Nevertheless, there is something right about the reliabilist idea that knowledge must be gained by a process which tends towards the truth. After all, the feature of the standard construal of justification that Gettier cases trade upon is that one could form one’s justified true belief in ways that in no way tend towards the truth (e.g.
by looking at a stopped clock). As we saw in Chapter 1, however, gaining knowledge is like having a skill at getting at the truth. Think again of the example of a skilled archer hitting the bullseye that we gave there. Insofar as this archer genuinely is skilled, then it is not a matter of happenstance that she hits the target this time.
Instead, we would expect her to hit the target across a range of relevantly similar conditions (such as if she were standing two inches to her left, or if the light was oh so slightly darker, or the wind oh so slightly stronger, and so on); this is just what it means to hit the target because of one’s skill, rather than just because one got lucky.
The same goes for the knower. This ought not to be someone who just happened to form a true belief, but rather someone who would have got a true belief in a range of relevantly similar circumstances. In the ‘stopped clock’ Gettier case, for example, the problem is that the agent only happened to have a true belief, since if she’d have looked at the clock a minute later or earlier, then she would have formed a false belief. Contrast this with someone looking at a working – and thus reliable – clock.
This person will tend to have true beliefs across a range of relevantly similar scenar- ios, such as if the time were slightly different, and so the way in which she is forming her belief is more akin to the skill of the archer in hitting the bullseye.
So although we cannot understand knowledge as simply reliable true belief, we ought to be careful about completely dismissing the reliabilist proposal. Perhaps, for example, there is some way of modifying the view so that it can evade the Gettier- style problem that we have raised?
One way in which one might modify the position could be to demand that knowl- edge is true belief that is gained as a result of the operation of reliable epistemic virtues or cognitive faculties.
An epistemic virtue (sometimes called an intellectual virtue) is a kind of cognitive skill that enables one to gain true beliefs. Crucially, however, it is unlike many other cognitive skills in that it constitutes an admirable character trait, one that specifi- cally concerns one’s intellectual character, and hence incorporates a desire for the truth. An example of such a trait is conscientiousness. An agent who is conscientious in the way in which she forms her beliefs (i.e. she is careful to avoid error and takes all available evidence into account) will be more likely to form true beliefs than someone who is unconscientious. This is the sense in which being conscientious is a
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virtues and faculties 57 cognitive skill, since it helps one form true beliefs in relevant situations. Relatedly, like other cognitive skills, it has reliability built into it, as being conscientious helps one to reliably form true beliefs (unlike being unconscientious, which wouldn’t help one reliably form true beliefs).
Note that it is part of what it means to be conscientious that one is motivated to get to the truth. If one is simply acting like someone who is conscientious, without actu- ally caring about the truth, then one wouldn’t in fact be exhibiting this character trait at all. As we will see in a moment, most cognitive skills do not require one to care about the truth. This is part of why an epistemic virtue like conscientiousness is an admirable intellectual character trait, in that we consider it to be an element of character in this sense that one cares about the truth.
Another reason why we think of epistemic virtues as admirable character traits is that one must acquire and then cultivate them – they are not cognitive skills that one gains by default. It is thus a reflection of one’s character that one is the kind of person who has acquired an epistemic virtue like conscientiousness. In order to see why we would care about these admirable intellectual character traits, think about the kind of intellectual character that we would want someone who occupies an important social role to have, such as a judge. We would surely want them to have acquired the relevant intellectual skills and for these skills to be motivated by a desire for the truth (and not, for example, by a desire for personal gain). In short, we would want them to have the admirable intellectual character of someone who has the epistemic virtues, such as the epistemic virtue of conscientiousness.
A cognitive faculty is also a cognitive skill, and hence also has reliability built into it, though it is importantly different from an epistemic virtue. In particular, one’s cognitive faculties are natural and innate, in the sense that they are part of our nor- mal cognitive endowment as human beings. For example, one’s perceptual faculties, such as one’s eyesight, are cognitive faculties, in that, when working properly in an environment for which they are suited at least, they are cognitive skills that enable you to reliably gain true beliefs, in this case about the world around you. Other cog- nitive faculties include one’s memory and one’s capacity for reasoning.
Unlike the epistemic virtues, one’s cognitive faculties don’t require one to be moti- vated by the truth. When I open my eyes in the morning, I gain lots of true beliefs about my environment regardless of whether I care about the truth. Since they are part of one’s natural cognitive endowment, one also doesn’t need to do anything in order to acquire one’s cognitive faculties; one simply has them. This marks another important difference between one’s cognitive faculties and one’s epistemic virtues.
These differences between the cognitive faculties and the epistemic virtues explain why the former are not regarded as admirable character traits, since it is no reflec- tion of one’s character that one has them. This is the sense in which one’s cognitive faculties are epistemically lower-grade cognitive skills than one’s epistemic virtues.
Even so, however, one’s cognitive faculties are very important to gaining knowledge.
Indeed, a great deal of our knowledge, especially our knowledge of our immediate environments, is gained via our cognitive faculties.
With the epistemic virtues and the cognitive faculties in mind, consider the proposal that knowledge is the result of true beliefs that are formed via these kinds of cog- nitive skills. The idea behind this adaptation to the general reliabilist thesis is that what is important when we talk about reliability is not the reliability of the process by which the belief was formed simpliciter, but rather the specific reliability of the agent (and thus the agent’s cognitive traits, such as her epistemic virtues and cogni- tive faculties) in gaining beliefs of this sort. Because this type of proposal essentially defines knowledge in terms of the epistemic virtues and cognitive faculties, it is known as virtue epistemology. Virtue epistemology is one of the oldest views in the theory of knowledge – a version of virtue epistemology was advanced by the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384–22 BC).
In order to see what this reliabilist version of virtue epistemology involves, consider an example originally proposed by the American philosopher Alvin Plantinga (1932–).
Imagine someone who has a brain lesion that has an extraordinary side-effect, in that it leads the subject to form the true belief that they have a brain lesion. This would thus be a case in which one is forming one’s true belief via a belief-forming process that is highly reliable. Nonetheless, I take it that there is no temptation here to suppose that our agent’s reliable true belief amounts to knowledge. Note that the problem is not that the true belief is due to luck, as given how the belief is formed the subject is effectively guaranteed to have a true belief in this case. Instead, the more natural explanation of why this true belief doesn’t amount to knowledge is that it isn’t in any way reflective of the agent’s cognitive abilities. Indeed, given that this true belief is effectively a cognitive malfunction on the part of the agent, albeit one that happens to result in a true belief, it is obviously not attributable to the agent’s cognitive abilities.
Compare, in this regard, our subject’s belief that he has a brain lesion, caused by the brain lesion, and the belief of his brain surgeon that he has a brain lesion, gained by looking at X-rays of his brain. The brain surgeon’s true belief is also reliably formed, but there’s a crucial difference, in that the reliability of his true belief does reflect his cognitive abilities, such as his cognitive ability to accurately interpret brain X-rays.
This is why the brain surgeon’s reliable true belief amounts to knowledge but our hapless agent with the brain lesion’s reliable true belief does not.
Virtue epistemology is able to explain what is going on here, since it will claim that what such cases show is that the mere reliability of one’s belief-forming processes is not enough for knowledge. This is because there can be reliable belief-forming processes that have nothing to do with one’s cognitive abilities, as the brain lesion case illustrates. Instead, what is required for knowledge is that one’s true belief is the result of those specific reliable belief-forming processes constitute one’s cog- nitive abilities, such as one’s epistemic virtues and cognitive faculties. In this way, reliabilism, understood as a kind of virtue epistemology, can capture the idea that knowledge involves a cognitive success that is creditable to the agent. The point behind this version of reliabilism is that when one has knowledge one has reliably got to the truth because of one’s cognitive abilities, rather than merely because one formed one’s belief in a reliable fashion (where the reliability may have nothing to do with one’s cognitive abilities, as happens in the brain lesion case).
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