Is Knowledge A True Belief Arising Out Of Competence Virtue Or Character Virtue?

There are various discussions about the problem of the nature of knowledge since the Gettier’s problem has proposed.But,whatever the internalism and externalism both cannot eliminate the intervention of “epistemic luck” by excluding the independence between the elements about “justification” and “truth”.During the past 30 years,virtue epistemology has had a great influence,it mainly paid attention to the “justifier” rather than “justification”,and its theoretical claim was that we can eliminate the “epistemic luck” by the use of intellectual virtue that is the nature of the“justifier”.From my research,it can conclude that: knowledge is a true belief arises out of intellectual virtue.Specifically,knowledge is a true belief arises out of competence virtue.I mainly talk about four chapters.Chapter 1,introduction.I mainly introduce what is the Gettier’s problem and its causes,and the relevant problems about the concept of intellectual virtue.For Zagzebski’s enlightening view,I point out the immediate reason is “double luck” and the fundamental reason is the independence between the elements about justification and truth why the Gettier’s problem appears.Virtue epistemologists argue that intellectual virtue play a critical role for the resulting true belief,and it can remove this independence.Virtue epistemology was divided into different camps according to the relation to the concept of Aristotelian virtue: virtue reliabilist view of virtue are more closer to the Aristotelian intellectual virtues and focus on broad competence virtues,and virtue responsibilist virtue concepts have significant connection with the Aristotelian moral virtues and their explanations about cognitive normativity built on the character virtues that involve agential responsibility.Competence Virtues include perception,memory,introspection,reason and so on;character virtues are open-mindedness,fair-mindedness,intellectually humility,intellectually courage...In Chapter 2 and Chapter 3,I mainly introduce the central ideas and advantages and disadvantages of the problem of the nature of knowledge within two kinds ofvirtue epistemology—virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism.The former asserts knowledge is true belief arises out of competence virtue;the latter affirms knowledge is true belief arises out of character virtue.Their strategy that solves the Gettier’s problem is “because” relation or “entail” relation: not only is there an explanatory relation between intellectual virtue and true belief,but intellectual virtue as a salient factor within the various ones contribute to truth.In the “Facade Barn Case” and“Force-Field Case”,they face a common challenge there has “because” relation between the intellectual virtue and the truth,but we cannot call it knowledge intuitively.I adopt Pritchard’s distinction about epistemic luck include “intervening epistemic luck” and “environmental epistemic luck”,and I think they only deal with the former.Moreover,virtue reliabilist dilemma there is a difficult to explain the state of high-grade knowledge involve the high degree of voluntariness by the use of competence virtue;and virtue responsibilist cannot illustrate the low-grade knowledge contain few elements of motivation according to character virtue.In the Chapter 4,I mainly settle those problems of “environmental epistemic luck”and the debate of low-grade knowledge and high-grade knowledge.I attempt to eliminate “environmental epistemic luck” by the discussion of Pritchard’s “the Scheme of Anti-luck Virtue Epistemology” and Greco’s “the Scheme of Virtue Contextualism”.According to my observation,the former supports “Safety Principle”(anti-luck condition)that combines with the version of Weak virtue epistemology.Although it successfully gets rid of “environmental epistemic luck” by creating the friendly cognitive environment,it is hard to respond to many counterexamples of“intervening epistemic luck”.Greco’s “Virtue Contextualism” attracted me deeply and I try to reveal “cognitive competence” in a context that respond to the “environmental epistemic luck”.In conclusion,Robust virtue epistemology,namely Virtue Contextualism,can thoroughly dispel two types of epistemic luck and don’t need to add the “Safety Principle”.I consider three schemes of combination,using thecompetence virtue to reconcile high-grade knowledge and exercising the character virtue to moderate low-grade knowledge for handling with the debate of low-grade knowledge and high-grade knowledge.And I think Sosa divide the competence into agential and nonagential which can greatly deal with it.So,virtue reliabilism successfully eliminate the intervention of “epistemic luck”and greatly respond to high-grade knowledge involve strong voluntariness.Meanwhile,although virtue responsibilism cannot respond to low-grade knowledge don’t contain any element of motivation,it’s worth noting its possible contributions of eliminating “epistemic luck”,explaining high-grade knowledge and responding the other questions.