The Status of Reflection in Virtue Epistemology

Abstract

This chapter claims that the main normative thesis of Sosa (that the ultimately desirable status for performances in general is the full aptness) can be subject of the objection of overintellectualisation of epistemic processes. It is proposed a way to safeguard Sosa’s perspective from this objection: to replace the Normative Thesis (NT), expressing the idea of full aptness, with the thesis that the ultimately desirable state of performances in general is the Simple Normative Thesis (SNT), stating that the fully desirable status for performances in general is (simple firstorder) aptness. With the rise of externalism, reflection’s central status in epistemology has come under threat: key epistemic phenomena such as knowledge and justified belief are no longer widely taken to essentially involve reflection. One notable exception to this trend is Sosa who, surprisingly enough, is a card-carrying externalist. Sosa develops a kind of virtue epistemology that promises to rehabilitate the status of reflection in epistemology. In this paper, I argue that Sosa remains ultimately unsuccessful in this regard. The thesis that is key to Sosa’s rehabilitation of reflection succumbs to exactly the kind of problem that dislodged reflection from its throne in epistemology. I then develop an alternative on behalf of Sosa. While the alternative view does avoid the problem Sosa encounters, it will not serve to rehabilitate the status of reflection. As virtue epistemologists, then, we will do well to continue to think of reflection has having been dislodged from its throne in epistemology.