Abstract
A number of virtue epistemologists endorse the following thesis: Knowledge is true belief resulting from intellectual virtue, where S’s true belief results from intellectual virtue just in case S believes the truth because S is intellectually virtuous. This thesis commits one to a sort of contextualism about knowledge attributions. This is because, in general, sentences of the form “X occurred because Y occurred” require a contextualist treatment. This sort of contextualism is contrasted with more familiar versions. It is argued that the position: (a) yields a better solution to the lottery problem, and (b) may be grounded in a more general theory of virtue and credit.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Cohen, S.: 1988, ‘How to Be a Fallibilist’, Philosophical Perspectives 2, 91–123.
Cohen, S.: forthcoming, ‘Contextualist Solutions to Epistemic Problems: Skepticism, Gettier and the Lottery’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
DePaul M. and Zagzebski L. (eds.): 2003, Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
DePaul, M.: forthcoming, ‘Character Traits, Virtues and Vices: Are there None?’, in Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Volume IX: Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Psychology.
DeRose, K.: 1995, ‘Solving the Skeptical Problem’, Philosophical Review 104, 1–52.
Engel, M. Jr.: 1992, ‘Is Epistemic Luck Compatible with Knowledge?’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy XXX,2, 59–75.
Feinberg, J.: 1970, Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of Responsibility, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Greco, J.: 1995, ‘A Second Paradox Concerning Responsibility and Luck’, Metaphilosophy 26, 81–96.
Greco, J.: 2003, ‘Knowledge as Credit for True Belief’, in DePaul M. et al. (eds.), Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Lehrer, K.: 2000, Theory of Knowledge, 2nd edn. Westview Press, Boulder, CO.
Nagel, T.: 1979, Mortal Questions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Riggs, W.: 2002, ‘Reliability and the Value of Knowledge’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64, 79–96.
Ross, L. and R. Nisbett (1991), The Person and the Situation, McGraw-Hill, New York.
Sosa, E.: 1991, Knowledge in Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Sosa, E.: 2000, ‘Skepticism and Contextualism’, Philosophical Issues 10, 1–18.
Walker, M.: 1991, ‘Moral Luck and the Virtues of Impure Agency’, Metaphilosophy 22, 14–27.
Zagzebski, L.: 1999, ‘What Is Knowledge?’, in Greco J. and Sosa E. (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 92–116.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Greco, J. (2004). A Different Sort of Contextualism. In: Brendel, E., Jäger, C. (eds) Contextualisms in Epistemology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3835-6_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3835-6_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-3181-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-3835-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)