1. Introduction
Over the past fifteen years, the study of the intellectual or “epistemic” vices has become a hot topic in responsibilist virtue epistemology, giving rise to the aptly-named field of vice epistemology (Battaly, Reference Battaly, Matheson and Vitz2014; Cassam, Reference Cassam2019; Kidd et al., Reference Kidd, Kidd, Battaly and Cassam2020; Tanesini, Reference Tanesini2021). In this time, vice epistemologists have mostly focused on the question of what makes a character trait, attitude, or way of thinking an epistemic vice, with two opposing theoretical camps emerging. On the one hand, proponents of motivationalism ground intellectual vices in defective epistemic motivations (Baehr, Reference Baehr, Kidd, Cassam and Battaly2020, Reference Baehr2025; Tanesini, Reference Tanesini2021; Zagzebski, Reference Zagzebski1996); on the other hand, proponents of obstructivism take epistemic vices to systematically obstruct knowledge (Cassam, Reference Cassam2019).
Despite the differences between these camps, it is widely agreed by proponents of each that intellectual vices are characterized by their negative relationship to distinctly epistemic goods. But which epistemic goods, exactly? Linda Zagzebski’s answer is an ‘insufficiently strong motivation for knowledge’ (1996: 208); Alessandra Tanesini’s includes a motivation to ‘avoid learning inconvenient truths’ (2021: 141); Jason Baehr’s is an ‘insufficient identification with…true belief and knowledge’ (Reference Baehr2025: 225); and whilst Quassim Cassam claims that obstructivism is ‘compatible with more than one view of knowledge’ (Reference Cassam2019: 10), his contention that vices get ‘in the way of belief’ reveals an exclusive concern with propositional knowledge (Reference Cassam2019: 11). In short, the answer to the question above is truth and propositional knowledge.
In this article, I demonstrate the need to expand vice epistemology’s axiology beyond these epistemic goods. In addition to truth and propositional knowledge, I argue that vice epistemologists need to include knowledge-how in their theorizing if they are to provide us with a full account of the nature and development of some intellectual vices. After introducing this species of knowledge in more detail in section 2, I claim in section 3 that it is sometimes embedded in the manifestation of putative epistemic vices. In section 4, I extend this point to the development of those vices. The upshot is that some intellectually vicious agents acquire knowledge-how in virtue of manifesting or acquiring their vices. If this is right, then we should want our existing accounts of intellectual vice to reflect this datum. However, I argue in section 5 that the inclusion of knowledge-how into our vice-epistemological theorizing generates difficulties for obstructivism and a popular version of motivationalism. Nevertheless, I claim that a less popular version of motivationalism can possibly vindicate the relationship between epistemic vices and knowledge-how. I conclude in section 6.
2. Knowledge-How: A Primer
Before illustrating the role that knowledge-how plays in the manifestation and development of some putative intellectual vices, it will be good to first have a better understanding of this species of knowledge. When it comes to thinking about knowledge-how, epistemologists tend to fall into either of two theoretical camps. The first is anti-intellectualism, which roughly claims that knowledge-how involves possessing something non-propositional, namely, an ability or complex set of dispositions to successfully φ (Ryle, Reference Ryle1949; Nöe, Reference Nöe2005; Setiya, Reference Setiya2012; Fridland, Reference Fridland2015). The second is intellectualism, an influential version of which—often called propositionalism—claims that knowledge-how is reducible to propositional knowledge (Pavese, Reference Pavese2015; Stanley and Williamson, Reference Stanley and Williamson2001; Stanley, Reference Stanley2011).Footnote 1
In spite of their differences, anti-intellectualists and intellectualists agree on at least two things. The first is that knowledge-how entails the possession of an ability or disposition to successfully φ. Given that anti-intellectualists ground know-how in the possession of an ability or disposition, they can straightforwardly accommodate this point. For example, they hold that knowing how to cycle entails having the ability or disposition to successfully cycle. Of course, the precise nature of these abilities will depend on the account in question, but most anti-intellectualists would agree that they are modally robust capacities that dispose one to reliably succeed in normal, counterfactual conditions (Hawley, Reference Hawley2003; Noë, Reference Nöe2005).
Since intellectualists ground knowledge-how in the possession of propositional attitudes, by contrast, they cannot directly appeal to an agent’s abilities or dispositions. Instead, they employ the notion of a ‘practical mode of presentation’ to show that knowledge-how indirectly entails the possession of an ability or disposition to φ. On Stanley and Williamson’s influential view (2001), this involves knowing that some proposition p is a contextually relevant way w for an agent to φ, such that the agent thinks about p in a first-person, practical way and this leads them to successfully φ. For example, the statement: “Hannah knows how to cycle” is true just in case Hannah knows that pushing the pedals in a circular fashion and holding the handlebars steady is a way for her to cycle, and she entertains these propositions in a practical, as opposed to a demonstrative, mode of presentation. Stanley and Williamson claim that this ‘entails the possession of certain complex dispositions’, the manifestation of which correspond to counterfactual success at φ-ing (Reference Stanley and Williamson2001: 429; Stanley, Reference Stanley2011: 126-127). Similarly, Carlotta Pavese takes practical modes of presentation to involve ‘practical senses’, the grasping of which ‘entails the ability to φ in a qualified sense’, namely, the ability to follow inferential rules about how to φ (2015: 16). In following these rules, one knows that some proposition is the next stage in φ-ing, and so on. Whilst practical modes of presentation remain contentious (Noë, 2005; Glick, Reference Glick2015; Mosdell, Reference Mosdell2018), they would provide intellectualists with a means of explaining the intuitive relationship between knowledge-how and action.
Although knowledge-how might entail an ability of some form to succesfully φ, such an ability is not sufficient for knowledge-how. Suppose I enjoy annoying my flatmate and believe that smoking does exactly this. Whenever I smoke, though, I also have a habit of tapping on the cigarette packet. Unbeknownst to me, it is this tapping that annoys my flatmate, not my smoking (Hawley, Reference Hawley2003). Despite having the ability to successfully annoy my flatmate, I clearly don’t know how to annoy them. This is because I don’t annoy them intentionally. To intentionally annoy my flatmate, I need to know how to do this. This is reflected in the Moorean nature of statements like: “I intentionally annoy my flatmate, but I don’t know how to annoy my flatmate” (Habgood-Coote, Reference Habgood-Coote2018; Ryle, Reference Ryle1949: 33). More generally, this suggests that knowledge-how requires one to be acting intentionally. This is the second area of common ground between anti-intellectualists and intellectualists (Ryle, Reference Ryle1949; Hawley, Reference Hawley2003; Setiya, Reference Setiya2012; Pavese, Reference Pavese2015).
What does it mean to intentionally φ ? This is a notoriously difficult question for action theorists, but at the very least we can say that an agent intentionally φs only if their φ-ing is not lucky or accidental. This much is clear from the example above. Although I succeed at annoying my flatmate, my success is arguably accidental, and this precludes it from being intentional. But then how should we understand this non-accidental relationship? A popular answer in the literature is by reference to control (Carter and Shepherd, Reference Carter and Shepherd2023; Gibbons, Reference Gibbons2001; Mele and Moser, Reference Mele and Moser1994). The reason why I only accidentally succeed at annoying my flatmate is because it is not under my control. According to a broadly causal tradition, control requires one’s action to be caused in an appropriate way by one’s intention, desire, or plan (Davidson, Reference Davidson1970). Since the act that actually annoys my flatmate (tapping on the cigarette packet) is not causally connected to my original intention or plan (to annoy my flatmate), it is not under my control, and hence not intentional. This rough characterization of control has been adopted by several anti-intellectualists (Carter and Shepherd, Reference Carter and Shepherd2023; Shepherd, Reference Shepherd2021). In contrast, some intellectualists adopt a more Anscombian view of control (Reference Anscombe1957), on which it requires knowing that one is φ-ing , and one’s φ-ing be guided to success by one’s knowledge of the means of φ-ing (Beddor and Pavese, Reference Beddor and Pavese2021; Pavese and Beddor, Reference Pavese and Beddor2023; Pavese, Reference Pavese2022). Given that I have a false belief about what annoys my flatmate, I do not know the means of annoying them. In turn, my success is not guided in the right way for control.
Together, the considerations above suggest the following, general thesis about knowledge-how:
Knowledge-How: If S knows how to φ, then S has an ability to intentionally φ.
By combining features of knowledge-how that are agreed upon by anti-intellectualists and intellectualists alike, this rough characterization allows me to remain neutral with respect to these camps. Now, one might worry that this neutrality risks smuggling a tacit embrace of intellectualism into my arguments here. In remaining neutral, that is, I leave open the possibility that knowledge-how is reducible to propositional knowledge. But since some vice epistemologists already include propositional knowledge in their axiology, I would seemingly arrive at my conclusion (that it needs to expand to include knowledge-how) on the cheap.Footnote 2
This worry operates on the basis that propositionalist or reductive intellectualism is true (Pavese, Reference Pavese2015; Stanley, Reference Stanley2011; Stanley and Williamson, Reference Stanley and Williamson2001). However, this view has been attacked on several fronts, including its allegedly misplaced reliance on linguistic data (Ditter, Reference Ditter2016; Rumfitt, Reference Rumfitt2003), as well as concerns that the epistemic profiles of knowledge-how and propositional knowledge diverge in their resilience to luck (Carter and Pritchard, Reference Carter and Pritchard2015a; Carter and Pritchard Reference Carter2015b, Cath, Reference Cath2015). As a result, intellectualists tend to retreat to weaker versions of the view that only identify knowledge-how with the possession of propositional attitudes, not propositional knowledge. If propositionalist intellectualism is false, then the worry above loses much of its force.
Crucially, the truth of propositionalist intellectualism would not undermine my argumentative strategy in this article. As I will argue in section 5, knowledge-how raises important implications for the two main views of intellectual vice in the literature, and these implications remain pressing even if knowledge-how is reducible to propositional knowledge. In light of this, vice epistemologists would still have independent reasons to include this species of knowledge in their theorizing. Thus, my decision to remain neutral on the nature of knowledge-how does not incur any costs to the arguments below.
3. Vicious Know-How
With a clearer picture of knowledge-how to hand, I will now argue that this species of knowledge can figure in the manifestation of some putative epistemic vices. In light of the discussion above, the success of this claim depends on these epistemic vices manifesting in the exercise of abilities to intentionally φ. I will start by motivating and defending a more general way of appreciating this claim, before showing how it applies to a specific epistemic vice.
To begin, consider the following feature of many epistemic virtues. Generally-speaking, epistemic virtues manifest when we engage in various intellectual activities. For example, virtuous intellectual curiosity manifests in the activity of good questioning (Watson, Reference Watson2015, Reference Watson2018), open-mindedness in the activity of perspective-switching (Baehr, Reference Baehr2011, Reference Baehr2025), and intellectual humility in recognizing and owning one’s cognitive limitations (Whitcomb et al., Reference Whitcomb, Battaly, Baehr and Howard-Snyder2015). There are thus distinct, if not sometimes overlapping, activities through which epistemic virtues characteristically manifest. Following Jason Baehr (Reference Baehr2015, Reference Baehr, Kidd, Cassam and Battaly2020), call this the competence dimension of epistemic virtue. More precisely:
Competence Principle (CP): For every intellectual virtue V, there is an activity or competence characteristic of V on the basis of which V can be distinguished from other intellectual virtues (Reference Baehr2015, 116, Reference Baehr, Kidd, Cassam and Battaly2020: 22).Footnote 3
Although Baehr does not offer a detailed account of these competences, he does identify the core competence to consist of the ‘skill or ability’ to reliably engage in the activity characteristic of a given virtue (Reference Baehr2025: 92). I want to suggest that a version of CP also applies to epistemic vices. At first glance, it might be difficult to see how it does. If anything, don’t epistemic vices involve a deficiency of the competences associated with their corresponding virtues? Part of what makes an agent close-minded is that they are incompetent at perspective-switching. Likewise, an agent is intellectually arrogant partly in virtue of being incompetent at recognizing and owning their cognitive limitations. For argument’s sake, suppose this is true. Even so, it does not follow that epistemic vices cannot manifest their own, characteristic competences. In fact, the existence of such ‘vicious competences’ is briefly discussed by Baehr (Reference Baehr, Kidd, Cassam and Battaly2020: 28, Reference Baehr2025: 199) and I have defended it at-length elsewhere (Matthews, Reference Matthews2025). In both cases, the idea is that some epistemic vices characteristically manifest in the exercise of their own core competences or abilities. More formally:
Vicious Competence Principle (VCP): For some intellectual vices V, there are competences or abilities characteristic of V, the exercise of which either manifest these intellectual vices or contribute to their possession.
Unlike its corresponding principle above, VCP is not a general claim about all epistemic vices. Instead, it rests on the weaker, qualified claim that some epistemic vices exhibit a competence dimension as part of their formal structure. Of course, it might be the case that many epistemic vices are manifested via the exercise of characteristic competences, but I do not commit myself to that here. Moreover, VCP recognizes that there could be clusters of competences or abilities associated with these epistemic vices. For ease of discussion, I will proceed as if these vices are indexed to a single competence or ability. Finally, VCP is neither necessary nor sufficient to possess an epistemic vice. That said, the development and exercise of these competences or abilities plausibly contributes to the possession of the associated epistemic vices. In this way, they function as mechanisms or expressions of vicious epistemic conduct.
To warm up to VCP, consider the sort of conduct expressive of various epistemic vices. A vivid illustration of intellectual dishonesty is the competent suppression and obfuscation of counter-evidence by Big Tabacco and Oil executives regarding the harms of smoking and climate change (Oreskes and Conway, Reference Oreskes and Conway2012; Proctor, 2011). Equally, consider the “intellectual bully”, whose epistemic arrogance manifests in their competence at intimidating and belittling their colleagues (Tanesini, Reference Tanesini2021). Finally, consider the workplace “slacker”, whose intellectual laziness manifests in their competence at time-wasting, phoning-it-in, or skipping steps in their inquiries (Battaly, Reference Battaly, Kidd, Battaly and Cassam2020).Footnote 4 In each case, these agents may be succeeding at suppressing counter-evidence, intimidating others, or slacking off, while knowing what they are doing. Their success may also be causally connected to their plans or intentions. In other words, these agents may intentionally exercise their relevant competences or abilities. If that’s right, then it follows from the discussion in section 2 that the intellectually dishonest executive knows how to obfuscate counter-evidence; that the intellectually arrogant bully knows how to intimidate his peers; and that the intellectually lazy slacker knows how to time-waste or phone it in. The upshot is that knowledge-how can figure in the manifestation of putative epistemic vices.
Let me illustrate VCP in more detail by considering the vice of ‘epistemic insouciance’ (Cassam, Reference Cassam2019). This is ‘an attitude of indifference to the truth or falsity of one’s utterances’, which characteristically manifests in bullshitting (2019: 81). According to Harry Frankfurt, the reason why bullshitters tends to be indifferent to the truth is because they have a more general intention of getting away with what they say (Reference Frankfurt2005: 54). Thus, whatever is conducive to this intention is what the bullshitter will say. In an effort to create their desired narrative, then, the bullshitter ends up ‘misrepresent[ing] their intentions to their interlocutors’ (ibid, 54). If a bullshitter is to effectively bring about their ‘practical interest’ of saying what they like, however, they are going to need to take the means necessary to this end. The more suitable or effective those means are, the more instrumental reasons they have to pursue them (Broome Reference Broome1999; Brunero, Reference Brunero2020; Kolodny, 2018). Since having an ability or competence makes one more likely to be successful, the bullshitter has instrumental reasons to develop the ability or competence to misrepresent his intentions to his interlocutors. This is supported by Frankfurt’s observation that some bullshitters are ‘exquisitely sophisticated craftsman’ (Reference Frankfurt2005: 23), implying that they are skilled at doing just this. Indeed, the two bullshitters that Cassam uses as illustrations of epistemic insouciance—Boris Johnson and Michael Gove—were arguably very sophisticated craftsmen in this respect (Reference Cassam2019: 78-80). They either knew what they were doing whilst campaigning for Brexit, or their bullshitting was causally connected to their desire of winning the Brexit referendum. As such, they had the ability to intentionally misrepresent their intentions to their audience. Thus, it follows that they knew how to bullshit.
The discussion above reveals a more general point about VCP, which is that an agent’s instrumental reasons play an important role in the development of their relevant abilities or competences. This applies to the epistemic vices mentioned earlier. The intellectually dishonest oil executive plausibly develops the ability or competence to effectively suppress or obfuscate evidence about climate change because it prevents such evidence from jeopardizing business; the arrogant bully develops the ability or competence to intimidate his epistemic peers because it is an effective means of defending his ego from threats (Tanesini, Reference Tanesini2021); and the intellectually lazy slacker develops the ability or competence to phone-it-in or time-waste because it enables them to avoid doing intellectual work (Battaly, Reference Battaly, Kidd, Battaly and Cassam2020). In each case, the vicious agent develops and exercises the relevant ability or competence because it is an effective way of realizing some further, practical interest.
Of course, just because an agent has instrumental reasons to develop one or more of these vicious competences or abilities, it does not follow that they will actually acquire these capacities. For example, suppose that our dishonest oil executive is incompetent at suppressing and obfuscating counter-evidence. Arguably, this fact about them does not make them any less intellectually dishonest. In response, recall that VCP does not make the possession or exercise of these competences or abilities necessary for epistemic vice. Instead, it merely stipulates that they are expressions or mechanisms of epistemically vicious conduct. As such, the executive might still exhibit the vice of intellectual dishonesty despite their incompetence at suppressing counter-evidence. Second, abilities and competences come in degrees, and those related to epistemic vices are no different. Since those who exhibit the vices above are disposed to engage in the relevant activity, they will have ample opportunities to gradually refine and develop the respective abilities and competences, particularly in light of their instrumental reasons. And depending on the quality of these capacities, they will come to know more or less how to obfuscate counter-evidence, intimidate their epistemic peers, slack off, or bullshit, in virtue of developing and acquiring the competence or ability to do these things. In this way, VCP allows us to see the way in which knowledge-how can figure in the manifestation of putative epistemic vices.
4. Learning How to be Vicious
In the previous section, I argued that knowledge-how can figure in the manifestation of putative epistemic vices. Before we’re in a position to know how to φ, though, we would first need to learn how to φ. Using this insight, this section argues that knowledge-how can also play an important role in the development or aetiology of some epistemic vices.
To set this up, note that virtue epistemologists widely take the development of intellectual skills to facilitate the cultivation of various epistemic virtues (Baehr, Reference Baehr2013; Battaly, Reference Battaly2016; Pritchard, Reference Pritchard2023). For instance, Lani Watson argues that environments which encourage people to develop the ‘skill of good questioning’ can help inculcate virtuous intellectual curiosity and inquisitiveness (Reference Watson2015, 2018). By promoting the cultivation of epistemic virtues in this way, these environments are epistemically edifying (Kidd, Reference Kidd2019: 226). However, when an environment either (i) facilitates the ‘erosion of conditions that encourage the cultivation and exercise of epistemic virtues’ or (ii) ‘encourages, legitimates, promotes, or provides conditions’ for people to develop epistemic vices, it is what Kidd equally calls epistemically corrupting (Reference Kidd2019: 131, Reference Kidd, Kidd, Battaly and Cassam2020: 72). Just as edifying environments facilitate the cultivation of epistemic virtues by first encouraging people to develop the corresponding intellectual skill, I want to suggest that some corrupting environments facilitate the development of epistemic vices by first encouraging people to develop the ability or competence through which those vices manifest.
I will use intellectual laziness as an example. Above, I noted that this vice characteristically manifests in the activity of ‘slacking off’ (Battaly, Reference Battaly, Kidd, Battaly and Cassam2020). For Battaly, this involves ‘intentionally taking an easy path in pursuit of one’s intellectual goals, knowing (or at least truly believing) that one’s work will suffer’ (Reference Battaly, Kidd, Battaly and Cassam2020: 181). These paths range from time-wasting, phoning it in, skipping steps in inquiries, and free-riding off others’ intellectual labor (Reference Battaly, Kidd, Battaly and Cassam2020: 182-183). In her view, slacking off also requires ‘succeeding in taking an easy path and actually reducing the quality or rate of one’s work’ (Reference Battaly, Kidd, Battaly and Cassam2020: 182, emphasis original). After all, if a person intended to skip steps in their inquiries, but ended up not doing this, it would be unclear how they would be slacking off. In this way, Battaly incorporates a success condition into her account of slacking off.
For my purposes, we needn’t look far to find environments that encourage slacking off. Consider what has recently been termed task-masking (Demopoulos, Reference Demopoulos2025; Royle, Reference Royle2025). This is the name for a popular trend, but it reflects a very familiar sort of behavior: pretending to work, whilst hardly working at all. Those who task-mask tend to walk hurriedly with laptops under their arms, stare intensely at their computer screens, and schedule unnecessary meetings throughout the working day, amongst other things. In Battaly’s terms, they are people who intentionally time-waste and phone it in, knowing (or truly believing) that their intellectual work will suffer. As one commentator notes, the reason why people increasingly task-mask is ‘because the work environment encourages it’ (Cook, Reference Cook2025).
If we grant that people who develop and exercise the abilities to intentionally time-waste and phone-it-in engage in acts of intellectual laziness, then broken workplace environments that incentivise this behavior are encouraging them to repeatedly act in intellectually lazy ways. And if Aristotle was right that ‘states of character arise out of like activities’ and that ‘it is from playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are produced’ (Aristotle Reference Ackrill and Urmson1998, NE, Bk. II, 1103b10-20, emphasis added), then it’s reasonable to think that people can habituate intellectually lazy tendencies from acts of slacking off in the workplace.
Although a token environment like the workplace can incentivise people to develop and exercise the abilities to intentionally time-waste and phone it in whilst they are at work, this does not yet tell us that this environment facilitates the development of intellectual laziness outside of work and across domains. At most, one might think that these environments encourage people to engage in acts of intellectual laziness, given that the abilities to time-waste and phone it in are forms of slacking off, and intellectual laziness characteristically manifests in this activity. For these environments to facilitate the acquisition of global laziness, though, they would need to lead people to develop and exercise these abilities across similar types of situations. After all, the possession of a character vice like intellectual laziness requires cross-situational consistency in how it manifests (Miller, Reference Miller2013).Footnote 5
I grant that intellectual laziness might be restricted to a domain like the workplace. That said, the abilities to time-waste and phone-it-in that one might develop in the workplace are, like abilities more generally, flexible and transferable because they allow their possessor to adapt to changing environments and to transfer their know-how from one domain to another. This makes it easier for agents to deploy their abilities across domains. That is, these abilities risk spilling out to different domains of intellectual conduct if the opportunity to slack off arises. For example, consider the case of weaponized incompetence. This refers to the intentional poor performance of some task, so that others (usually women) have to take it upon themselves to complete it (Kecmanovic, Reference Kecmanovic2025). Thus, suppose Fred is asked by his partner to complete various long and arduous financial documents. Having already developed and exercised the abilities to time waste and phone it in at work, he adapts these abilities and deploys them to drag out this task as much as possible. As a result, Fred’s partner takes over and completes the forms. Upon realizing that he can effectively avoid doing this sort of intellectual labor at home, Fred begins finding more opportunities to time-waste and phone it in, adapting his abilities accordingly. Each time, the exercise of these abilities further strengthens Fred’s intellectually lazy tendencies, allowing them to take further root in this domain of his epistemic conduct. Over time, as he exercises these abilities across more and more domains, Fred’s initially localized tendencies will become cross-situationally consistent. The upshot is that he comes to possess the vice of intellectual laziness.
If this is right, then we can appreciate how the abilities to intentionally time-waste and phone it in might facilitate the development of an epistemic vice like intellectual laziness within a particular domain and perhaps also across domains. For insofar as these abilities entail knowledge-how, and their exercise promotes the development of intellectual laziness, agents like Fred can learn how to time-waste and phone it in as they adapt and deploy these abilities across domains of their epistemic conduct. This not only allows us to see the role that knowledge-how can play in the development of this epistemic vice across domains, but it also provides a more general insight into how we might initially develop or acquire epistemic vices. In this way, knowledge-how can inform our very understanding of the nature of epistemic vice.
5. Know-How and Vice Epistemology
At the beginning of this article, I said that vice epistemologists have said little about knowledge-how. Having seen that this species of knowledge can figure in the manifestation and development of some putative epistemic vices, I now want to consider the implications that these findings have for the two main views in the literature.
5.1. Obstructivism
Let’s start with obstructivism. According to this view, epistemic vices are character traits, attitudes, or ways of thinking that ‘systematically obstruct the gaining, keeping, or sharing of knowledge’ (Cassam, Reference Cassam2019: 12). As I noted in the introduction, this knowledge is propositional in nature. To make sense of the relationship that some vices bear to knowledge-how, then, obstructivism must expand its remit to include this species of knowledge. However, this task is not so straightforward.
First, obstructivism identifies epistemic vices with the systematic obstruction of knowledge. Would this include the obstruction of knowledge-how? That cannot be the case. After all, even the most dogmatic or arrogant people know how to do a range of ordinary things (like driving), so they clearly have an abundance of knowledge-how at their disposal.
Cassam recognizes that a similar worry arises in connection with perceptual knowledge. If a necessary condition for epistemic vice is the systematic obstruction of propositional knowledge, how do dogmatic or intellectually lazy people have so much knowledge from things like perception? As he puts it, ‘how can I be prevented by an epistemic vice from knowing that it is raining?’ (Reference Cassam2019: 8). His solution is to point out that the systematic obstruction of this knowledge has little to do with our character traits, attitudes, or ways of thinking (Reference Cassam2019: 8). Rather, it is more a matter of having defective perceptual faculties. Since obstructivism doesn’t count defective faculties amongst its candidates for epistemic vice, it can sidestep this worry. Instead, it can focus on the knowledge that is impacted by our traits, attitudes, or ways of thinking, which is why Cassam specifies that epistemic vices obstruct knowledge by ‘impeding effective inquiry’ (Reference Cassam2019: 7).
This looks like a promising way of addressing the worry above. If asked: “how can we be prevented by an epistemic vice from knowing how to cycle or drive?”, the obstructivist can say that this knowledge-how has little to do with the qualities that constitute epistemic vices and more to do with our physical capacities. Obstructivists can then focus on the know-how that our epistemic vices do tend to obstruct, which might come from something like our practical inquiries.
Although this strategy might give the obstructivist a principled response to the worry above, it brings a second challenge in its wake. According to VCP, recall, some epistemic vices can manifest in the exercise of abilities to intentionally φ. Since the development of such abilities would be gradual, and since these abilities would entail knowledge-how, it follows that these agents would acquire the corresponding know-how in a gradual fashion. But if some epistemic vices abet a source of knowledge-how and obstructivism claims that epistemic vices obstruct the knowledge-how from our effective practical inquiries, then it needs to explain why these two claims are not in tension.
This worry is compounded by another. In particular, the know-how that some epistemic vices abet relates to what Cassam terms the ‘project of vice reduction’ (2019: 186). This is the project of identifying and ameliorating our epistemic vices. To effectively do this, it helps if we can first identify the source of our vices. I have argued above that knowledge-how can contribute to the development of our vices; e.g., learning how to slack off can contribute to the acquisition of the vice of intellectual laziness. Not only does knowledge-how allow us to pinpoint how and why these people might have developed this epistemic vice, but it can also help us devise strategies for ameliorating this vice. Therefore, it is in the best interests of those engaged in the project of vice reduction to consider the know-how that epistemic vices can abet.
5.2. The Absence Conception
The other main account of intellectual vice in the literature is motivationalism. In contrast to obstructivism, it identifies intellectual vices with defective epistemic motivations. Arguably, the most popular interpretation of this view is that defective epistemic motivations imply an absence of good epistemic motivations. That is to say, intellectual vices reflect a ‘lack of motivation for knowledge’ (Zagzebski, Reference Zagzebski1996: 207), a ‘characteristic failure to attend to truth or truth-related considerations’ (Montmarquet, Reference Montmarquet and Axtell2000: 138), or an ‘insufficient identification with epistemic goods like true belief and knowledge’ (Baehr, Reference Baehr2025: 225). Following Crerar (Reference Crerar2018), call this the absence conception of motivationalism. What might this conception have to say about the relationship between epistemic vice and knowledge-how?
As the statements above might suggest, proponents of this conception have said little about knowledge-how in their theorizing. That said, one proponent has offered some suggestive remarks about its relationship to epistemic virtue. On Linda Zagzebski’s view, epistemic virtues are underpinned by an ultimate or final ‘motivation for knowledge’ or cognitive contact with reality (Reference Zagzebski1996: 167). Interestingly, Zagzebski clarifies that this motivation need not ‘solely arise from the motivation to have propositional knowledge’; often, she notes, the ultimate end of this motivation will be ‘something practical: creating an artistically superior sonnet, making a fine violin, winning a chess game’ (Reference Zagzebski1996: 179). In these cases, Zagzebski recognizes that the motivation for knowledge characteristic of epistemic virtue will involve a ‘desire for the practical end’ and be ‘more a matter of knowing how rather than knowing that’ (Reference Zagzebski1996: 179).
These remarks allow us to see what Zagzebski’s version of the absence conception might have to say about knowledge-how. Insofar as epistemic vices reflect a ‘lack of motivation for knowledge’ or an ‘insufficiently strong motivation for knowledge’ (Reference Zagzebski1996: 207-208), or a lack of motivation for epistemic goods, that might include having an insufficiently strong motivation for knowledge-how. Now, this doesn’t imply that epistemically vicious agents are insufficiently motivated to attain knowledge-how in general. But the absence conception would partly ground the viciousness of close-minded, incurious, or intellectually arrogant agents in their being insufficiently motivated to attain the know-how involved in perspective-switching, asking good questions, or identifying and owning their cognitive limitations, etc. Since knowing how to do these things implies having the relevant ability, moreover, the failure to be sufficiently motivated to attain this knowledge-how would also help explain why those who exhibit these vices lack the abilities characteristic of their virtuous counterparts.Footnote 6
Despite this, it’s unclear whether the absence conception could explain why some vicious agents end up developing and exercising the abilities captured in VCP. To see this, recall that the development and exercise of these abilities is closely connected to an agent’s instrumental reasons. On reflection, they are the reasons for which, or in light of which, these agents act. That is, their instrumental reasons are also their motivating reasons (Alvarez, 2010; Müller, Reference Müller2025).Footnote 7 However, by focusing solely on the vicious agent’s deficit of good epistemic motivations—their being insufficiently motivated to attain the sort of knowledge-how just mentioned—the absence conception risks neglecting the presence of these motivating reasons, and the accompanying motivations to acquire and exercise the abilities discussed here. Since these abilities entail knowledge-how, this conception would struggle to fully account for the role that this species of knowledge plays in connection with the manifestation and development of some epistemic vices.Footnote 8
5.3. The Presence Conception
Although the absence conception is arguably the most popular version of motivationalism, it is not the only version available in the literature. In addition, there is a less popular version of the view that takes epistemic vices to be constituted by the presence of bad epistemic motivations, such as being motivated to ‘ignore’, ‘avoid’, or ‘frustrate’ epistemic goods in various ways (Battaly, Reference Battaly, Matheson and Vitz2014, Reference Battaly, Kidd, Medina and Pohlhaus2017; Tanesini, Reference Tanesini2021: 45). Call this the presence conception (Crerar, Reference Crerar2018).
If intellectual vices are constituted by bad epistemic motivations, what accounts for the presence of these motivations in the first place? The answer to this question is found in a yet deeper source of motivation. According to Alessandra Tanesini—the presence conception’s most explicit defender—vicious epistemic motivations are ‘themselves derivative of other motivations that often concern ego-defence or impression management’ (Reference Tanesini2021: 21, fn. 3). Notice that these are distinctly practical ends. For Tanesini, these ends give rise to non-epistemic motivations that bias an agent’s cognition in such a way that they avoid truths or evidence that potentially jeopardize their sense of self. Thus, she claims that intellectually arrogant people are motivated away from epistemic goods because they are ultimately motivated to defend their egos from (imagined) threats (Reference Tanesini2021: 109). In this respect, the bad epistemic motivations constitutive of intellectual vice are themselves underpinned by deeper, instrumental motivations.Footnote 9
If this is right, then the presence conception looks well-placed to vindicate the arguments I have made. As I’ve argued, those who exhibit certain epistemic vices have practical ends they desire to bring about. But insofar as bad epistemic motivations are rooted in an agent’s instrumental motivations, this could help explain why the epistemically insouciant bullshitter or the intellectually lazy slacker is averse to epistemic goods: because these goods are inconsistent with their respective practical ends. And since having an ability or competence makes one more likely to be successful in some endeavor, the presence conception could account for the motivating reasons that can lead vicious agent to develop the abilities or competences captured by VCP. Given that these abilities or competences entail knowledge-how, the presence conception would thereby make better sense of the relationship between epistemic vices and knowledge-how than either obstructivism or the absence conception. As a result, it merits more consideration from vice epistemologists than it has thus far enjoyed.
6. Conclusion
I have argued that vice epistemologists need to expand their axiology to include knowledge-how if they are to provide us with a full understanding of the nature and development of some epistemic vices. Along the way, I have also argued that this species of knowledge has important implications for our existing accounts of epistemic vice.Footnote 10
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