Why Only Virtues Can Confer Epistemic Dispositions: The Occasionalist Demon

Modesto Gómez-Alonso

doi:10.5281/zenodo.1412747

Modesto Gómez-Alonso Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, España

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1412747

Keywords: Virtue Epistemology, Epistemic Dispositions, Knowledge, Radical Scepticism, Performance Normativity

Abstract

I will argue that, contrary to what happens with Schaffer’s debasing demon, that is not even able to threaten our knowledge of the external world, there is a demon —the occasionalist demon— that plays epistemic havoc merely by being possible. The occasionalist demon argues for an antirealist view on epistemic dispositions so that he forces virtue epistemologists into a dilemma between counting virtues as mere occasional causes of cognitive achievements (which is simply abandoning their theory) and committing themselves to metaphysical claims about how faculties are constituted and about how they are related to successful epistemic performances, specifically, to claims about the internal and logical relation captured by Sosa’s concept of ‘manifestation’. This paper aims thus at clarifying what it really involves to endorse a virtue epistemology. It will be argued that Sosa’s account of the primitive character of the relation of manifestation is crucial to effectively overcome the challenge raised by the occasionalist demon.

Author Biography

Modesto Gómez-Alonso, Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, España

MODESTO GÓMEZ–ALONSO, is Profesor Encargado de Cátedra at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, and Research Assistant at the EIDYN Research Centre, University of Edinburgh. PhD in Philosophy at the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca. He works in epistemology of virtues, radical scepticism, Hinge Epistemology and metaphysics of dispositions. He published: Frágiles certidumbres. Wittgenstein y Sobre la certeza. Duda y lenguaje (Salamanca: Publicaciones Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, 2006); «Against a Nomic Virtue Epistemology» (Análisis. Revista de investigación filosófica 3, 2, 2016: pp. 283–314); «Cartesian Humility and Pyrrhonian Passivity: The Ethical Significance of Epistemic Agency» (Logos & Episteme 7, 4, 2016: pp. 461–487; «Wittgenstein on the Will and Voluntary Action» (En: Action, Decision–Making and Forms of Life, editado por Jesús Padilla Gálvez. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2016, pp. 77–108). He translated into spanish texts of Ernest Sosa and Peter Hacker.

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Why Only Virtues Can Confer Epistemic Dispositions: The Occasionalist Demon

Abstract

Author Biography

References

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