Knowledge, Dexterity, and Attention
A Theory of Epistemic Agency

This title provides the first thorough defense of a naturalized virtue epistemology.

Abrol Fairweather (Author), Carlos Montemayor (Author)

9781107089822, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 May 2017

204 pages
23.6 x 15.9 x 1.6 cm, 0.45 kg

'This is an excellent book … The reader gets a balanced, critical account of how virtue epistemology stands today. The argumentation is judicious and insightful. I learned a great deal from it, and so, I think, will anybody who reads it.' Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Contemporary cognitive science clearly tells us that attention is modulated for speech and action. While these forms of goal-directed attention are very well researched in psychology, they have not been sufficiently studied by epistemologists. In this book, Abrol Fairweather and Carlos Montemayor develop and defend a theory of epistemic achievements that requires the manifestation of cognitive agency. They examine empirical work on the psychology of attention and assertion, and use it to ground a normative theory of epistemic achievements and virtues. The resulting study is the first sustained, naturalized virtue epistemology, and will be of interest to readers in epistemology, cognitive science, and beyond.

Introduction: why only agents are knowers
1. Epistemic virtue, reliable attention and cognitive constitution
2. Meta-epistemology and epistemic agency
3. Success semantics and the etiology of success
4. Epistemic agency
5. Assertion as epistemic motivation
6. Curiosity and epistemic achievement
7. Collective agency, assertion and information.

Subject Areas: Cognitivism, cognitive theory [JMAQ], Philosophy of mind [HPM], Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge [HPK]