Virtue Epistemology: The Utility of ‘Apt Beliefs’

In Apt Performance and Epistemic Value, Duncan Prichard focuses on the work of Ernest Sosa’s virtue epistemology regarding apt beliefs. This is not just a focus. It is primarily a critique. The strongest and most plausible portion of this critiques is when Prichard denounces the notion that apt belief and knowledge are inseparable entities, in that, one can have knowledge without an apt belief and an apt belief without knowledge. This point has its merits and demerits. Prichard notices that luck cannot be compatible with knowledge, which is a huge merit. He also claims that unsafety in belief is incompatible with knowledge, which is a questionable notion, as, when safety only has value when it is nested within truth establishing grounds. However, it is important to unpack Sosa’s virtue epistemology before getting into what Prichard has to say about it, as, Prichard’s entire essay is resting on the hard labor of ‘Ernie’. In order to understand Prichard’s point about why an apt belief is not necessary for knowledge, it is required to understand what an apt belief is and how Sosa links it to knowledge. Additionally, given the context of intellectual virtuousness, it is of important intellectual virtue to spell out the to spell out as clearly and charitably the position you wish to disagree with. Otherwise, you’re no philosopher: you are a polemicist.