Review of Fairweather and Montemayor, Knowledge, Dexterity, and Attention [Book Review]

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 201712 (2017)
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Abstract

In common with many other "virtue epistemologists," Abrol Fairweather and Carlos Montemayor contend that in order to count as knowledge, a mental state must be the product of truth-apt dispositions. I question their theoretical motivations. First, I note that unlike virtue ethics, affect is irrelevant to knowledge. A generous act is arguably better if it is performed warm-heartedly, but a belief is no more creditable if it is performed with the right affect. Second, I argue that non-discursive skills are better cases for virtue epistemologists than cognitive reliability—but because it is hard to know how skills work in individual instances of belief-formation, they cannot figure in the accreditation of knowledge. Finally, I argue that the oughts that attend inquiry (e.g., "you ought to look into this carefully") come from outside the context of inquiry.

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Mohan Matthen
University of Toronto, Mississauga

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References found in this work

Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.
Theorizing about the epistemic.Stewart Cohen - 2016 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (7-8):839-857.
Knowledge and its Limits. [REVIEW]L. Horsten - 2000 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 64 (1):200-201.

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