Non-evidential virtue epistemology: Some queries about cornerstones, epistemic alchemy, and scepticism

Abstract

Jakob Ohlhorst’s Trust Responsibly develops a dual process, virtue-theoretic answer to a crucial challenge to hinge epistemology, the so-called “demarcation problem” of distinguishing epistemically good from epistemically bad hinges. The book is packed with insightful ideas about many epistemological issues, offering carefully crafted arguments for a picture of knowledge that merges in an extremely attractive way hinge epistemology, virtue epistemology, and dual process theory. In this contribution to the book symposium on Trust Responsibly, I focus on Ohlhorst’s characterisation of cornerstone propositions, his take on epistemic alchemy, and the internalist credentials of his answer to the sceptical challenge, raising some worries about these aspects of his account.