Trust Responsibly

<p>This book offers a defence of Wrightean epistemic entitlement one of the most prominent approaches to hinge epistemology. It also systematically explores the connections between virtue epistemology and hinge epistemology.</p><p>According to hinge epistemology any human belief set is built within and upon a framework of pre-evidential propositions – hinges – that cannot be justified. Epistemic entitlement argues that we are entitled to trust our hinges. But there remains a problem. Entitlement is inherently unconstrained and arbitrary: We can be entitled to any hinge proposition under the right circumstances. In this book the author argues that we need a non-arbitrariness clause that protects entitlement from defeat. This clause he argues is to require epistemic virtue. Virtuous cognitive dispositions provide the non-arbitrariness clause that protects entitlement from defeat. The epistemic character of the agent who holds a particular set of hinges tells us something about the hinges’ epistemic status. Conversely epistemic virtues are cognitive dispositions and capacities that rely on hinge propositions – without trusting in some hinges we would be unable to exercise our virtues.</p><p><i>Trust Responsibly</i> will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on epistemology Wittgenstein and virtues.</p><p>The Open Access version of this book available at www.taylorfrancis.com has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.</p>