2016/03/21 by Quassim Cassam · 271 citations
Arts and Humanities · Neuroscience · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Aesthetics #Character (mathematics) #Character traits #Epistemology #Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics #Identity (music) #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Philosophy #Prejudice (legal term) #Psychology #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment #Situationism #Social epistemology #Social psychology #Sociology #Virtue
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/monist/onv034
published in The Monist 99(2), 159-180 (Oxford University Press)
crossref issued 2016/03/21 · crossref published 2016/03/21 · crossref published-online 2016/03/21 · openalex publication_date 2016/03/21 · crossref created 2016/03/21 · crossref published-print 2016/04/01 · crossref deposited 2019/09/05 · openalex created_date 2022/05/12 · crossref indexed 2026/07/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Vice epistemology is the philosophical study of the nature, identity, and epistemological significance of intellectual vices. Such vices include gullibility, dogmatism, prejudice, closed-mindedness, and negligence. These are intellectual character vices, that is, intellectual vices that are also character traits. I ask how the notion of an intellectual character vice should be understood, whether such vices exist, and how they might be epistemologically significant. The proposal is that intellectual character vices are intellectual character traits that impede effective and responsible inquiry. I argue that situationist critiques of virtue epistemology pose no significant threat to this proposal. Studies by social psychologists of belief in conspiracy theories suggest that it is sometimes appropriate to explain questionable beliefs by reference to intellectual character vices. Neither ‘regulative’ nor ‘analytic’ epistemology has any good reason to question the epistemological significance of such vices.