This is the introductory chapter of the book, which aims to launch a powerful and largely unexplored position in epistemology, naturalized virtue epistemology. Many of the chapters in the book examines empirical findings on the nature of cognitive dispositions and personality traits (Alfano, Battaly, Miller, Pritchard), and this is clearly one direction for naturalized virtue epistemology to take. The book also examines two significant worries for a would-be naturalized virtue epistemology. One problem a naturalistic turn might create for virtue epistemology is the persistent worry about normativity in naturalistic theories. A second worry is that the relevant results from the sciences will signal bad news for virtue epistemology. The book addresses a wide range of issues relevant to the project of developing a naturalized virtue epistemology. Virtue epistemology should be informed by an important development in personality psychology called the Big Five personality traits or Five- Factor Model of traits.

Virtue epistemology standardly divides into two camps: virtue-reliabilism and virtue-responsibilism. This chapter discusses the epistemic warrant in terms of features of reliable belief-forming faculties. By treating epistemic virtue in terms of functions, and functions in terms of history, it sets out to understand functions, virtues, and warrant. The chapter explicates the etiological functions. The etiological account of functions entails an account of normal functioning and normal conditions. On the etiological account, functions arise when an item produces a beneficial effect that in turn enters into a feedback mechanism, where the mechanism explains why the item persists or reoccurs because of the beneficial effect. The chapter identifies three functional norms for any item with an etiological function: function fulfillment, normal functioning, and function fulfillment because functioning normally. Natural selection requires three elements: variation, copying, and beneficial consequences. Trial-and-error learning involves trials, variations in behavior, errors, negative reinforcers and successes, positive reinforcers.

This chapter considers whether, in epistemology, ought implies can. It offers an account of the epistemic ought. This account of oughts and cans will be virtue theoretic in that epistemic norms are cashed out in terms of proper functioning and essential kinds. In order to isolate the kind of can that is implied by the epistemic ought, the chapter considers three recently proposed views of the epistemic ought. It turns out that, while each of these views is insightful, and to some extent true, none of them is explanatorily adequate. Nicholas Wolterstorff clarifies the notion of proper functioning at issue by appeal to other, typically non-epistemic. Richard Feldman takes the epistemic ought to fall into a general category of ought that he calls role oughts. The criticism of Feldman's account of the epistemic ought was anticipated by Hilary Kornblith, in an article critical of Feldman's account of the ought.

This chapter talks about the naturalism and epistemic norms of inference. Norms of inference can be classified by analogy with the more familiar distinction between doxastic and propositional justification with respect to propositions. The chapter only considers the analog of doxastic justification for inferences, and token inferences. It focuses on the epistemic status of basic inferences, an inference whose epistemic status is not derived from those of the subject's other inferences or beliefs. However, versions of the Open Question Argument (OQA) are liable to be raised as objections to the naturalizing strategy under development. The strategy of appealing to a non-propositional insight offers a promising way to avoid the risks inherent in invoking epistemic reliance on something that looks too much like an additional premise. The chapter sketches the outlines of an epistemological account of how some basic inferential moves have the epistemic status of solidity.

This chapter develops the version of indirect epistemic teleology (IET) that is supported by pluralist teleology, and explores how it might answer at least some of the more important objections. It lays out the basic ideas of pluralist teleology. The chapter explains that IET is the view that results from applying pluralist teleology to the field of epistemic normativity. It explores IET in relation to both meta-epistemic issues and issues in normative epistemology. IET is structurally analogous to a kind of rule-consequentialism in ethics. The chapter discusses the concept of justified belief and other epistemic evaluative concepts. It evaluates the epistemic practices in all possible worlds, considered as hypothetical or counterfactual possibilities, relative to the actually optimal set of norms. The chapter considers objections to IET and briefly explores the ability of the theory to respond to the objections.

This chapter provides a detailed assessment in philosophy of the Big Five approach, specifically on the question of whether it provides empirical support for the widespread possession of the moral and epistemic virtues. It briefly reviews some of the recent discussions in philosophy concerning the empirical adequacy of the virtues. The chapter also provides an overview of the Big Five approach in personality psychology. It focuses on three important reasons for why the Big Five taxonomy, however well supported it might be, does not offer any empirical support for the widespread possession of the traditional moral and epistemic virtues. Three important concerns are: Big Five traits are only summary labels; problems for the leading causal trait model of the Big Five; and Big Five and responsibility. The labeling approach can apply to the facets which use virtue concepts.

This chapter critically assesses some of the psychological and semantic commitments of John Greco's account and provides an alternative proposal that, like Greco's, will ground epistemic assessment in agent-level mental states in the context of action, but requires more robust causal and motivational connections between an agent and their successful outcomes than Greco. It outlines the reliabilist theory of epistemic virtue with a semantics that explicitly incorporates aims, motivations, and goals, and is based on the most recent psychological evidence. Epistemologists have assumed that there is only one type of agency involved in basic perceptual belief-forming processes, and reliabilists, in particular, have assumed that all perceptual belief is reliable and sensitive to accurate information from other perceptual cognitive processes. Epistemic agents may succeed based on abilities to which they lack conscious access.

The situationist challenge to virtue theory arose with respect to virtue ethics. The expression of the situationist challenge to virtue epistemology is offered by Mark Alfano. The chapter begins with Alfano's situationist attack on responsibility virtue epistemology. Alfano's strategy is to cite experiments which appear to show that situational factors have a significant bearing on agents' abilities to complete certain intellectual tasks. The chapter shows that Alfano offers a different version of the situationist critique of virtue epistemology depending on whether it is responsibilist or reliabilist virtue epistemology that is at issue. It briefly considers a version of robust virtue epistemology which has been offered by John Greco, and which is broadly speaking a reliabilist proposal. Once one recognizes the epistemic dependency of knowledge, then robust virtue epistemology ceases to be an option. Modest virtue epistemology, in contrast, is entirely compatible with the epistemic dependence of knowledge.