virtue epistemology the subfield of epistemology that takes epistemic virtue to be central to understanding justification or knowledge or both. An epistemic virtue is a personal quality conducive to the discovery of truth, the avoidance of error, or some other intellectually valuable goal. Following Aristotle, we should distinguish these virtues from such qualities as wisdom or good judgment, which are the intellectual basis of practical – but not necessarily intellectual – success.
The importance, and to an extent, the very definition, of this notion depends, however, on larger issues of epistemology. For those who favor a naturalist conception of knowledge (say, as belief formed in a ‘reliable’ way), there is reason to call any truth-conducive quality or properly working cognitive mechanism an epistemic virtue. There is no particular reason to limit the epistemic virtues to recognizable personal qualities: a high mathematical aptitude may count as an epistemic virtue. For those who favor a more ‘normative’ conception of knowledge, the corresponding notion of an epistemic virtue (or vice) will be narrower: it will be tied to personal qualities (like impartiality or carelessness) whose exercise one would associate with an ethics of belief.
See also RELIABILISM, VIRTUE ETHICS. J.A.M.