ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that we need a third analysis of intellectual virtue: personalism (Battaly 2016a, 2017; Battaly and Slote 2016; Slote and Battaly 2018). Personalism contends that intellectual virtues are personal dispositions, rather than sub-personal ones. Personalism allows for the possibility that an individual might have had little or no control over which character traits she came to possess, and thus might not be praiseworthy (or blameworthy) for having the intellectual virtues (or vices) that she has. This chapter examines reliabilism and responsibilism, in turn. It argues that we should add personalism to our pluralist repertoire: in addition to recognizing both reliabilist and responsibilist virtues— many virtue epistemologists are already pluralists of this sort— we should also recognize this third, personalist, kind of intellectual virtue. The chapter addresses some objections to personalism and identifies some areas for further research.
