Sosa's Virtue Epistemology (Texto en Ingles) (Ensayo Critico‪)‬

Ernest Sosa is the father of modern virtue epistemology, having first introduced such an approach near the end of "The Raft and the Pyramid" (Sosa 1980). His most recent, and most developed, version of the view is contained in A Virtue Epistemology (2007). The view relies on a distinction between animal and reflective knowledge, attempting to understand both kinds of knowledge in terms of the notion of apt belief. An apt belief is, according to Sosa, one that is true because competent, and it is a virtue epistemology because of this use of the notion of competence. To have a competence is to have an intellectual virtue, and thus knowledge is, at bottom, understood in terms of the intellectual virtues. As with other versions of virtue epistemology, this version faces several kinds of problems, and here I will focus on two of them. I will press a point I have made elsewhere, that virtue epistemology does not present a complete answer to the problem of the value of knowledge. (1) In order to have provided a complete answer to the problem of the value of knowledge, any given virtue epistemology will have to clarify the nature of knowledge in terms of the virtues, and then explain how virtuous true belief is more valuable than true belief itself. I have argued that the latter point is correct (that a true belief that is a display of an intellectual virtue is more valuable than a true belief that is not), but I have argued as well that virtue epistemologies fail to provide an adequate account of the nature of knowledge.