ABSTRACT
A popular view in contemporary Anglophone epistemology is that knowledge is true belief produced by intellectual virtue. Philosophers accepting this are often called "virtue epistemologists." Virtue epistemologists differ on how to characterize an intellectual virtue. An important initial question is what virtue epistemologists are giving theories of. One possibility is that they are offering theories of the ordinary knowledge concept, a mental representation shared by members of a community. This aligns with the dominant methodology of contemporary Anglophone epistemology. Understood as an account of the ordinary knowledge concept, virtue epistemology faces at least two serious problems. The first serious problem is that knowledge does not require belief, as those categories are ordinarily understood. The second serious problem is that knowledge does not require reliability. Theorists have provided some arguments that knowledge requires reliability. One main passage cited in favor of the reliability requirement contains a brief explanatory argument (Goldman 1979).
