1st Edition

Social Virtue Epistemology

Edited By Mark Alfano, Colin Klein, Jeroen de Ridder Copyright 2022
    636 Pages 26 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This collection of 19 chapters, all appearing in print here for the first time and written by an international team of established and emerging scholars, explores the place of intellectual virtues and vices in a social world. Relevant virtues include open-mindedness, curiosity, intellectual courage, diligence in inquiry, and the like. Relevant vices include dogmatism, need for immediate certainty, and gullibility and the like.

    The chapters are divided into four key sections: Foundational Issues; Individual Virtues; Collective Virtues; and Methods and Measurements. And the chapters explore the most salient questions in this areas of research, including: How are individual intellectual virtues and vices affected by their social contexts? Does being in touch with other open-minded people make us more open-minded? Conversely, does connection to other dogmatic people make us more dogmatic? Can groups possess virtues and vices distinct from those of their members? For instance, could a group of dogmatic individuals operate in an open-minded way despite the vices of its members?

    Each chapter receives commentary from two other authors in the volume, and each original author then replies to these commentaries. Together, the authors form part of a collective conversation about how we can know about what we know. In so doing, they not only theorize but enact social virtue epistemology.

    Introduction: A research program for social virtue epistemology
    Mark Alfano, Colin Klein, and Jeroen de Ridder

    Part I: Foundational Issues

    1. Interactionism, Debiasing, and the Division of Epistemic Labour  Steven Bland
    1b. Commentary from Neil Levy
    1c. Commentary from Michel Croce and Duncan Pritchard
    1d. Steven Bland’s Response to Commentaries

    2. Attunement: On the Cognitive Virtues of Attention  Georgi Gardiner
    2b. Commentary from J. Adam Carter
    2c. Commentary from S. Goldberg
    2d. Georgi Gardiner’s Response to Commentaries

    3. From vice epistemology to critical character epistemology  Ian James Kidd
    3b. Commentary from J. Adam Carter
    3c. Commentary from S. Goldberg
    3d. Georgi Gardiner’s Response to Commentaries

    4. Narrowing the Scope of Virtue Epistemology  Neil Levy
    4b. Commentary from Steven Bland
    4c. Commentary from Quassim Cassam
    4d. Neil Levy’s Response to Commentaries

    5. Mindshaping and intellectual virtues  A. Tanesini
    5b. Commentary from Ian James Kidd
    5c. Commentary from Thi Nguyen
    5d. A. Tanesini’s Response to Commentaries

    Part II: Individual Virtues and Vices

    6. The Vices And Virtues Of Extremism  Quassim Cassam
    6b. Commentary from Barend de Rooij and Boudewijn de Bruin
    6c. Commentary from Marco Meyer
    6d. Quassim Cassam’s Response to Commentaries

    7. Expectations of Expertise: Boot-strapping in Social Epistemology  Sanford C. Goldber
    7b. Commentary from Heidi Grasswick
    7c. Commentary from Erik J. Olsson
    7d. Sanford C. Goldberg’s Response to Commentaries

    8. Fake News, Conspiracy Theorizing, and Intellectual Vice  Marco Meyer and Mark Alfano
    8b. Commentary from Quassim Cassam
    8c. Commentary from Colin Klein
    8d. Marco Meyer and Mark Alfano’s Response to Commentaries

    9. Playfulness Versus Epistemic Traps  C. Thi Nguyen
    9b. Commentary from Ian James Kidd
    9c. Commentary from Lani Watson
    9d. C. Thi Nguyen’s Response to Commentaries

    Part III: Collective virtues and vices

    10. Solidarity: Virtue or Vice?  Heather Battaly
    10b. Commentary from T. Ryan Byerly
    10c. Commentary from Duncan Prichard
    10d. Heather Battaly’s Response to Commentaries

    11. Collective (Telic) Virtue Epistemology  J. Adam Carter
    11b. Commentary from Jeroen de Ridder
    11c. Commentary from Kate Devitt
    11d. J. Adam Carter’s Response to Commentaries

    12. Three Models for Collective Intellectual Virtues  Jeroen de Ridder
    12b. Commentary from Kate Devitt
    12c. Commentary from Heidi Grasswick
    12d. Jeroen de Ridder’s Response to Commentaries

    13. Real Life Collective Epistemic Virtue and Vice  Barend de Rooij and Boudewijn de Bruin
    13b. Commentary from Steven Bland
    13c. Commentary from Neil levy
    13d. Barend de Rooij and Boudewijn de Bruin’s Response to Commentaries

    14. The Social Virtue of Questioning: A Genealogical Account  Lani Watson
    14b. Commentary from J. Adam Carter
    14c. Commentary from S. Goldberg
    14d. Lani Watson’s Response to Commentaries

    Part IV: Methods and Measurementes

    15. An Interdisciplinary Methodology for Studying Collective Intellectual Character Traits  T Ryan Byerly
    15b. Commentary from Heather Battaly
    15c. Commentary from Marco Meyer
    15d. T Ryan Byerly’s Response to Commentaries

    16. A Bayesian social platform for inclusive and evidence-based decision making
    S. Kate Devitt, Tamara R. Pearce, Alok Kumar Chowdhury, and Kerrie Mengersen
    16b. Commentary from Jeroen de Ridder
    16c. Commentary from Erik J. Olsson
    16d. S. Kate Devitt, Kerrie Mengersen, Tamara R. Pearce and Alok Kumar Chowdhury’s response to commentaries

    17. Measuring Social Epistemic Virtues: A Field Guide  Marco Mayer
    17b. Commentary from T Ryan Byerly
    17c. Commentary from Alessandra Tanesini
    17d. Marco Meyer’s response to commentaries

    18. Learning from Ranters: the Effect of Information Resistance on the Epistemic Quality of Social Network Deliberation  Michael Morreau and Erik J. Olsson
    18b. Commentary from Georgi Gardiner
    18c. Commentary from Thi Nguyen
    18d. Michael Morreau and Erik J. Olsson’s Response to Commentaries

    19. Education as the Social Cultivation of Intellectual Virtue  Michel Croce and Duncan Pritchard
    19b. Commentary from Alessandra Tanesini
    19c. Commentary from Lani Watson
    19d. Michel Croce and Duncan Pritchard’s Response to Commentaries

    Biography

    Mark Alfano is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University. In 2019, he published Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology (Cambridge UP). His papers have won awards from the Philosopher’s Annual (2018) and Peritia (2019).

    Colin Klein is Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. He is the author of What the Body Commands: The Imperative Theory of Pain (MIT Press, 2015).

    Jeroen de Ridder is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Professor by special appointment of Christian Philosophy at the University of Groningen. His research is in social and political epistemology, and in 2021 he co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology.