EPISTEMIC CORRUPTION AND EDUCATION

While virtue epistemologists agree that knowledge consists in having beliefs appropriately formed in accordance with epistemic virtue, they disagree regarding what constitutes an epistemic virtue. Some take epistemic virtue to be a character trait. Others take epistemic virtues to be stable naturalistic dispositions which reliably produce true beliefs. There are also other virtue epistemologists who combine character traits and stable naturalistic dispositions into a “mixed” theory. All three focus exclusively on epistemic virtues, traits that lead cognizers to truth. But, the topic of epistemic vice is typically ignored. In this paper after arguing for the importance of accounting for epistemic vice, I consider dual systems theory, drawing a parallel with Ernest Sosa’s distinction between two kinds of knowledge. I argue that information supporting dual systems theory helps explain two different kinds of epistemic vice. After pointing out important advantages for including both kinds of vice in virtue epistemology and showing how virtue epistemologies can be modified to accommodate epistemic vice, I conclude by suggesting that consideration of epistemic vice favors mixed theories of virtue epistemology.

While honesty is clearly a virtue of some educational as well as moral significance, its virtue‐ethical status is far from clear. In this essay, following some discussion of latter‐day virtue ethics and virtue epistemology, David Carr argues that honesty exhibits key features of both moral and epistemic virtue, and, more precisely, that honesty as a virtue might best be understood as the epistemic component of Aristotelian practical wisdom. In the wake of arguments to be found in Plato's Laws, as well as in those of more modern philosophers such as Jean‐Jacques Rousseau and Iris Murdoch, Carr then traces the main roots of moral dishonesty to various forms of vain and self‐delusive ego attachment. In this light, he argues in the final section of the essay that literature and the arts may provide a powerful educational antidote to such attachment.

Lawyer Competence: Epistemic Virtues in Legal Ethics This article advances a virtue epistemological account of lawyer competence. It analyses how epistemic virtues (such as curiosity, courage, temperance, humility, justice, and generosity) illuminate and structure key principles of the legal profession. Focusing on the Code of Conduct for European Lawyers and the Charter of Core Principles of the Council of Bars & Law Societies of Europe, the article reconstructs their provisions through the lens of virtue epistemology, showing how they embed commitments to epistemic virtue. It argues that this framework both clarifies the normative foundations of professional competence and provides practical guidance for strengthening reliability, trustworthiness, and lawyers’ role in the fair administration of justice.

AI technologies, particularly deep neural networks and machine learning models, have become increasingly integrated into knowledge production across diverse scientific domains, raising critical concerns about explainability and interpretability. Different disciplines and contexts require fundamentally different types of explanations, making universal approaches to explainable AI inadequate. Virtue epistemology offers a promising framework for addressing these challenges by focusing on how AI systems cultivate or undermine epistemic virtues within specific knowledge communities. Rather than seeking explanations in abstract terms, virtue epistemology emphasizes epistemic abilities and character traits as they manifest within particular epistemic cultures. Case studies from social science, neuroscience, medicine, and the humanities reveal that meaningful progress in explainable AI requires aligning computational reasoning with the cultivation of epistemic virtues and the mitigation of epistemic vices that characterize each scientific community’s specialized knowledge practices and norms.

This chapter will provide concrete examples of a number of moral and epistemic virtues and show how they can help people in general to live better lives in the modern society. By ‘better’ it should be noted that I mean both in the sense they increase their own well-being and contribute to a broader improvement of society. The account provided here draws on scientific research into the ways in which people assimilate information and form their beliefs (as explained and exemplified in Chap. 3), as well as virtue theory. Further to this, the field of ‘Virtue Epistemology’ is introduced. While it is a relatively young field much interesting and, for the purposes here, highly applicable research has already been carried out.KeywordsVirtue EthicPractical WisdomNicomachean EthicIntellectual VirtueEpistemic VirtueThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

I defend the view that charity in interpretation is both an epistemic and a moral virtue. In the first part, I examine Donald Davidson’s version of his principle of charity and question his ascription of beliefs by raising a phenomenological objection: beliefs themselves, before being ascribed, need to be interpreted when interpreters and the subjects they try to understand do not share the same cultural and historical background. In the second section, I examine the notion of epistemic virtue as discussed in virtue epistemology and question whether an epistemic virtue can be completely separated from a moral virtue. In the third section, I show how Gregory the Great, Father of the Church and Pope in the 6th century, understands the virtue of charity in interpretation not as a motivation (in a causal process of interpretation, as in virtue epistemology) but as an attraction to the good (in a teleological process) so that the interpreter is not only a technician producing an interpretation (following a “principle” of charity, as in Davidson) but a moral agent acting in a community.

How navigation systems transform epistemic virtues: Knowledge, issues and solutions

In this paper I argue that virtue ethics should be understood as a form of ethics which integrates various domains of the practical in relation to which virtues are excellences. To argue this it is necessary to distinguish two senses of the “moral”: the broad sense which integrates the domains of the practical and a narrow classificatory sense. Virtue ethics, understood as above, believes that all genuine virtue should be understood as what I call virtues proper. To possess a virtue proper (such as an excellent disposition of open-mindedness, an epistemic virtue) is to possess a disposition of overall excellence in relation to the sphere or field of the virtue (being open to the opinions of others). Overall excellence in turn involves excellence in integrating to a sufficient degree, standards of excellence in all relevant practical domains. Epistemic virtues, sporting virtues, moral virtues, and so on are all virtues proper. In particular it is impossible for an epistemic virtue to be a moral (narrow sense) vice.

Many machine learning (ML) systems operate as blackboxes and offer limited insight into their internal mechanisms. This opacity creates tension between two crucial objectives optimizing technical performance and fulfilling ethical obligations for transparency. As this tension intensifies, especially in domains that often require justifiable decisions, this paper hopes to reconcile the engineering drive toward higher accuracy and reliability with epistemic virtues emphasizing honesty, accountability, and intellectual rigor. Drawing on philosophical theories of explanation and virtue epistemology, this paper also reviews various principles that embed ethical considerations into ML development and deployment processes. This study adopts a theoretical analysis to reveal how certain epistemic virtues (as exemplified by honesty, thoroughness, clarity, and open-mindedness) can guide ML design choices. In addition, we outline criteria for a balanced framework and policies that honor ethical demands. Finally, we stress the practical relevance of virtue-based approaches to knowledge production in modern technology for ethicists and epistemologists.

Simplicity was recently described in the philosophy of science as “perhaps the most controversial theoretical virtue” (Schindler 2018). It has been also argued that contrary to the standard view, simplicity is not merely a pragmatic virtue but also an epistemic one. Virtue epistemologists are also interested in epistemic virtues, but simplicity is usually absent in their discussions. This paper adduces several contemporary approaches to simplicity showing that in philosophy and in psychology it can be considered either as a virtue or as a vice. The paper then refers to the thought of Thomas Aquinas as an example of a premodern understanding of the virtue simplicity and suggests that his notion of simplicity as a virtue might be developed today within virtue epistemology into an interesting complement to this “perhaps the most controversial theoretical virtue” (Schindler 2018) known from contemporary philosophy.

This paper applies a virtue epistemology approach to using the Internet, as to improve our information-seeking behaviours. Virtue epistemology focusses on the cognitive character of agents and is less concerned with the nature of truth and epistemic justification as compared to traditional analytic epistemology. Due to this focus on cognitive character and agency, it is a fruitful but underexplored approach to using the Internet in an epistemically desirable way. Thus, the central question in this paper is: How to use the Internet in an epistemically virtuous way? Using the work of Jason Baehr, it starts by outlining nine intellectual or epistemic virtues: curiosity, intellectual autonomy, intellectual humility, attentiveness, intellectual carefulness, intellectual thoroughness, open-mindedness, intellectual courage and intellectual tenacity. It then explores how we should deploy these virtues and avoid the corresponding vices when interacting with the Internet, particularly search engines. Whilst an epistemically virtuous use of the Internet will not guarantee that one will acquire true beliefs, understanding or even knowledge, it will strongly improve one’s information-seeking behaviours. The paper ends with arguing that teaching and assessing online intellectual virtues should be part of school and university curricula, perhaps embedded in critical thinking courses, or even better, as individual units.

At the intersection of social and virtue epistemology lies the important, yet so far entirely neglected, project of articulating the social dimensions of epistemic virtues. Perhaps the most obvious way in which epistemic virtues might be social is that they may be possessed by social collectives. We often speak of groups as if they could instantiate epistemic virtues. It is tempting to think of these expressions as ascribing virtues not to the groups themselves, but to their members. Adapting Margaret Gilbert’s arguments against individualist accounts of collective beliefs, I show that individualist accounts of group virtues are either too weak or too strong. I then formulate a non‐individualist account modeled after Gilbert’s influential account of collective beliefs. A crucial disanalogy between collective traits and beliefs, I argue, makes the success of this model unlikely. I conclude with some questions with which the future work on collective epistemic virtues should engage.

The development of national character can be done through the development of one's individual character. However, because humans live in a certain social and cultural environment, the development of a person's individual character can only be done in the relevant social and cultural environment. That is, the development of culture and character can be carried out in an educational process that does not release students from the social environment, community culture, and national culture. The research used is ex post facto, where the researcher connects causes and effects that are not manipulated or treated (designed and implemented) by the researcher. PAI learning is significantly related to the character of students, because the value of p = 0.000 is smaller than 5%. The correlation criterion is very strong (ry1.2 = 0.886). Thus, school culture and PAI learning are related either independently or not with the character of the students of SMPIT Rahmaniyah Cibinong Bogor. The most dominant variable influencing the student's character is the PAI learning variable. Based on the hypothesis test, it was concluded that school culture and PAI learning together had a positive effect on the character of junior high school students. There is a positive influence between school culture and PAI learning with student character, this shows that student character will increase if school culture and PAI learning at SMPIT Rahmaniyah Cibinong Bogor.

Alessandra Tanesini does superb work in exploring that second perspective through her work on epistemic vices, a guiding theme of which is that we need a vice epistemology alongside a virtue epistemology and an anti-social epistemology to complement our social epistemology. Looked at from one perspective, there is a story to tell about epistemic virtues, thinking and exploring, and the cooperative pursuit of truth, knowledge and understanding through systems of enquiry. Looked at from another perspective, it is a story of epistemic vices, obstruction and willed ignorance, and the individual and collective determination to turn away from epistemic goods. In the phenomenological tradition, empathy is understood, not as simulation, but as a distinctive kind of intentional state – as an experience of one’s own that presents someone else’s experiences as someone else’s. Empathising with someone isn’t a matter of simulating or modelling their experiences.

We evaluate a common reasoning strategy used in community ecology and comparative psychology for selecting between competing hypotheses. This strategy labels one hypothesis as a “null” on the grounds of its simplicity and epistemically privileges it as accepted until rejected. We argue that this strategy is unjustified. The asymmetrical treatment of statistical null hypotheses is justified through the experimental and mathematical contexts in which they are used, but these contexts are missing in the case of the “pseudo-null hypotheses” found in our case studies. Moreover, statistical nulls are often not epistemically privileged in practice over their alternatives because failing to reject the null is usually a negative result about the alternative, experimental hypothesis. Scientists should eschew the appeal to pseudo-nulls. It is a rhetorical strategy that glosses over a commitment to valuing simplicity over other epistemic virtues in the name of good scientific and statistical methodology.