The Mismeasure of the Self: A Study in Vice Epistemology
Robin McKenna
Abstract
Alessandra Tanesini's new book may be a ‘study in vice epistemology’, but it possesses many virtues and few vices. Let me call attention to three of its virtues. First, Tanesini stakes out a distinctive position within vice epistemology, according to which intellectual vices have affective and motivational bases. Second, she engages extensively with social psychology. Tanesini pursues a marriage between vice (and virtue) epistemology and attitude psychology. Her aim is to provide secure psychological foundations for philosophical theorising about virtue and vice. Third, Tanesini engages extensively with the moral and political concerns of feminist philosophers. The result is a defence of vice epistemology that is not just sensitive to but deeply informed by and relevant to social psychology and feminist philosophy. Here is a brief summary of the book. Chapter 1 situates it within the tradition of social vice epistemology. More specifically, Tanesini pursues ‘autonomous social vice epistemology with an ameliorative goal’ (p. 8). Breaking this down, she is interested in (i) the nature of intellectual vice, (ii) its impact on inquiry, (iii) its impact on the vicious individual and those around them, and (iv) how to tackle intellectual vice. The chapter also introduces one of Tanesini's core ideas, which is that it is an essential component of intellectual excellence that one has an estimation of one's intellectual self-worth that is driven by a motivation to ‘know oneself’—to form an accurate estimation of one's abilities. (Note that this is not to say that it is an essential component that one actually has an accurate estimation; one might be unlucky.) As befits a study in vice epistemology, Tanesini is particularly interested in individuals who don’t have a measure of their epistemic worth—who ‘mismeasure’ themselves.