Knowledge, skill and virtue epistemology

According to virtue epistemology, one should primarily understand knowledge in terms of the relationship between cognitive success and cognitive agency. There are various ways of understanding this thesis. Along one axis, there is the debate about whether we should focus on the agent’s reliable cognitive skills in general, or whether we should instead treat knowledge as primarily concerned with the manifestation of more elevated epistemic standings, such as intellectual virtues. Along another axis, there is the debate about whether we should understand knowledge as being exclusively defined in terms of the subject’s cognitive skills (where this category includes the intellectual virtues), or whether there need to be supplementary conditions in one’s theory of knowledge to deal with the problem posed by knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. This chapter will explore these topics, and in the process offer an overview of the contemporary debate regarding issues at the nexus of knowledge, skill and virtue epistemology.