One question that all virtue epistemologists face is: what traits are intellectual virtues? Defending a satisfactory answer to this question is important for virtue epistemology (VE) because, on VE, knowledge and justification are understood in terms of intellectual virtue. Virtue epistemologists are divided, with respect to this question, in both their methods and answers. A standard method, in the spirit of Aristotle, is to take the notion of epistemic flourishing to be conceptually prior to the concept of intellectual virtue. On such a view, intellectual virtues will be those traits that are appropriately connected to the fundamental epistemic end of epistemic flourishing. Given that this fundamental end is not a very precise concept, virtue epistemologists typically opt for a more theoretically simple picture, by defending something like the following:
Epistemic Value (Truth)-Monism (EVM): True belief is the fundamental epistemic aim.
EVM is endorsed explicitly or implicitly by most virtue epistemologists. For those who accept EVM as a thesis about fundamental epistemic value, it's rather easy to generate a formula for identifying what traits are epistemic virtues: Trait T is an epistemic virtue iff T is appropriately connected to the end of true belief.
How must intellectual virtues be 'appropriately connected' to the end of true belief? There is disagreement on this point. Some virtue epistemologists (virtue reliabilists) (Greco 1999; Sosa 1993; 2007) opt for a reliable-success view of the relevant connection: a trait is an intellectual virtue iff it is a stable feature of one's cognitive character that reliably generates true beliefs and avoids error. Others (some of whom are called virtue responsibilists) embrace a 'motivationalist' picture of this connection (e.g. Montmarquet 1991; Battaly 2004). On the motivationalist picture, a trait is an epistemic virtue iff a manifestation of the trait is characterised by a motivation for truth. Zagzebski (2006) embraces a conception of intellectual virtue that is a mix between virtue-reliabilism and virtue-motivationalism, and which is stronger than either separately. Zagzebski thinks, following Aristotle, that virtues have both a motivational component and a reliable success component. Accordingly, for Zagzebski, the satisfaction of both the motivational requirement and the reliability requirement are necessary for intellectual while neither alone is sufficient.
The motivationalist picture is probably the least popular, and this is because all the other views hold that 'reliably getting one to the truth' is at least a necessary ingredient of intellectual virtue. Sosa and Greco have argued especially forcefully in favour of the reliability component as both necessary and sufficient for intellectual virtue. As Heather Battaly (2004) has noted, and Wayne Riggs (2010) has observed elsewhere, a certain plausible candidate intellectual virtue makes some serious trouble for the view that a reliable success condition is necessary for intellectual virtue. This is the trait of openmindedness. (For a discussion of the nature of openmindedness, see here). The manifestation of openmindedness might well reliably bring individuals to the truth. However, it seems mistaken to suggest that what makes openmindedness an intellectual virtue is that openminded individuals reliably get to the truth. Battaly has suggested that what makes openmindedness an intellectual virtue has to do solely with openminded individuals' motivation. Here's Battaly (2004):
What makes open-mindedness, so construed, an intellectual virtue? What makes it an intellectual, rather than a moral, virtue is its motivational component. Even though it need not track the truth, it is characterized by a motivation for truth. What makes it a virtue, rather than a skill or a habit of some other sort? It is a virtue partly because it is an entrenched habit that expresses the agent’s epistemic values.[35] The morally just person wants to respect the rights of others appropriately because she wants what appears good and believes that respecting the rights of others appropriately is good. In this manner, the motivational component of justice expresses her moral values. Analogously, the open-minded person wants to listen to others’ ideas that are thought to be true because she wants the truth and thinks that she can attain it by listening to those ideas. Moreover, she wants the truth because it appears good from an epistemic point of view. Accordingly, the motivational component of open-mindedness expresses her epistemic values.Is this plausible? If so, should we think that what makes any trait an intellectual virtue has something to do with one's motivation and nothing to do with reliably achieving the truth? One problem here is that a motivationalist picture would seem to exclude a plausible explanation for why faculty virtues (i.e. good memory) constitute intellectual virtues. Faculty virtues, as Sosa and Greco note, aid us epistemically by reliably getting us to the truth, and involve no obvious motivational element.
It seems that reflecting on openmindedness presents three options for the virtue epistemologist. First, maintain that reliability is a necessary ingredient of intellectual virtue and explain (contra Battaly and Montmarquet) how the epistemic value of openmindedness lies primarily in its reliability. Secondly, deny that openmindeness is an intellectual virtue because it reliably brings about the truth, and insist that it is so rather because it involves a virtuous motivation for truth, and then defend a motivationalist account of intellectual virtue more broadly. Thirdly, one might reject the EVM picture in favour of a pluralist account of fundamental epistemic value and explain why openmindedness is an intellectual virtue by way of its connection to some fundamental epistemic value other than truth. Which, if any, of these avenues is most plausible?
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