Epistemic Situationism: Reinterpretation And Reply

Conventional virtue epistemology,represented by Sosa,Geoco and Zegzebski,formed in 1980s by dealing with the central problems in traditional epistemology.Additionally,the supporters of virtue epistemology claimed that this theory could also report the truth of our actual cognitive condition and believed this would be demonstrated by further psychological investigation.Nevertheless,the data from psychological experiments not only unfit the hypothesis given by virtue epistemology,but also rise challenge to it.The situationist challenge,the most significant challenge to conventional virtue epistemology from a psychological concern,points out the fact that the intellectual value is extremely rare among our actual cognitive condition.We must revise the conventional theory to fit those data or insist the conventional theory and then heading a sceptical crisis.Many philosophers have replied this challenge.In the paper,I divide those replies into two categories.The gentle replies tried to clear up the contradiction by reinterpreting the conventional theory,while losing the sight of the genuine problems proposed by the situationist challenge.In comparison,the radical replies replaced the definition of knowledge raised by conventional theory by a new one,while falling into some ancient epistemic problems virtue epistemology had already solved.Considering both categories of these replies are unsatisfactory,I'll present another reply to the situationist challenge.Based on the gentle replies,I'll point out the sceptical crisis is only a fallacy.Besides,with the help of a philosophical experiments,the connection of knowledge and virtue could be supported by the empirical intuition.We may have only a little knowledge through the act of perfect intellectual virtue,but we generally judge and evaluate the cognitive condition by intellectual virtue.This could prevent the empirical adequacy of conventional virtue epistemology in a normative instead of a factual way.