Epistemic Axiology

An overview is presented of what I take to be (some main aspects of) the role of the intellectual virtues within the epistemological enterprise. Traditionally, the theory of knowledge has been thought to be central to the epistemological project, but since, as I explain, the intellectual virtues aren't required for knowledge, this might suggest that they have only a marginal role to play in epistemological debates. I argue against this suggestion by showing how the intellectual virtues are in fact crucial to several core (and interrelated) epistemological topics, including the nature of inquiry, epistemic axiology and our understanding of ignorance.

One of the main problems of modern rationalistic theories of science is the non-eliminability of the subjective factor in the development of science. Temperate rationalism of Newton-Smith was an attempt to solve this problem. J. Życiński developed his own version of temperate rationalism in which the subjective factor played much more substantial role. In the article I am presenting his specific idea of the personal commitment as a necessary condition for rationalism and science. In the first section I proceed to reconstruct Życiński’s argument leading him to the conclusion of this epistemological necessity. Next in the section 2 I present his idea of the epistemological uncertainty principle as a consequence of the subjective commitment. In sections 3 and 4 I explore axiological and pragmatic aspects of the Zyciński’s solution. Finally, in the section 5 I do compare his tempe-rate rationalism with Newton-Smith’s proposal in the context of the Polanyi’s idea of personal knowledge showing differences in their re-spective approach to the role of the subjective factor in science and rationalism.