Epistemic Situationism

"This volume is the first sustained examination of epistemic situationism, the clash between virtue epistemology and the situationist hypothesis supported by research in empirical psychology. Current research in social psychology suggests that environmental variables have greater explanatory and predictive power than traits in explaining human behavior and this has raised serious challenges to ethical theories, such as virtue ethics, that rely on a psychology of personality traits. However, virtue epistemology appears to assume the same trait-based psychology as virtue ethics does, and the research challenging virtue theories in ethics is relevant to philosophical theorizing about knowledge as well. Until recently virtue epistemology and situationism were separate literatures, but philosophers have begun to examine the apparent incompatibility between situationist psychology and virtue epistemology. Much of the psychological research that raises questions about the empirical adequacy of the moral psychology of virtue ethics also appears to raise doubts about the empirical adequacy of the epistemic psychology assumed by virtue epistemology. Responsibilist virtue epistemology appears particularly vulnerable because epistemic virtues like open-mindedness, conscientiousness, and intellectual courage are traits of intellectual character, but reliabilist virtue epistemology appeals to the psychology of cognitive skill, abilities, and competences that may be similarly vulnerable. The essays in this volume take up this new problem of epistemic situationism from multiple points of view - some skeptical or revisionary, others conservative."--