Özet:

The concept of a virtue, which is very important in ethics since its beginning, has been adopted by epistemologists in the 1980s, and then, virtue epistemology has become a growing field of philosophical inquiry. In virtue epistemology, which is an agent-based approach, different understandings of what intellectual virtue is have revealed two main streams, the reliabilist approach, and the responsibilist approach. T. Zagzebski (1946-) is the leading name of the responsibilist approach, which considers intellectual virtues as character traits for cognitive achievement and closen intellectual virtues with moral virtues. Zagzebski, who establishes a relationship between theoretical ethics and normative epistemology in her Virtues of the Mind (1996), argues that epistemic evaluation is a type of moral evaluation. This study first shows where Zagzebski is positioned in virtue epistemology. Afterward, the study states the reasons that lead Zagzebski to establish a link between knowledge and morality and tries to show how this link is established in her virtue theory. In this context, Zagzebski’s concern to bring intellectual and moral virtues closer, that is, the motives behind her theory are presented under the following themes in this study: 1- Emphasizing empirical studies in epistemology in contemporary philosophy by naturalist approaches and disregarding the normative dimension of epistemology, 2- Narrowing the framework of morality in modern philosophy, which moves away from ancient thought and the lack of attention to the common points between epistemology and ethics, 3- Inadequacy of existing approaches in epistemology to provide an explanation for the value problem for knowledge, 4- Reflection of problematic structures of action-based ethical theories on theories in epistemology, 5 -Inability to overcome problems such as Internalism and Externalism in epistemological debates. Zagzebski proposes an alternative virtue theory by considering these problems. Her motivation-based responsibilist virtue theory includes components of motivation and reliable success. Zagzebski's motivation-based virtue theory is capable of providing an evaluation of both intellectual and moral virtues. Zagzebski tries to show the similarities and relations between ethics and epistemology within her theory. In addition, she reveals that virtue theory offers solutions to problems such as the definition of knowledge, Gettier issues, and value problem in epistemology. She shows the advantages of theory over other theories. This approach renders the sharp distinction between moral and epistemic evaluation meaningless in Zagzebski's view. In this respect, she extends the field of morality to cover the normative aspects of cognitive activities and argues that intellectual virtues are types of moral virtues, and normative epistemology is a branch of ethics. In this theoretical framework, beliefs will be evaluated in parallel with the evaluation of actions in morality. With her theory, Zagzebski drew attention to critical problems related to contemporary philosophy and made a significant attempt to solve these problems. In particular, Zagzebski's virtue theory provides detailed explanations about what virtue is, points out to advantages of her theory over other theories, draws attention to the reliable success as well as the motivation component, and shows the relationships and closeness between intellectual and moral virtues, which constitute the remarkable aspects of the virtue theory. Zagzebski, in her theory, reveals the points that show the connection between normative epistemology and theoretical ethics. However, it would be more defensible for Zagzebski to remain in the claim of establishing the connection between ethics and epistemology rather than expanding the range of ethics.

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