New publication by Duncan Pritchard: ‘Virtue Epistemology, Extended Cognition, and the Epistemology of Education’, in Universitas: Monthly Review of Philosophy and Culture, by Duncan Pritchard

Abstract: How should we, from an epistemological point of view, understand the role of technology in education? On one very natural conception of the epistemic goals of education, such technology can only at best play an enabling role, since ultimately the task of education is to enhance the unaided cognitive abilities of the subject. This way of conceiving of the epistemic goals of education can be compounded once one notices that virtue epistemology offers a very natural framework for understanding the epistemology of education. This is because virtue epistemology often tacitly incorporates a commitment to epistemic individualism, such that one’s cognitive abilities are to be understood exclusively in terms of one’s ‘onboard’, and thus in this sense ‘internal’, cognitive processes. Hence, when virtue epistemology is applied to the epistemology of education, this seems to confirm the idea that technology can at best only play a supporting role. It is argued, however, that the virtue epistemology framework is in fact entirely compatible with an epistemic anti-individualism which allows technology which is outwith the skin of the subject to nonetheless form a constitutive part of the subject’s cognitive processes. It is claimed that such an extended virtue epistemology has a number of attractive features, and some of its implications for the epistemology of education are explored.

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Virtue Epistemology, Extended Cognition, and the Epistemology of Education