The Virtue of Knowledge

Abstract The connection between intellectual virtue, justified acceptance, and knowledge requires elucidation. The coherence theory of knowledge that I have developed has a very natural place for the role of intellectual virtue. Moreover, I think I can provide some clarification of the nature of intellectual virtue and resolve some tension between subjective and objective, internalist and externalist, as well as motivational and reliablist approaches to the subject of virtue by considering the role of intellectual virtue in knowledge.1 That is my objective in this essay. I shall begin with a brief account of the conception of knowledge I have developed. The target of my account of knowledge is what I have in a recent essay called discursive knowledge.2 It is the sort of knowledge a subject can use as a premise in reasoning to confirm some conclusions and reject others. I do not assume that my target conception of knowledge, discursive knowledge, is the only one that is important in an overall theory of human cognition. It is, however, a human intellectual product that plays a central role in human science and society.