Virtue, agency and responsibility: an epistemological perspective

Abstract

This article focus on the relevance of epistemic agency to analyze knowledge in terms of epistemic virtue, highlighting the strategy adopted by virtue epistemologists to argue for the thesis that we can be epistemic agents, responsible for our epistemic lives, even if our beliefs are involuntary states. While L. Zagzebski (2001), by way of epistemic Frankfurt-style cases, claims that considering epistemic agency as a necessary condition for knowledge allows to offer an analysis that escapes the famous Gettier objection, E. Sosa (2015) refines his theory, offering new argumentation for the idea that there is an epistemic domain where there can be agency and we can be responsible for our true beliefs because of the significance of our cognitive character in knowledge acquisition. My aim in presenting and comparing Zagzebski’s and Sosa’s proposals is to emphasize some aspects in the current state of the art in virtue epistemology that favor credit accounts of knowledge.