanted to go out to eat, so we begged my parents to take us to McDonalds. After talking my parent into taking us, we talked them into letting us stay there to eat so we could play on the outdoor playground. While we were playing I happened to find a wallet in the ball pit with One-hundred dollars in it. I could not believe I found One-hundred dollars. No one else was playing with us,…