Knowledge, Dexterity, and Attention: A Theory of Epistemic Agency

Description

Contemporary cognitive science clearly tells us that attention is modulated for speech and action. While these forms of goal-directed attention are very well researched in psychology, they have not been sufficiently studied by epistemologists. In this book, Abrol Fairweather and Carlos Montemayor develop and defend a theory of epistemic achievements that requires the manifestation of cognitive agency. They examine empirical work on the psychology of attention and assertion, and use it to ground a normative theory of epistemic achievements and virtues. The resulting study is the first sustained, naturalized virtue epistemology, and will be of interest to readers in epistemology, cognitive science, and beyond.

Abrol Fairweather is Lecturer in Philosophy at San Francisco State University. He has edited several volumes on virtue epistemology, including Virtue Epistemology (with Linda Zagzebski, 2001), Naturalizing Epistemic Virtue (with Own Flanagan, 2014), and Epistemic Situationism (with Mark Alfano, 2017). Carlos Montemayor is Associate Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University. He is the author of Minding Time: A Philosophical and Theoretical Approach to the Psychology of Time (2013) and Consciousness, Attention, and Conscious Attention (with H. H. Haladjian, 2015).

'This is an excellent book ... The reader gets a balanced, critical account of how virtue epistemology stands today. The argumentation is judicious and insightful. I learned a great deal from it, and so, I think, will anybody who reads it.' Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews