Virtue epistemology and the epistemology of virtue (Logos, phronesis, moral epistemology)

The ancient Greeks almost universally accepted the thesis that virtues are skills. Skills have an underlying intellectual structure (logos), and havin g a particular skill entails understanding the relevant logos, possessing a general ability to diagnose and solve problems (phronesis), as well as hav ing appropriate experience. Two implications of accepting this thesis for m oral epistemology and epistemology in general are considered. Thinking of v irtues as skills yields a viable virtue epistemology in which moral knowled ge is a species of a general kind of knowledge that is not philosophically suspect. Also, the debate between internalists and externalists in epistemo logy is subversively resolved as moot by adopting this strategy: the locus of justification for a belief is in the nature of skill. Thus, the continge nt fact that some skills allow Homo Sapiens an 'internal access,' while oth ers do not, is theoretically neutral when considering the nature of justifi cation per se.