Abstract
This chapter aims at an analysis of the Qur’ānic concept of ignorance in the light contemporary virtue epistemology with its focus on intellectual virtues. In Sect. 2.1 below I give a brief set of introductory remarks about the contemporary emergence of virtue epistemology and the directions in which it is evolving. Sosa’s seminal work for bridging the divide between foundationalism and coherentism through the concept of intellectual virtue is noted along with early work done by Montmarquet and Code on intellectual responsibility and conscientiousness. Sosa’s reliabilist and Zagzebsky’s responsibilist positions are highlighted. This overview sets the stage for casting a careful look in Sect. 2.2 at all the verses of the Qur’ān that talk about remediable blameworthy ignorance in humans with the purpose of deriving from them what the Qur’ān takes to be central epistemic virtues. The analysis brings out various intellectual virtues that mostly seem to be forms of epistemic conscientiousness.
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- 1.
Unless mentioned otherwise all translations of Qur’ān verses discussed in this book are from the Quranic Arabic Corpus .
- 2.
For a discussion of different kinds of ignorance , including remediable blameworthy ignorance, as understood by Plato, see the first chapter of K.M. Vogt (2012). I use the term here in a more general sense to refer to any form of ignorance that results from the failure of an epistemic agent to take correct epistemic action in a given situation.
- 3.
An early formulation of this definition of knowledge can be found in Ayer (1957, 31–33).
- 4.
Epistemic justification is a hotly debated issue and philosophical positions on the subject range from various forms of foundationalism through coherentism and foundheretism (mixture of foundationalism and coherentism proposed by Susan Haack) to infinitism , contextualism and reliabilism etc. For a discussion of these positions, see Fumerton (2005).
- 5.
See Robert Lockie ’s (2008, 170) discussion of this relationship between internalism /externalism and deontology / consequentialism distinctions.
- 6.
For an overview of developments in epistemology since the mid-1970s see Pryor (2001, 95–124). Although this article gives a survey of developments since the mid-1980s, it briefly notes the mid-1970s developments in the introduction.
- 7.
Roughly contextualism is the view that truth of our knowledge -ascriptions is context-dependent. Depending on the context the same ascription of knowledge to a person might be true in one situation and false in another. For example, such a view can be found, among other writers, in the work of David Lewis (1996) and Keith DeRose (1992, 1999). Relevant alternative theories, developed by Dretske and Goldman in the 1970s, argue that knowing p does not require one to have evidence to rule out irrelevant alternatives to p. Foundationalism contends that justification for our beliefs ultimately rests upon certain other beliefs, called “basic beliefs,” that are themselves immediately justified. Traditionally foundationalism asked for these foundational beliefs to be infallible or indubitable. More modest contemporary approaches allow for fallible or revisable perceptual beliefs as basic in this sense. For modest foundationalist views see Pryor (2001).
- 8.
- 9.
For example, ẓannā is translated as “they believe” in the Quranic Dictionary at http://corpus.quran.com/ wordbyword.jsp?chapter=2&verse=230#(2:230:20).
- 10.
Here I am following Gottlob Frege ’s basic claim in ontology wherein there are only two kinds of entities, i.e., concepts and objects. In Frege’s terminology objects are “saturated” entities while concepts are “unsaturated.” In predicative statements, concepts join with objects to make a complete whole. In Frege’s language, objects are said to fall under concepts. For example, in “snow is white” the object “snow” is claimed to fall under the concept “whiteness.” The result in this case is a true statement. If we were to say “snow is hot,” the result would be a false statement. For details of his position see Frege (1951, 168–80).
- 11.
This is Muhammad Sarwar’s translation with slight emendation by me toward the end.
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Adeel, M.A. (2019). From Ignorance to Knowledge : Deriving Epistemic Virtues from the Qur’ānic Conception of Ignorance. In: Epistemology of the Quran. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17558-0_2
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