alston on zagzebski

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International Phenomenological Society

Review: [untitled]Author(s): William P. AlstonReviewed work(s):

Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations ofKnowledge by Linda Zagzebski

Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 185-189Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2653439

Accessed: 29/10/2008 06:44

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Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVol. LX, No. 1, January000

VirtueandKnowledgeWILLIAMP. ALSTONSyracuse University

Virtues of the Mind is a powerful systematic development of a virtueapproachto epistemology. As a bonus there is a penetratingdiscussion ofvirtue n generaland moralvirtuein particular.The book deservesto be at thecenter of discussion of virtue epistemology for some time to come. Butenough of this encomium.I come not to praiseLindaZagzebski,nor, indeed,to buryher, but to raise a few criticalquestions about positions she takes inthe book.

The Concept of VirtueThough I find many attractive eaturesof Zagzebski's accountof a virtue, Ialso find worrisomeproblems,some of them in its most distinctive features.For one thing, she takes every virtueto include a distinctivekind of motive.(126 ff.) I have no serious objection to that claim, though, as usual in suchmatters,quibblescould be raised aboutparticular ases. It seems obvious thata temperatepersonis motivated o actmoderately at least in some matters),acourageous personis motivatedto standfast in the face of danger,and so on.But Zagzebski makes things unnecessarilydifficult for herself by insistingthat a motive "in the sense relevantto an inquiryinto virtue is an emotionor feeling that initiates and directs action towards an end."(131) In defendingthis claim she objects to using 'motive' merely to specifya desiredend. But when she comes to spell out the emotions characteristicofa given virtue she does not do so well. "A courageous person is motivatedout of emotions characteristicof the virtue of courage to face dangerwhensomething of importance is at stake.... A fair person is motivated out ofemotions that make him like to see others treatedequitably..." (131) Whatshe gives us here is a specificationof what a person with a certain virtue istypically motivated to do, while making a formal acknowledgment of herthesis by the maximally unspecific codicil that this motivation is out ofemotions that lead to such behavior.And her furtherdiscussionsof virtues arelargely concernedwith the ends or goals characteristicof a given virtue(seethe next paragraph or an example). Emotion is a wheel that isn't movinganything in the mechanism. In a footnote she attributes this lack of

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specificity about characteristicemotions to the poverty of our language foremotions, but I thinka more plausible explanationis the inadequacy of herthesis. Note too that in anotherexample, open-mindedness, she speaks ofsuch a person as "motivatedout of delight in discovering new truths".Butdelight would seem to figurehere as the emotionattached o the realizationofthe goal an open-minded person pursues, rather than as what leads to thetypical behaviorof an open-mindedperson.I have no doubtthat when peopleare acting out of one or another virtue there are often suitable emotionsinvolved. But examples like the above do not augurwell for the prospect ofdistinguishing virtuesin terms of particular motions.

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 isreliable at bringingaboutthe end thatis the aim of the motivationalcompo-nent of the virtue." 136) This thesis has the startlingconsequence that a per-son who would give freely of herresources f she hadmore than s required osustain life cannot be termed 'generous', and a person who is sincerelydevoted to helping others but is so inept as to more frequently harmratherthan help the intendedtargetscould not be termed 'kind'or 'compassionate'.Yet surely we would describe this latter sort of person as "kind,well mean-ing, well intentioned, but ineffective or inept". No doubt, one who ismotivated like the personjust described but who is also usually successful atimproving the condition of the otherpersonis superior n importantrespects.But that superioritydoes not consist in being more kind or compassionate.Thereare,no doubt,some virtues thatcarrya reliabilityconstraint.One whois strongly motivated to moderate his consumption of food and drink butrarelysucceeds in doing so could not be termed'temperate'.But this implica-tion does not attachto all virtues.

Knowledge and JustificationTo come closer to the central focus of the book, I will take a look at thevirtue-basedaccountof knowledgeandepistemic ustificationZagzebskiprof-fers. Before registeringcomplaintsabout this let me say thatone of the mainways in which this book goes far beyond its predecessors in virtue episte-mology is its determinedattempt o make intellectualvirtue the fundamentalconcept in terms of which all othercentralepistemologicalconceptsare to beunderstood.Let's see how successfulZagzebskiis in this.

The account of justified belief in terms of intellectualvirtue is modelledon an account of the rightness (and wrongness) of acts in terms of moralvirtue. Here is a summarystatementof the former.

A right act is what a person who is virtuously moti-vated, and who has the understanding of the particular

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situation that a virtuous person would have, might doin like circumstances. (235)

"Might", because an act can be right, i.e., permissible, without beingrequired.The parallelaccountof justified belief runs like this.

A justified belief is what a person who is motivated byintellectual virtue, and who has the understanding ofhis cognitive situation a virtuous person would have,might believe in like circumstances. (241)

Note that motivationplays a key role in both analyses. This means thatbeliefs are taken to be something one is motivated to have, which in turnmeans thatthey are taken to be somethingone does, in a suitably broad senseof thatterm. Just whatthatsense is remains a bit hazy. In section 4.2 of PartI Zagzebski defendsthe thesis that "beliefs,like acts, arrange hemselveson acontinuumof degrees of voluntariness, rangingfrom quite a bit to none atall". (66) But I have searched n vain for any examples from the "quite a bit"end. She makes the sound points that the voluntaryis not restricted to thechosen, thatcoughingand wincing are as involuntaryas typical perceptualormemory beliefs, and that it is a mistake to think of perceptual beliefs asparadigmcases of justifiability (though she does not deny that they can bejustified). But none of this shows thatany beliefs, much less many of them,are undereffective voluntarycontrolin such a way as to make them subjectto one's being motivated to bring them about. This is one of the leastsuccessful sections in the book, and, unfortunately,hatlack of success trans-fers to the attempt o analyzejustifiedbelief on the model of rightaction.

But, bracketingmy reservationsaboutthe alleged voluntarinessof beliefandgoing along with Zagzebskion that,I will consider how her virtue-basedaccountsof epistemicjustificationandknowledgefare.One pressing problemconcerns the question of how the account is to be applied to beliefs on the"notat all voluntary"end of the spectrum.As Zagzebski indicates, ordinaryperceptualandmemorybeliefs areobviousexamples.Are we to thinkof per-ceivers as motivatedby intellectualvirtueto form beliefs as they do? It wouldseem thatmotivation,whetherby virtueor otherwise,has nothingto do withthe matter.How then,on this account,can such beliefs bejustified?

Zagzebski does not treat this problemforjustification,but she does raisean analogous problemfor knowledge. In order to get into thatI have to saysomething abouther account of knowledge. As with much other contempo-raryepistemology,the accountof knowledge,as contrastedwith true ustifiedbelief, is drivenby the attempt o avoid Gettierproblems.I don't have spacehere and now to go into thisproperly,but herapproach eaturesthe notion ofan act of virtue. Briefly, an agent performsan act of virtue provided s/he

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not only does something from a virtuous motivation and something a virtu-ous person would do in the circumstances,but also is successful in achievingthe end of the virtuous motivation.Where the "act" s forming a belief andthe virtue is intellectual, this last requirement amounts to forming a truebelief through thesefeatures of the act, i.e., throughthat virtuousmotiva-tion. (270) This is an ingenious way of handling Gettierproblems. WhenZagzebski says thatthe true belief is formedthroughthe virtuousmotivation,she understands his in such a way thatit requiresnot only that the belief beformed in this way and is also true, but that the belief's being trueis due tothe virtuous motivation. This prevents the gap between what makes thebelief true and what gives rise to its being formed that is characteristicofGettier cases. To use one of Zagzebski's cases, consider a physician whodiagnoses a patientas sufferingfroma certainvirus on the basis of character-istic symptoms. In this case the symptomsare due to something else, but asit happens the patient is suffering from that virus. The belief is formedvirtuously and also is true, but these are unconnected;and so she doesn'tknow that the virus is present. But if the symptoms on the basis of whichthe diagnosis was virtuouslymade were due to that virus, then the virtuousmotivation and the truthof the belief were connectedproperly,and she doesknow.

To get back to the problemthis theoryhas of accommodatingperceptualbeliefs andperceptualknowledge, Zagzebskipointsout:The definitionof knowledge I have given is fairly rigorous. It requiresthe knower to have anintellectually virtuousmotivation n the dispositionto desiretruth,and this dispositionmustgiverise to conscious and voluntaryacts in the process leading up to the acquisitionof true belief.(273)It seems clear that perceptual knowledge does not ordinarily meet thisrequirement.No such"consciousandvoluntary" cts aretypicallyinvolved.

Zagzebski addresses this worry in Pt. III, sec. 2.2. But she fails to con-front it squarely.She pointsout that sometimespeople doubttheirsenses andin those cases cognitive processesthatcould be actsof virtue occur. Butwhataboutthe vast majorityof cases in which no such doubts arise? She suggeststhatacceptinga presumptionof truthuntil there arespecific reasons to thinkotherwise 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 accountof an act of virtue,indeed does not turn t into an act of any sort. And so thegapbetweenknowledge,on her accountof knowledge,andordinaryperceptualknowledge remains.Instead of doing somethingmore satisfactorywith thisissue, she worries about the fact that small children andlower animals (whopresumablyhaveperceptualknowledge)aregenerally ree of suchdoubts.Shetries to deal with this worry by saying that such subjects can "imitate" hebehaviorof adults in cases where doubtis lacking, even though they fail to

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doubt where there is reason to do so. This doesn't help much to squaretheattribution of perceptual knowledge to such subjects with her account ofknowledge. But the moreserious objectionis that she neverexplainshow theperceptual knowledge of mature human beings satisfies her analysis ofknowledge in those cases in which no "conscious andvoluntaryacts"lead upto the acquisitionof thetrueperceptualbelief.

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alston on zagzebski

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