International Phenomenological Society

Review: [untitled] Author(s): William P. Alston Reviewed work(s): Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge by Linda Zagzebski Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 185-189 Published by: International Phenomenological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2653439 Accessed: 29/10/2008 06:44
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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

2000 Vol. LX, No. 1, January

Virtueand Knowledge
WILLIAMP. ALSTON

Syracuse University

Virtues of the Mind is a powerful systematic development of a virtue approach to epistemology. As a bonus there is a penetrating discussion of The book deserves to be at the virtuein general and moral virtuein particular. center of discussion of virtue epistemology for some time to come. But enough of this encomium. I come not to praise Linda Zagzebski, nor, indeed, to bury her, but to raise a few critical questions about positions she takes in the book. The Concept of Virtue Though I find many attractivefeatures of Zagzebski's account of a virtue, I also find worrisomeproblems, some of them in its most distinctive features. For one thing, she takes every virtue to include a distinctive kind of motive. (126 ff.) I have no serious objection to that claim, though, as usual in such cases. It seems obvious that matters,quibbles could be raised aboutparticular a temperatepersonis motivatedto act moderately(at least in some matters),a courageousperson is motivatedto standfast in the face of danger,and so on. But Zagzebski makes things unnecessarily difficult for herself by insisting that a motive "in the sense relevant to an inquiry into virtue is an emotion or feeling that initiates and directs action towards an end." (131) In defending this claim she objects to using 'motive' merely to specify a desired end. But when she comes to spell out the emotions characteristicof a given virtue she does not do so well. "A courageous person is motivated out of emotions characteristicof the virtue of courage to face danger when something of importance is at stake.... A fair person is motivated out of emotions that make him like to see others treatedequitably..." (131) What she gives us here is a specification of what a person with a certain virtue is typically motivated to do, while making a formal acknowledgment of her thesis by the maximally unspecific codicil that this motivation is out of emotions thatlead to such behavior.And her furtherdiscussions of virtues are largely concerned with the ends or goals characteristicof a given virtue (see the next paragraphfor an example). Emotion is a wheel that isn't moving anything in the mechanism. In a footnote she attributes this lack of
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specificity about characteristicemotions to the poverty of our language for emotions, but I think a more plausible explanation is the inadequacy of her thesis. Note too that in another example, open-mindedness, she speaks of such a person as "motivatedout of delight in discovering new truths".But delight would seem to figurehere as the emotion attachedto the realizationof the goal an open-minded person pursues, rather than as what leads to the typical behaviorof an open-mindedperson. I have no doubt that when people are acting out of one or another virtue there are often suitable emotions involved. But examples like the above do not augur well for the prospect of distinguishingvirtues in terms of particular emotions. Another problem with the account of virtue is that Zagzebski takes 'virtue' to be a success term. "A person does not have a virtue unless she is reliable at bringing about the end that is the aim of the motivational component of the virtue."(136) This thesis has the startlingconsequence that a person who would give freely of her resourcesif she had more thanis requiredto sustain life cannot be termed 'generous', and a person who is sincerely devoted to helping others but is so inept as to more frequently harm rather than help the intendedtargetscould not be termed 'kind' or 'compassionate'. Yet surely we would describe this latter sort of person as "kind, well meaning, well intentioned, but ineffective or inept". No doubt, one who is motivated like the personjust describedbut who is also usually successful at improving the condition of the otherperson is superiorin importantrespects. But that superiority does not consist in being more kind or compassionate. There are, no doubt, some virtues that carrya reliability constraint.One who is strongly motivated to moderate his consumption of food and drink but rarelysucceeds in doing so could not be termed 'temperate'.But this implication does not attachto all virtues. Knowledge and Justification To come closer to the central focus of the book, I will take a look at the virtue-basedaccountof knowledge and epistemicjustificationZagzebskiproffers. Before registeringcomplaints about this let me say that one of the main ways in which this book goes far beyond its predecessors in virtue epistemology is its determinedattemptto make intellectualvirtue the fundamental concept in terms of which all other centralepistemological concepts are to be understood.Let's see how successful Zagzebski is in this. The account of justified belief in terms of intellectual virtue is modelled on an account of the rightness (and wrongness) of acts in terms of moral virtue. Here is a summarystatementof the former. A right act is what a person who is virtuously motivated, and who has the understanding of the particular

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situation that a virtuous person would have, might do in like circumstances. (235) "Might", because an act can be right, i.e., permissible, without being required.The parallelaccountof justified belief runslike this. A justified belief is what a person who is motivated by intellectual virtue, and who has the understanding of his cognitive situation a virtuous person would have, might believe in like circumstances. (241) Note that motivation plays a key role in both analyses. This means that beliefs are taken to be something one is motivated to have, which in turn means that they are taken to be somethingone does, in a suitably broadsense of that term. Just what that sense is remains a bit hazy. In section 4.2 of Part I Zagzebski defends the thesis that"beliefs, like acts, arrangethemselves on a continuum of degrees of voluntariness,ranging from quite a bit to none at all". (66) But I have searchedin vain for any examples from the "quitea bit" end. She makes the sound points that the voluntary is not restricted to the chosen, that coughing and wincing are as involuntaryas typical perceptualor memory beliefs, and that it is a mistake to think of perceptual beliefs as paradigm cases of justifiability (though she does not deny that they can be justified). But none of this shows that any beliefs, much less many of them, are under effective voluntarycontrol in such a way as to make them subject to one's being motivated to bring them about. This is one of the least that lack of success transsuccessful sections in the book, and, unfortunately, fers to the attemptto analyzejustified belief on the model of right action. But, bracketingmy reservationsabout the alleged voluntarinessof belief and going along with Zagzebski on that, I will consider how her virtue-based accounts of epistemicjustificationand knowledge fare. One pressing problem concerns the question of how the account is to be applied to beliefs on the "not at all voluntary"end of the spectrum.As Zagzebski indicates, ordinary perceptualand memory beliefs are obvious examples. Are we to think of perceivers as motivatedby intellectualvirtueto form beliefs as they do? It would seem that motivation, whetherby virtue or otherwise, has nothing to do with the matter.How then, on this account,can such beliefs be justified? Zagzebski does not treat this problem for justification, but she does raise an analogous problem for knowledge. In order to get into that I have to say something about her account of knowledge. As with much other contemporaryepistemology, the accountof knowledge, as contrastedwith truejustified belief, is driven by the attemptto avoid Gettierproblems. I don't have space here and now to go into this properly,but her approachfeaturesthe notion of an act of virtue. Briefly, an agent performs an act of virtue provided s/he

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not only does something from a virtuous motivation and something a virtuous person would do in the circumstances,but also is successful in achieving the end of the virtuous motivation. Where the "act"is forming a belief and the virtue is intellectual, this last requirement amounts to forming a true belief through these features of the act, i.e., through that virtuous motivation. (270) This is an ingenious way of handling Gettier problems. When Zagzebski says that the true belief is formed throughthe virtuousmotivation, she understandsthis in such a way that it requiresnot only that the belief be formed in this way and is also true, but that the belief's being true is due to the virtuous motivation. This prevents the gap between what makes the belief true and what gives rise to its being formed that is characteristicof Gettier cases. To use one of Zagzebski's cases, consider a physician who diagnoses a patientas sufferingfrom a certainvirus on the basis of characteristic symptoms. In this case the symptoms are due to something else, but as it happens the patient is suffering from that virus. The belief is formed virtuously and also is true, but these are unconnected; and so she doesn't know that the virus is present. But if the symptoms on the basis of which the diagnosis was virtuously made were due to that virus, then the virtuous motivation and the truthof the belief were connected properly,and she does know. To get back to the problem this theory has of accommodatingperceptual beliefs and perceptualknowledge, Zagzebskipoints out:
The definition of knowledge I have given is fairly rigorous. It requires the knower to have an intellectually virtuousmotivationin the dispositionto desire truth,and this disposition must give rise to conscious and voluntary acts in the process leading up to the acquisition of true belief. (273)

It seems clear that perceptual knowledge does not ordinarily meet this No acts are typically involved. requirement. such "consciousand voluntary" Zagzebski addresses this worry in Pt. III, sec. 2.2. But she fails to confront it squarely.She points out that sometimes people doubt their senses and in those cases cognitive processes thatcould be acts of virtue occur. But what about the vast majorityof cases in which no such doubts arise? She suggests that accepting a presumptionof truthuntil there are specific reasons to think otherwise is itself an "act of virtue". But I'm afraid that calling a "presumptionof truth"an "act of virtue"doesn't make it satisfy her account of an act of virtue, indeed does not turnit into an act of any sort. And so the gap betweenknowledge,on her accountof knowledge,and ordinary perceptual knowledge remains. Instead of doing something more satisfactory with this issue, she worries about the fact that small children and lower animals (who presumablyhave perceptualknowledge)are generallyfree of such doubts.She tries to deal with this worry by saying that such subjects can "imitate"the behavior of adults in cases where doubt is lacking, even though they fail to
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doubt where there is reason to do so. This doesn't help much to square the attribution of perceptual knowledge to such subjects with her account of knowledge. But the more serious objectionis that she never explains how the perceptual knowledge of mature human beings satisfies her analysis of knowledge in those cases in which no "consciousand voluntaryacts" lead up to the acquisitionof the trueperceptualbelief.

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