Roger shares his dynamic Plenary session paper from the recent"Epistemic Agency" Conference. Scroll down to the 'P's in JB Library to view and print.

Abstract:
"Virtue epistemology" designates an area of recent research in the theory of knowledge. Since Descartes and Hume, epistemologists have mainly tried to determine what justifies our beliefs: what rules we must follow in order to
have the right to believe something. Virtue epistemology breaks with this account. It focuses on properties of persons and their epistemic dispositions or virtues. In a virtue-based epistemology, the right question is not "What are the rules we must follow in order to have legitimate beliefs?" but "What
kind of person (believer) must I be-what epistemic qualities must I have-in order to have warranted beliefs?" This reinforces the moral aspect of epistemology. In a sense, it even suggests that "epistemic evaluation just is a form of moral evaluation" and that "knowledge is at root a moral notion", as
Linda Zagzebski has said. But is it true that moral and epistemic virtues are one and the same? I think not. Thomas Aquinas' account of the relation between moral and intellectual virtues is more cautious than Zagzebski's and more plausible too. It can better explain those cases where a bright intellectual seems to be completely devoid of moral scruples and a morally good man a little bit simple intellectually. Even if we are surprised when a great philosopher (or scientist) appears to be morally (or politically) repugnant (for example, to have been a member of the Nazi party, or given his support to ultra-leftist terrorists), such cases are not rare! If the move from rule-based epistemology to virtue-based epistemology seems to be an exciting perspective, we must be careful not to confuse epistemology with ethics. The "ethics of belief" is perhaps not properly ethics, and the Aristotelian and Thomistic distinction between two sorts of virtues seems to be right."