Abstract

The last several decades have witnessed the emergence of virtue epistemology as a major option in the theory of knowledge. However traditional foundationalist and coherentist epistemologies are, under fair descriptions, themselves virtue epistemologies. These venerable approaches may therefore be subject to recent charges that the psychological theories presupposed by virtue epistemology are not empirically sustainable. Drawing on evidence from psychology and cognitive science, this paper argues that the empirical charges recently levied against virtue epistemologies are in fact challenges for epistemology more broadly, including both foundationalist epistemologies and coherentist epistemologies.