When virtue epistemologists offer analyses of knowledge, they usually give something that looks like two relata (a success element and an ability/virtue element) linked with the elusive 'because' or 'through.' There's been a hearty amount of epistemic theorising about the nature of the relata, and comparatively less theorising about how it is that the relata should be linked. Zagzebski, Sosa and Greco have all weighed in (to different extents, Greco most substantially) on the 'because' or 'through' term, and I am very curious to know of other virtue epistemologists who have also tried to nail down this relation. If anyone knows of work on the 'because' outside of these three authors, I'd be very interested to know about it! Thanks--Adam

As defenders of what Pritchard calls "robust" VE, I don't know of others than the 'big three.' I started a paper on M. Levin's critique of robust VE for the "Because" conference call for papers, but didn't finish with it. Its a great topic, though, and a very complex issue, no doubt. I hope the Geneva conference brings some clarification.

Can a credit theory of knowing be maintained that is *not* a version of robust VE? Doesn't Pritchard argue that moderate VE can, I forget now. But what I'd say is that none of robust VE proponents has really so far as I know responded directly to Levin's paper in PPR.

But if you're looking for the *because* in a reliabilist way, you might also read Chris Lepock's work on metacognitive control, where as I was mentioning to him, the use he makes of "control" seem to indicate a robust sense of the because of virtue attribution. I think he's working on an empirically informed development of , and so, one might say, is Lahroodi with his papers on the "need for cognition." Miscevic's truth-linked yet "strong" virtue epistemology is another possible support, though he speaks less of this. But if you're looking for a more social psychologically informed reliabilism because you think that will help you respond to scepticism, then for a kind of 'secondary' literature developing at least some aspect of the elusive 'because' relationship, I'd say to consider Lepock and Lahroodi's papers.

Credit theorists, including Greco, Sosa, and Zagzebski and others hold that in cases of knowledge, an agent's cognitive abilities/competences/virtues have salience in an explanation of how that agent comes to get things right. Anti-luck and virtue epistemologies, and again, virtue reliabilist and virtue responsibilist epistemologies agree in so much. This commits the credit theorist to providing some plausible account of the "because" relationship. What does it mean to know 'in virtue of a virtue'? Greco is of course clear that the relation is causal, though he finds that the choice among plural causal factors is underdetermined until the interests at play in the practical reasoning context are allowed as desiderata. Greco and Sosa differ not over that, but in that Sosa incorporates a coherence (epistemic perspective) condition on reflective knowing, while Greco allows subjective justification and the importance to it of cognitive "integration," but finds Sosa's account of epistemic ascent to metabeliefs about our reliability, psychologically suspect.

The problem Michael Levin poses, is that there is no plausible construal of the because relationship that will serve to exclude Gettier cases (or some combination of what in Pritchard's terms are "veritic" and "environmental" luck. Perhaps, then, the stern burden of making philosophical sense of the "because" relationship is unmeetable only for that group that Pritchard calls proponents of "Robust VE" (again, Greco, Sosa and Zagzebski). But this would not necessarily be as difficult as for "anti-luck virtue epistemology," as Pritchard and Carter have at times espoused, and as my DATA account would have it. The "independent" safety or anti-gettier condition then supplies solution to the value problem through its aretaic condition, these person-level abilities or virtues accruing credit to the agent, but not without ALSO the independent anti-luck condition. Nor is the inclusion of such a condition in any troubling way ad hoc.--At least that's my view, indicating that (anti-luck or virtue) responsibilists support the credit theory without also supporting the stronger thesis of Robust VE.

At any rate, arguing that isn't the point of my post. I wanted to contrast Greco and Zagzebski. Despite their many commonalities in championing credit theory of central epistemic concepts, they have this large difference. Greco has recently developed a form of epistemological contextualism, while Zagzebski considerably more sceptical about it.

Now there are various forms of contextualism, and Greco distinguishes his, which he calls “__” from those of authors like Cohen and DeRose, on the one hand, and those like Hawthorne and Stanley, on the other (called “attributor contextualism” and “subject senstive invariantism,” respectively). For Greco, 'reliable’ is context dependent in epistemological discourse: If a central function of knowledge attributions is to identify information for use in practical reasoning, as Greco thinks, then then knowledge attributions ought to be sensitive to the different interests in play in different practical reasoning environments. Standards and other variables (such as explanatory salience), then, can shift according to interests and purposes of the attributor and/or subject context.

Zagzebski (2004) appears to accept that “The degree of conscientiousness demanded of a particular belief varies with the circumstances” (359). The degree to which one’s caring makes it important that a particular belief is true varies with the context, but this point does not constitute semantic contextualism. Caring clearly raises the bar of knowledge, but whether it also raises the bar of knowledge is something she is right to be more cautious of claiming. “The causal relation (or ‘because’ relation) between trying and success is not dependent upon what the agent cares about,” though she concedes that there’s a lack of clarity about what it does depend upon, there being no presently very satisfying account of the ‘because’ relationship’. Part of the reason for Zagzebski’s doubts about contextualism is that caring and conscientiousness tend to pull in opposite directions: “If the standards for knowledge depned upon what the agent or attributor cares about, that has the ironic consequence that the more the agent or attributor cares, the more conscientious the agent is required to be, and the less likely it is that she will know. If knowledge is credit for truth belief the result is paradoxical for it means that the more I or my attributor cares, the less likely it is that I will be credited with successfully reaching truth. But the more conscientious I am in getting to the truth, the more credit I deserve…Those who combine the view that knowledge is credit for true belief with contextualism need a way to avoid this paradox” (376).

Now this question I would end with, is whether Greco's form of contextualism has a response to Zagzebski's paradox. The reason I ask is that I find this objection very powerful against attributor constextualism (at least), and some of the ways Greco talks about shifting interests and standards in a conversational context make me wonder if he isn't caught in this problem also. On the other hand, I don't think Zagzebski or anyone can just deny the need for SOME form of contextualism, and Zagzebski so far as I know simply offers no account of the "because" realtionship, but premises this part of the credit theory on a kind of promisory note.