The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2006) Vol.

XLN

Agent Reliabilism, Subjective

Justification, and Epistemic Credit
Christine McKinnon
Trent University

Abstract
In this paper I examine John Greco’s agent reliabilism, in particular,
his requirement of subjective justification. I argue that his requirement
i s too weak as i t stands to disqualify as knowledge claims some t r u e
beliefs arrived a t by reliable processes and t h a t it is vulnerable to the
“value problem” objection. I develop a more robust account of subjective
justification t h a t both avoids the objection t h a t agents require beliefs
about t h e i r dispositions i n o r d e r t o be subjectively justified a n d
explains why knowledge is more valuable than true belief.

1. Introduction
Virtue epistemologists t r y to ground knowledge claims i n
features of agents, in particular, their intellectual virtues or
cognitive dispositions (or sometimes the motivations associated
with them) and/or their faculties. Most have had little to say
about criteria for good cognitive agency or about the importance
of cognitive character.’ John Greco’s agent reliabilism2 appears
to address this oversight by making agents rather t h a n the
processes, faculties, or dispositions they employ the locus of
reliability, and by requiring that these processes, faculties, or
dispositions be the agents’ own in the sense that would make
t h e t r u e beliefs arrived at by their exercise subjectively
justified. These true beliefs would thus qualify as knowledge
claims.

Christine McKinnon i s Professor and Chair of the Philosophy

Department at Trent University, Canada. Her current research focuses
o n moral a n d intellectual virtues a n d vices, a n d o n character
possession a s a functional good for h u m a n s . S h e i s the author of
Character, Virtue Theories, and the Vices (Broadview Press, 1999)
and several articles on character possession, moral and intellectual
virtues, hypocrisy, and sincerity.

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In this paper I first examine the requirement of subjective

justification that features in agent reliabilism, as developed by
Greco. The requirement is intended t o ensure that agents’ true
beliefs make sense from their perspectives. It is designed to rule
out as knowledge true beliefs arrived at by dispositions that,
however reliable, do not count as the agents’ own. I look a t the
criteria of nonstrangeness, stability, and integration that Greco
offers to explain the relevant sense in which agents’ cognitive
dispositions are truly their own, and I argue that these criteria
do not serve the dual aims of excluding as knowledge claims the
kinds of true beliefs agent reliabilists ought to want t o exclude
and of explaining why agents should be due epistemic credit for
those t r u e beliefs of theirs t h a t a r e subjectively justified. I
argue t h a t , although there is much t h a t is correct about the
attempt t o ground knowledge claims in dispositions t h a t are
truly the agents’ own, Greco’s criteria for t h e right kind of
disposition ownership need t o be strengthened. This more
stringent set of criteria will exclude as knowledge claims
certain true beliefs held by agents, but it will also explain why
agents are due epistemic credit for their knowledge claims and
may not be due similar credit for some of their true beliefs.
I n t h e second p a r t of t h i s paper, I develop these more
stringent criteria, making reference to agents’ cognitive char-
acters. I argue that this development transforms Greco’s agent
reliabilism into something that might qualify more clearly as
character reliabilism. Further, it can provide a response to the
so-called value problem (why is knowledge more valuable than
t r u e belieP3) by granting to cognitive character a value inde-
pendent of the reliability of the dispositions that comprise it.
According to character reliabilism, cognitive character is a n
intrinsic good for humans, and when agents arrive at their true
beliefs through the exercise of dispositions that comprise their
cognitive characters, they can rightly be said t o have knowl-
edge, and they are rightly due epistemic credit for those true
beliefs.

2. Greco’s Agent Reliabilism

Greco’s agent reliabilism requires that reliability be located in
agents and not simply in processes, faculties, or t r a i t s t h a t
agents use. Although his reliabilist approach emerges from a
broadly externalist tradition, Greco’s insistence that reliability
is not sufficient for knowledge forces him t o adopt a “mixed
strategy.” To answer t o the intuition t h a t agents ought to be
sensitive to what makes their claims justified, Greco further
requires what he terms “subjective justification”: agents’ beliefs
must result from the exercise of dispositions and faculties that
are truly their own. Greco wants to disqualify as knowledge
true beliefs arrived at by strange but reliable processes or by

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reliable processes adopted only fleetingly. For true beliefs to

qualify as knowledge, the manner in which agents arrive at
their true beliefs has to seem right to the agents or from the
agents’ perspectives.
Greco provides the following account of knowledge:
S knows p only in cases where (a)S is subjectively justified in
believingp, and @I)as a result of this S is objectively reliable
in believing p.
And he glosses subjective justification as:
S is subjectively justified in believing p if and only if S’s
believingp results from the dispositions that S manifests when
S is motivated to believe the truth.4
(Greco has offered slightly differing accounts of subjective justi-
fication. Sometimes he says agents have to be “properly motiva-
ted to believe what is true,” or t o be “sincerely trying t o believe
what is true.”5 Sometimes he says that the relevant dispositions
a r e those t h a t a r e manifest “when S is thinking conscien-
tiously,” which Greco understands as “thinking honestly.”6He is
careful, however, to insist t h a t he means nothing more
cognitively rigorous than the default mode he supposes each of
us is in when we are trying t o form accurate beliefs about the
world.7)
The requirement of subjective justification is said t o provide
a way of ensuring that agents’ beliefs make sense from their
perspectives, because the dispositions t h a t are implicated in
arriving a t their true beliefs are said to be-in an important
sense-their own,* that is, to be stable properties of their char-
acters. This requirement is thus supposed to rule out as knowl-
edge true beliefs arrived at by strange processes or by processes
adopted in a fleeting manner. Greco also claims that it provides
an account of how agents are sensitive to the reliability of their
evidence, without requiring that they have either occurrent or
dispositional beliefs about their beliefs or about their cognitive
disposition^.^

3. Strange and Fleeting Processes

Greco’s answer to the “strange and fleeting process” objection
reveals a tension with his requirement of subjective justifica-
tion, which is meant to ensure that beliefs are appropriate from
the agents’ points of view. He argues that the objection is to be
avoided under agent reliabilism because the dispositions agents
manifest when motivated to believe the truth are said-in virtue
of being their own-to be necessarily stable and nonstrange
features of them. As Greco points out, dispositions cannot be
fleeting. And while i t seems possible t h a t one might have a
stable disposition t o adopt a reliable process only occasionally,

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such stable dispositions are probably not manifest when one is

motivated to believe the truth.
But Greco means more than nonfleetingness when he talks
about the stability of a disposition. The required stability is
across logical space, and not necessarily across temporal space.
He argues t h a t a disposition is stable if i t produces, other
things being equal, similar results in near possible worlds. A
cognitive disposition that reliably produces true beliefs in this
world is stable if it also reliably produces true beliefs in near
possible worlds. But it is hard to see what “stability” adds here
over and above “reliability,” for the latter is surely best thought
of as holding across logical space as well. Reliable cognitive
dispositions are just those that permit agents t o be sensitive in
the right kinds of ways t o the right kinds of evidence-in this
world and in near possible worlds. Stability across logical space
does seem t o be a feature of reliable cognitive dispositions. It is
just not obvious why stability need be a feature of all disposi-
tions that are the agents’ own in the requisite sense.
Perhaps Greco is simply making an important negative point
here: he is denying that cognitive dispositions have t o persist
through agents’ lifetimes in order t o qualify as belonging t o
agents in the requisite sense. Agents acquire cognitive disposi-
tions-as well as lose them. We might wonder, however, a t what
point in the acquisition of a cognitive disposition it becomes
stable enough to qualify a s a n agent’s own ( a s opposed t o
becoming stable enough to qualify as a disposition), and at what
point it becomes unstable enough to fail to qualify as an agent’s
own (as opposed to becoming unstable enough t o fail to qualify
as a disposition). This points to a general worry about Greco’s
subjective justification requirement: if agents do not need to
have any beliefs about the general merits of cognitive disposi-
tions, it is unclear why the beliefs that result from the exercise
of their own dispositions need be appropriate from their points
of view.
A similar worry occurs when we try t o understand t h e
criterion of “nonstrangeness.” Again, because Greco does not
require that agents have beliefs about their cognitive disposi-
tions, the nonstrangeness cannot be something t h a t agents
detect themselves. Presumably, i t is something t h a t can be
established objectively. But Greco gives us no criteria by which
to make such judgments. Some may think that Alvin Plantinga’s
imagined subject with the brain lesionlo or Laurence Bonjour’s
imagined subject with powers of clairvoyance1’ have strange
belief-forming dispositions. Then again, the imagined scenarios
are strange.I2There are real world examples, however. What
about chicken-sexers? Or water-diviners? Or mathematical idiot
s a ~ a n t s ? ’Or
~ blindsighted persons? Blindsighted persons report
considerable cognitive dissonance when asked to pronounce on
the identity of objects presented to them. And people with rare

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mathematical gifts are often bemused to discover that they can,

apparently effortlessly, produce true mathematical claims. Or
perhaps they are bemused that others do not seem to possess
similar abilities? The statistical rarity of these dispositions can-
not be what makes them strange in Greco’s sense. But neither
would subjective assessments seem to be the right measure,
requiring as they would, contra Greco, some beliefs on the part
of agents about their dispositions. We would need to know more
about what the criteria for strangeness in our world are.
But the more significant problem for Greco is that arriving
at beliefs through the exercise of nonstrange and stable disposi-
tions is what is supposed to ground subjective justification, and
ultimately agents’ claims t o knowledge. And yet, agents are not
required to have any beliefs about their belief-forming disposi-
tions. Nevertheless, some agents must have beliefs about cogni-
tive dispositions in order that judgments of nonstrangeness and
stability can be made. Because these judgments may not be
ones that agents can make about their own dispositions, Greco’s
requirement of subjective justification is one that many agents
will not know whether they satisfy. Greco settles for this conse-
quence because he wants to avoid the vicious regress implicit in
requiring that agents know that they know something before
they can be said to know it.14
In the absence of any requirement that agents assess their
cognitive dispositions as good ones t o have, or identify with
them as ones they would like to motivate them to investigate the
world in determinate ways, i t is not clear t h a t all the non-
strange and stable cognitive dispositions agents manifest when
they are motivated t o believe the truth need be theirs in the
sense required to confer upon them the requisite epistemic credit
for their successful exercise. If meeting objective requirements
of stability and nonstrangeness of dispositions does not succeed
in making agents’ true beliefs arrived a t through their use
subjectively justified and hence epistemically creditworthy, then
we may ask, what is required in order to make sure that the
dispositions are the agents’ own in a way t h a t would render
their beliefs subjectively justified and, when true, epistemically
creditworthy?
In a recent work,15 Greco has strengthened the requirements
dispositions have t o meet in order to be truly the agents’ own,
or to be part of their cognitive characters. In addition t o stabil-
ity, Greco requires that the candidate dispositions be integrated
with the agents’ other cognitive dispositions. This looks like it
might be a way of glossing further the criterion of nonstrange-
ness-except t h a t integration is said to have to do with the
extent t o which the products of the disposition are related t o
other beliefs in the system and with sensitivity t o counter-
evidence.16 Beliefs are products of dispositions, and i t is not
clear that integration of products of dispositions need reflect

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integration of the cognitive dispositions themselves. We would

need t o be told more about what it is for cognitive dispositions
t o be integrated before we would know whether integration of
resulting beliefs is a good test for integration of cognitive
dispositions.
What about the claim t h a t integration of dispositions is
related to sensitivity t o counterevidence? This seems t o be on
the right track, but, again, the sensitivity is surely on the part
of agents and not on the part of one or more of their beliefs or
their cognitive dispositions.17 Certainly, in the statistically
strange cases cited above, one might think t h a t the agents’
dispositions are not well integrated with their other disposi-
tions. But it is less clear t h a t the agents are not sensitive t o
counterevidence.
Furthermore, integration of their dispositions is not some-
thing about which Greco can expect cognitive agents to be able
t o make judgments, given t h a t they do not need t o have any
beliefs about their cognitive dispositions. Again, judgments
about integration of cognitive dispositions that are unavailable
to most agents would not seem t o be the sorts of things t h a t
could render true beliefs arrived at by their exercise subjec-
tively justified in the sense of making sense from their per-
spective. I want t o suggest a way t o provide content t o t h e
requirement of subjective justification without insisting that
agents have beliefs about the reliability of their belief-forming
dispositions on those occasions when they arrive at true beliefs
through their exercise.

4. Epistemic Credit and

Good Cognitive Agency
There is a considerable history of epistemologists trying to deny
knowledge to those agents whose true beliefs are true only as a
matter of luck, or who hold true beliefs only accidentally.
Epistemic luck can be cosmic (as with systematic deception by
an evil genius) o r more local ( a s in the barn facade cases).
Greco’s agent reliabilism seems designed to avoid-among other
things-attributing knowledge to those agents whose beliefs are
only “luckily” true, even if the beliefs result from the exercise
of reliable dispositions. The internalist intuition t h a t Greco
seems anxious t o accommodate is that a cognitive disposition,
no matter how reliable it is, does not deliver knowledge unless
the resulting true beliefs are subjectively justified, t h a t is,
unless they make sense from the agents’ perspectives. This
they will do, Greco claims, if the dispositions a r e truly t h e
agents’ own in the requisite sense.
Many kinds of things acquire true beliefs about the world
via reliable processes, dispositions, and/or faculties. These
include small children, animals, and sleepwalkers (and ther-

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mometers, if beliefs can be held by nonintentional systems). If

we take the notion of epistemic credit t o attach to knowledge-
and not t o true beliefs t h a t are not subjectively justified, no
matter how reliable the process by which they are arrived at-
we will be committed to denying knowledge to small children,
animals, and sleepwalkers. We may also end up denying knowl-
edge t o adults whose true beliefs are not subjectively justified,
according to the criteria developed below. The cost of this con-
clusion will have to be assessed.
The idea that agents deserve epistemic credit for (some of)
their t r u e beliefs is one t h a t h a s i t s home in t h e idea t h a t
cognitive agents are in some sense responsible for (some of)
their epistemic states. This need not mean t h a t agents a r e
responsible for all their cognitive faculties or dispositions. Many
cognitive faculties a r e biologically grounded in a way t h a t
precludes agents from being responsible for possessing them.
And many cognitive dispositions may be relatively difficult or
easy for some agents to acquire, through no fault or merit of
their own. Cases of extreme difficulty (or impossibility) or
extreme facility serve to undermine the thought that agents are
responsible for all their cognitive dispositions. The responsi-
bility-and hence the credit-should be attached to agents’ good
exercise of their faculties or dispositions. Standards for good
exercise of cognitive dispositions are learned by young children
as they learn t o become cognitive agents, and they are further
refined by developing cognitive agents as they seek to become
better cognitive agents.
There are many natural human abilities that normally get
developed and perfected without any self-reflexive awareness on
the part of the agent. Sitting, walking, eating, seeing, etc. seem
t o require no awareness by agents of standards for correctness
and no beliefs about how these feats are achieved. Acquiring
true beliefs would likewise seem t o be a natural human ability,
and one about which agents do not require awareness of stan-
dards for correctness o r beliefs about how they succeed in
acquiring true beliefs. Acquiring true beliefs that are subjec-
tively justified would also seem to be a natural human ability,
but one that differs from these other abilities in obvious ways,
the most important of which may be that subjective justification
seems t o require a higher-order awareness, a n awareness of
myself as the sort of thing that has beliefs and a s the sort of
thing that can wonder whether these beliefs make sense.
Becoming a cognitive agent who can have subjectively justi-
fied beliefs is a necessarily self-reflexive activity. And trying to
become a better cognitive agent is likewise necessarily self-
reflexive. Both endeavors require that agents be aware of them-
selves as the kinds of being who stand in different relations t o
evidence and who form beliefs using cognitive faculties and
dispositions based on the evidence. They have t o be sensitive t o

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the hazards of belief formation: some of their beliefs will be

false, some will be true but not justified, and some will be true
and justified. They have to want to come t o know the t r u t h ,
using optimal methods. Self-reflexive cognitive agents intent on
becoming better cognitive agents will thus want to be moved by
optimal cognitive dispositions (including dispositions to exercise
their cognitive faculties in optimal ways) in the appropriate
circumstances. They therefore will want to develop for them-
selves a cognitive character, comprised of these optimal disposi-
tions, and complete with higher-order dispositions to exercise
the appropriate cognitive dispositions necessary to believe well
under the circumstances. In these respects cognitive agency is
much like moral agency.
Virtue ethicists have employed the notion of a moral char-
acter to help explain the unity of agents’ lives and their motiva-
tional patterns, as well as to explain why certain actions are
praiseworthy and certain persons are admirable. Some have
argued that a moral character is something like an intrinsic
good for humans.18 The process of developing a moral character
begins when agents learn to attribute to themselves and others
beliefs and desires and to evaluate the worthiness of desires
and the fit between beliefs and desire-satisfaction. It continues
as agents come to identify with the set of dispositions by which
they want to be moved in their quest to lead a good human life.
All this is begun in the context of the social and moral com-
munities in which children find themselves, and i n which
certain reasons for acting a r e approved of, certain ends a r e
valued, and certain kinds of persons are admired. Developing a
moral character lends stability and meaning to agents’ lives, in
part by tying together temporally distant parts of their lives
and in part by making explicit t o them what they value and
why, thereby providing them with reasons for acting with which
they can be well pleased.
The analogous notion of a cognitive character can be of help
here. The motivation to possess a good cognitive character is the
motivation to be a good cognitive agent, t o engage in optimal
cognitive activity, t o believe well. Believing is a natural human
activity and believing well is a human excellence, which serves
the brute end of survival a s well as many more subtle ends
associated with human flourishing. But because we have
higher-order capacities-which emerge after we have learned
that not all our beliefs are true-to doubt some of our beliefs
and to recognize t h a t we a n d others sometimes hold false
beliefs o r hold true beliefs for bad reasons o r hold true beliefs
t h a t are only “luckily” true, we also naturally wonder about
standards for excellent cognitive activity. Agents who are moti-
vated to develop a good cognitive character will see that, given
human nature and the nontransparency of the world, there are
certain traits that conduce more than others to excellent cogni-

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tive inquiry, and certain faculties whose reliability is com-

promised under certain conditions. Such agents want to
cultivate those cognitive dispositions t h a t a r e implicated in
excellent cognitive inquiry, as revealed by the cognitive activity
of-including the proffering of reasons by-cognitive agents
recognized to be successful i n their cognitive communities.
Developing a cognitive character is something that takes place
in the context of t h e corrections made and t h e training
encouraged by caregivers, teachers, and fellow cognitive agents.
Sometimes the training is quite explicit. And sometimes incul-
cating the relevant traits requires acts of will.
Because the project of developing a cognitive character
requires self-reflexive awareness and a perspective on one’s
dispositions, agents embarked on character-development can be
subjectively justified in some of their true beliefs. If they have
arrived at their beliefs through the exercise of dispositions or
faculties they have previously endorsed, or are in the process of
endorsing, as good belief-forming dispositions or faculties, these
beliefs will be subjectively justified. Their dispositions will not
be strange, from either an objective or a subjective perspective.
They cannot be strange from a third-person point of view because
they are precisely those dispositions cognitive agents recognized
to be good display in their successful cognitive inquiries.
Neither can these dispositions be strange from a first-person
point of view because agents have endorsed them or deliber-
ately worked to inculcate them. They are thus the agents’ own
in a nonaccidental sense. Although it may be partly a matter of
luck which cognitive dispositions it is hard or easy for particu-
lar agents t o instill (and hence which beliefs they happen to
have in the circumstances), t h a t the beliefs t h a t result from
their exercise are subjectively justified is not a matter of luck.
Supposing that standards for objective nonstrangeness are
located in the cognitive community need not endorse a form of
cognitive relativism. Good cognitive agents a r e those who
reliably get at the t r u t h and avoid error because of their
cognitive dispositions. (Greco’s second condition on knowledge
makes explicit the requirement of objective reliability.) In com-
munities where the most admired cognitive agents fail to get at
the truth, nonoptimal dispositions may be inculcated by those
who, through no fault of their own, are working with poor role
models. But their dispositions will likewise fail t o provide them
reliably with true beliefs. So they will fail to meet the require-
ment on knowledge that beliefs be true.
In order to develop cognitive characters, agents need t o be
self-reflexively aware of themselves as the kinds of beings who
can evaluate and-to a certain extent-regulate their motiva-
tions and dispositions. If we are to locate t h a t which distin-
guishes true belief from knowledge in some feature of cognitive
agents and, moreover, some feature t h a t would ground t h e

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epistemic credit they a r e due for their knowledge claims, i t

seems not enough to require that agents arrive at their true
beliefs through the exercise of one or more of their reliable,
stable, and nonstrange dispositions when they are motivated to
believe the truth. To explain why agents’ knowledge claims are
more epistemically valuable than their true beliefs, we need to
identify something about the manner in which agents arrived at
their true beliefs that reflects credit on them. The credit would
be well earned if they were to arrive at their true beliefs through
cognitive dispositions they had identified with-because of their
perceived merits-as ones they wanted t o comprise their cogni-
tive character, and hence as dispositions by which they wanted
to be moved.
The endorsement of cognitive dispositions by agents required
of character reliabilism ensures t h a t these dispositions a r e
truly the agents’ own. Thus agents can rightly be held respon-
sible for their exercise and rightly deserve credit when their
exercise permits them to engage in optimal cognitive activity
and t o arrive a t true beliefs. I think Greco does suppose t h a t
agents’ stable and reliable dispositions will make up their cog-
nitive character, and I intend much of what I say here about
cognitive character to be an embellishment of his position. But
explicit claims about the self-reflexive n a t u r e of character
development and the requisite endorsement by agents of their
dispositions are needed before Greco’s agent reliabilism can do
for him the required work.
Greco’s requirement of subjective justification is as it stands
too weak t o disqualify as knowledge true beliefs arrived a t by
strange dispositions or processes. This requirement can be made
more stringent, while still appealing to dispositions t o believe,
rather than to agents’ dispositional o r occurrent beliefs about
evidencel9 o r normsz0or their beliefs o r their dispositions. The
appropriate motivation in the requirement of subjective justifi-
cation then becomes, not the motivation t o believe the truth,21
but the motivation t o believe as those with excellent cognitive
characters believe,22where those with excellent cognitive char-
acters both want t o engage in and are reasonably successful a t
engaging in optimal cognitive activity because of their excellent
cognitive characters. Because developing a character is a n
inherently self-reflexive activity, this motivation provides us
with a way to think about the kind of sensitivity that agents
need to have towards their own cognitive dispositions. It has
four further advantages, which I shall not develop here. First, it
stresses the active agency of knowers as well as their depen-
dence on their cognitive community. Second, it permits a more
plausible account of how novice cognitive agents can possess
knowledge. Third, it accords value to some nonobviously truth-
promoting dispositions. Fourth, it permits standards for admir-
able cognitive activity even in those worlds where agents are

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systematically deceived but are in no position t o detect t h e

deception.

5. Sensitivity to
Cognitive Dispositions
Clearly, one challenge is to explicate the kind of identification
with or endorsement of cognitive dispositions undertaken by
agents in order that these dispositions be truly their own in the
sense required t o confer subjective justification, that is, t o be
part of their cognitive characters. This challenge is exacerbated
by two of Greco’s well-founded desires. First there is the desire
to avoid the requirement t h a t agents know t h a t they know
something before their claims qualify as knowledge. The obvious
problem here is one of a vicious regress. Second there is the
desire to avoid the requirement that agents have beliefs about
their own reliability before their claims qualify as knowledge.
The problem here, according t o Greco, is t h a t i t is psycho-
logically implausible that we have occurrent beliefs about the
reliability of our dispositions on each occasion when we can be
said t o have knowledge.23Greco thus objects t o Sosa’s perspec-
tivism because he takes the required perspective t o be inten-
tional. He suggests t h a t instead of requiring dispositional
beliefs, we should settle for dispositions to believe. But then we
seem t o be back with the same problem of determining which
dispositions are the agent’s own-in the requisite sense-and
why.
If we think about the requirement that agents must assess
and evaluate cognitive dispositions a s optimal before they
identify with them and endorse them as part of their cognitive
characters, then we begin t o see what kind of awareness is a t
stake. Agents have t o recognize how certain acquired habits of
thought-as well a s t h e excellent use of certain n a t u r a l
faculties-are implicated in optimal cognitive activity. They
learn this in the context of normative evaluative practices.
Judgments of admiration and praiseworthiness-as well a s
judgments of right and wrong, good and bad, true and false,
justified and unjustified-take place in the moral and cogni-
tive communities agents inhabit and in which they learn to
ascribe t o others and themselves reasons f o r acting and
believing. Agents soon learn t o evaluate these reasons, and t o
evaluate persons as moral and cognitive agents on the basis of
the attitudes they hold toward these reasons. Some persons
want to act upon and believe for good reasons, and some resist.
Some persons try to make a habit of acting upon and believing
for good reasons, while others repeatedly let competing reasons
and motivations get the better of them. Agents soon come to
see others and themselves as beings who are held responsible
for t h e a t t i t u d e s they hold towards moral and cognitive

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reasons. The project of developing a character involves incul-

cating and identifying with those dispositions t h a t agents
come t o approve of, because they come to see them as disposi-
tions possessed by admirable agents, t h a t is, agents whose
characters motivate them t o act and believe well and account
for them reliably succeeding at acting and believing well.
This is not to require t h a t agents have occurrent beliefs
about their dispositions in order for their true beliefs to be
subjectively justified. Agents do need a sense of which cognitive
dispositions and faculties are usually reliable and under what
general kinds of circumstances. They also need to be sensitive
to what kinds of conditions undermine the usual reliability of
dispositions or faculties. These are sensibilities agents acquire
as they are learning to become cognitive agents, a s they are
learning to discriminate between true and false beliefs, between
justified and unjustified beliefs, and between good and bad
reasons for believing. The early low-level instruction t o which
children are exposed includes having their errors corrected as
well a s receiving explanations of why some dispositions a r e
better t h a n others. Successful training results in children
endorsing their natural faculties as reliable-under certain
conditions-and instilling certain dispositions to believe. A
small child who claims that the stick is bent when he observes
it sticking out of the water is not told simply that the stick is
straight. He is told that under certain conditions appearances
can be deceptive. Straight sticks partially immersed in water
appear t o be bent. Likewise for a child who makes false claims
about the size of distant objects he sees. The child may at first
have t o be told explicitly about the ways in which appearances
can be deceptive, but he soon learns t o correct24for the refrac-
tion o r the distance without having t o appeal t o any beliefs
about the deceptiveness of visual appearances under those
conditions. Soon, his beliefs about the straightness of the stick
or the size of distant objects are reliable because he has become
disposed t o make the relevant correction, even though he may
no longer have any explicit beliefs about the deceptiveness of
appearances under these conditions or about the need to make
the “correction.” Greco is right that a child’s claim that the stick
is straight counts as knowledge because i t is a t r u e belief
arrived a t through the exercise of a reliable disposition the
child manifests when he is trying to acquire accurate beliefs
about the world. But it is a disposition the child had to acquire.
And the child acquired it through explicit training, or at least
experimentation on his part. What might have been explicit
beliefs at earlier points in his cognitive development were
replaced by, as he matured, dispositions to believe.
Likewise, caregivers and teachers can explain to children
t h e value of being open-minded o r careful. Much explicit
instruction about t h e h a z a r d s of being closed-minded o r

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careless may be required. And many temptations that under-

mine open-mindedness and carefulness may have to be resisted.
At the start, cognitive agents, like moral agents, may be aware
of having to make a deliberate effort-fuelled sometimes by
quite conscious beliefs about the merits of the disposition they
a r e trying to instill or about the desirability of emulating
admirable cognitive agents-to believe in ways approximating
t h e ways in which open-minded o r careful persons would
probably believe. As they gradually become more successful a t
believing after the fashion of open-minded o r careful persons,
and as they are motivated more and more to believe in ways
that admirable cognitive agents believe, their beliefs about good
ways of believing may be available to them only in principle.
They may be able to retrieve-or articulate-these beliefs only
if they reflect hard enough on the question of good cognitive
agency. Of course, this is not something agents have to do when
they believe as good cognitive agents believe. When they believe
as good cognitive agents believe they are motivated to believe
by those optimal dispositions to believe that they have endorsed.
Whatever training agents might have undergone or whatever
beliefs they might have had about t h e merits of cognitive
dispositions and the limitations of cognitive faculties need not
be available to cognitive agents as explicit beliefs once disposi-
tions to believe have been endorsed. Their endorsement reflects
an assessment of them as good dispositions to be moved by and
as ones agents want to be moved by, or, in the case, of percep-
tual faculties, as ones on which they can rely.
When maturing cognitive agents engage in optimal cognitive
activity, it is dispositions t o believe, rather than beliefs about
dispositions, that are manifest. Cognitive development comes in
many stages, and different kinds of dispositions will be active
earlier than others. Normal perceptual faculties will reliably
generate knowledge claims with only minimal training
concerning undermining conditions. It will be more difficult for
developing cognitive agents to instill dispositions to believe that
involve overcoming temptations (including laziness, carelessness,
dogmatism, pride, etc.) or that require cognitive sophistication
to appreciate their merits. Greco’s agent reliabilism, which
appeals to stable dispositions cognitive agents happen t o have,
ignores the history of training and effort t h a t underlies the
gradual acquisition of many of our cognitive dispositions and
the gradual recognition of the limits of reliability of many of our
cognitive faculties. I t also ignores the self-reflexive attitude
agents have towards their cognitive dispositions and faculties.
And it is this capacity for self-reflexive awareness that makes
possible subjective justification.
If we modify Greco’s subjective justification requirement so
that agents have to have been aware of and endorsed-not just
manifested-those dispositions t h a t reliably lead to their

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 Christine McKinnon

acquiring true beliefs, we can see a way t o understand t h e

requirement that agents’ dispositions must be their own. We
can also see how the requirement t h a t agents endorse their
cognitive dispositions does indeed permit subjective justification
and thereby knowledge. Greco is right to identify dispositions t o
believe rather than dispositional or occurrent beliefs as those
features of agents t h a t a r e relevant t o t h e requirement of
subjective justification. But the dispositions t o believe-if they
are to do their work-have to be ones about whose contribution
to good cognitive agency agents have t o have had some aware-
ness. In this they are unlike dispositions to walk or to talk or to
avoid danger.
One might object t h a t this sets the bar for knowledge too
high. It requires implausibly high standards of self-reflexive
awareness for ordinary decent cognitive agents. I am relying on
an analogy with virtue ethics here. According t o virtue ethics,
virtuous agents are ones motivated by virtuous dispositions.
These dispositions are ones that virtuous agents have endorsed
and inculcated because they recognize that the exercise of these
dispositions permits them t o lead good human lives. Agents
wishing t o lead good human lives want t o know what disposi-
tions make this more likely; these are the dispositions they
want t o endorse or instill and by which they want to be moved.
Actions t h a t manifest one or more of these dispositions are-
other things being equal-good actions. In order t o perform
actions as good persons perform them, agents must be capable
of the kind of self-reflexive awareness required in order to think
of themselves as responsible both for their actions and for their
reasons for acting. While small children (and animals) can be
causally responsible for bringing about good outcomes through
their actions, these actions are not the sorts of things that are
subjectively justified for small children. Nor do small children
deserve moral credit for these actions.
Virtue epistemologists likewise ought to require that knowl-
edge claims are-other things being equal-true beliefs t h a t
agents arrive a t through the exercise of dispositions they have
previously endorsed a s optimal. Prior t o endorsing or incul-
cating these dispositions, agents might once have had beliefs
about their efficacy. O r they might simply have come t o rely
upon them in what they were trained t o recognize as appro-
priate circumstances. They need not-at the moment of acquiring
true beliefs through the exercise of their dispositions-have
either dispositional or occurrent beliefs about their dispositions.
When experienced drivers successfully shift from third gear
down to second as they turn corners, they manifest dispositions
t o shift gears t h a t they acquired partly as a result of explicit
beliefs they once had about switching gears and partly as a
result of much practice. Experienced drivers’ successful maneu-
vers can be explained by citing their dispositions t o switch

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gears at appropriate times, dispositions t h a t , over time,

replaced the beliefs that guided novice drivers’ earlier behavior.
Successful driving instruction involves instilling in learners
beliefs about how and when t o shift gears and then having
learners practice enough so that these beliefs are replaced by
stable dispositions to make the motions necessary to switch
gears in appropriate circumstances, that is, when it feels right
t o them t o do so. But nothing is t o be gained by insisting that
experienced drivers have dispositional or occurrent beliefs about
switching gears, or about the conditions under which gears are
to be switched, o r about how one goes about switching gears, or
about their own dispositions. Recognizing that persons require
explicit instruction before they become proficient a t driving a
car with a standard transmission and noting t h a t the beliefs
they acquire during their training contribute to their success at
car driving does not mean that these beliefs need to be avail-
able once they have learned t o drive. Nor does it over-intellec-
tualize the activity of car driving to note that driving behavior
t h a t was once governed, at least in part, by explicit beliefs
becomes governed by dispositions experienced drivers have
instilled. A similar charge would seem to be equally misplaced
in the cognitive case.
While one might concede that in cases of reflective knowl-
edge, beliefs are subjectively justified only if they are arrived at
by dispositions that agents have previously endorsed, one might
still object t h a t in the most straightforward cases of animal
knowledge, such a requirement is misguided. Babies and small
children can surely have beliefs about the world long before
they can have beliefs about belief-formation or about cognitive
dispositions or about good cognitive agency. And they can have
t r u e beliefs. This is no doubt correct. But why should we
suppose they are subjectively justified in their true beliefs? As
long a s we accept the internalist requirement of subjective
justification, then surely only those beings capable of being
subjectively justified are capable of possessing k n o ~ l e d g eAnd
.~~
as long as we accept Greco’s interpretation of subjective justifi-
cation, then only those beings capable of having the kind of self-
awareness that permits them to assess whether a belief seems
right to them are capable of being subjectively justified.
I have been arguing that the requirement of subjective justi-
fication is not satisfied simply by the fact that agents’ beliefs
result from them exercising dispositions-no m a t t e r how
reliable-they happen to possess. The requirement must suppose
a conception of cognitive agency that, minimally, requires an
awareness by agents of themselves as the kind of being that can
have true (and false) beliefs about the world and that acquires
beliefs about the world in various ways and supports them for
various reasons, some of them better t h a n others. Children
become cognitive agents-as they become moral agents-through

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 Christine McKinnon

exposure to and training in the normative cognitive and moral

practices of their communities. It is in this context t h a t they
develop conceptions of themselves as beings capable of acting
and believing for reasons and as beings who come to be held
responsible for their actions and beliefs as they take increasing
responsibility for developing their moral and cognitive selves.
Beings incapable of this kind of self-reflexive perspective may
well come t o have true beliefs about the world. They may well
act in ways that enhance the well-being of others. They may
even do so reliably. But such beings lack a conception of them-
selves as agents t h a t permits their beliefs o r actions to be
subjectively justified.

6. Character Reliabilism
The objection inherent in the value problem is that the product
of a reliable process seems no more valuable than a similar
product that results from a process that is not reliable. So the
reliability of agents’ dispositions that are manifest when they
arrive a t knowledge claims cannot be what distinguishes the
value of their t r u e beliefs and the value of their knowledge
claims. Invoking agents whose reliable dispositions are manifest
is clearly a move in the right direction. But agents’ attitudes
toward their dispositions a r e also relevant. Good cognitive
agents have t o want t o be motivated by those dispositions that
are implicated in the best kinds of cognitive activity. So they
have to want to be aware of which dispositions permit success-
ful cognitive inquiry, and they have to want to be motivated by
them. Having reliable truth-conducive dispositions will permit
agents to arrive at many true beliefs. Recognizing the merits of
these dispositions and succeeding in being motivated by them
in their cognitive investigations will permit agents t o believe
well.
The sensitivity that agents require toward their dispositions
must be robust enough t o permit them to see-at least in prin-
ciple-what it is about the way in which they arrive at their
beliefs under the cognitive circumstances in which they find
themselves that makes them likely to be true. Otherwise, it is
hard to see why they should deserve epistemic credit for holding
their true beliefs; and it is hard to understand why we might
still admire their cognitive investigations even if they result in
false beliefs. Character reliabilism would require that agents
themselves have an awareness of the value of cognitive dispo-
sitions and of the circumstances under which cognitive faculties
a r e likely to be unreliable. I t requires agents to have made
some effort to endorse those dispositions they recognize to be
cognitively valuable and instill them a s ones by which they
want to be moved. For dispositions to do t h e kind of work
Greco’s agent reliabilism seems t o require-that is, for their

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exercise to form the basis of subjective justification-the sense

in which the dispositions have t o be the agents’ own h a s to
involve something more t h a n stability and nonstrangeness.
Agents who want to develop admirable cognitive characters
recognize the need for a self-reflexive perspective on the extent
t o which their cognitive dispositions permit their cognitive
‘ activities to measure up. They do not have to be able t o articu-
late precisely what their limitations are, or what constitutes
their efficacy. And they do not have to have beliefs about them
when they manifest them in arriving at their knowledge claims.
Agents’ training in the context of a community in which stan-
dards of cognitive excellence and admirability are developed
permits them to discern which dispositions a r e cognitively
effective, and under what circumstances.
Linda Zagzebski has suggested that Greco ought t o call his
position “character reliabilism”26if it is t o succeed in locating
the value of knowledge in something other than the reliability
of agents’ dispositions. I have tried to develop Greco’s position
in a way that would make this label apposite by requiring an
endorsement on the part of agents of those dispositions they
want t o have as part of their cognitive characters. I have also
suggested that the more appropriate motivation in the subjec-
tive justification requirement is the motivation to believe as
good cognitive agents believe rather t h a n the motivation to
believe the Good cognitive character is a human excel-
lence. And it permits agents t o believe well by furnishing them
with desires and reliable dispositions t o do so, grounded in an
awareness of why their exercise constitutes believing well. In
the stages when agents are developing their cognitive char-
acters, they may have many explicit beliefs about, and they may
be self-reflexively aware of, many of their dispositions. As
agents mature, explicit training in and explicit beliefs about
optimal cognitive dispositions and about optimal uses of cogni-
tive faculties are replaced by dispositions t o believe in cogni-
tively optimal ways. Character development is a n ongoing
process, and dispositions t o believe can coexist with explicit
beliefs about the merits of cognitive dispositions, including
those with which agents have yet to identify. Because of the
history of their acquisition and/or endorsement, the dispositions
and faculties that agents manifest when they believe as good
cognitive agents believe are truly the agents’ own in a way that
explains why beliefs resulting from their exercise are subjec-
tively justified and why true beliefs resulting from their exercise
qualify as knowledge claims deserving epistemic credit.2s

Notes
’ This may not be quite fair: Ernest Sosa, who is clearly a pioneer
in the field, talks about cognitive character, and the later Alvin

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Goldman also develops a position t h a t purports to ground knowledge

in cognitive character. John Greco, too, thinks of his position as one
that appeals to cognitive character. The tendency, however, has been to
suppose that characters are made up of the dispositions agents happen
to have, and little is made of character development as a self-reflexive
activity.
See John Greco, ”Agent Reliabilism,” in Philosophical Perspec-
tives i n Epistemology 13, ed. by James Tomberlin (Oxford: Blackwell,
1999), 273-96; J o h n Greco, Putting Skeptics i n Their Place (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ch. 7; a n d J o h n Greco,
“Further Thoughts on Agent Reliabilism: Replies to Cohen, Geivett,
Kvanvig, and Schmitt and Lahroodi,” Philosophical and Phenomen-
ological Research 66, no. 2 (2003): 466-80.
Linda Zagzebski suggests t h a t unless the value of agents’ char-
acters is more t h a n t h e value of t h e reliability of their dispositions,
Greco’s agent reliabilism may fail to avoid t h e value problem. See
Linda Zagzebski, “From Reliabilism to Virtue Epistemology,” in Knowl-
edge, Belief; and Character, ed. by Guy Axtell (Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield, ZOOO), 118.
John Greco, “Virtues and Rules in Epistemology,” in Virtue Epis-
temology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, ed. by Abrol
Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001), 137. See also John Greco, “Further Thoughts on Agent Relia-
bilism: Replies to Cohen, Geivett, Kvanvig, and Schmitt and Lahroodi,”
475.
John Greco, Putting Skeptics in Their Place, 192. (Part of chapter
7 of Putting Skeptics i n Their Place is a version of t h e earlier “Agent
Reliabilism.” Page references will be to Putting Skeptics in Their
Place.)
Ibid., 190.
Ibid., 190-91.
Ibid., 191.
Ibid., 188-91.
lo See Alvin P l a n t i n g a , Warrant: The Current Debate (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1993), 199.
l 1 See Laurence Bonjour, “ E x t e r n a l i s t Theories of Empirical
Knowledge,” Midwest Studies i n Philosophy 5 (1980): 53-73.
l 2 Stewart Cohen, J o n a t h a n Kvanvig, a n d Reza Lahroodi a n d
Frederick Sch m i t t a l l object to Greco’s h a n d l i n g of t h e imagined
examples of ag e n t s a r r i v i n g at t h e i r beliefs through s t r a n g e a n d
fleeting processes. See Stewart Cohen, “Greco’s Agent Reliabilism,”
Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 65, no. 2 (2003): 437-41;
J o n a t h a n .Kvanvig, “Simple Reliabilism a n d Agent Reliabilism,”
Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 65, no. 2 (2003): 451-56;
Reza Lahroodi and Frederick Schmitt, “Comments on J o h n Greco’s
Putting Skeptics i n Their Place,” Philosophical and Phenomenological
Research 65, no. 2 (2003): 457-63.
l 3 Greco seems t o w a n t to accord knowledge to idiot savants;
Zagzebski does not. It is not clear that Greco’s agent reliabilism should
consider the true beliefs of idiot savants to be knowledge claims. See
J o h n Greco, “Two Kinds of Intellectual Virtue,” Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 60, no. 1 (2000): 182. See Linda Zagzebski,
“Responses,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60, no. 1
(2000), 208.

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l4 John Greco, Putting Skeptics in Their Place, 181-84.

l5 John Greco, “Virtue a n d Luck, Epistemic a n d Otherwise,”
Metaphilosophy 34, no. 3 (2003): 353-66.
l6 Ibid., 358.
Ibid., 358. See also J o h n Greco, “ F u r t h e r Thoughts on Agent
Reliabilism: Replies to Cohen, Geivett, Kvanvig, a n d Schmitt and
Lahroodi,” 474.
See, for example, Joel Kupperman, Character (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1991); C h r i s t i n e McKinnon, Character, Virtue
Theories, and the Vices (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press,
1999); Edmund Pincoffs, Quandaries and Virtues (Lawrence, KS: The
University Press of Kansas, 1986).
l9 Greco writes of agents having beliefs about the reliability of their
euidence. See his “Agent Reliabilism,” 289-91. But it is surely beliefs
about the reliability of their dispositions or faculties (or perhaps of
themselves as cognitive agents) that are in question.
2o In his earlier works, Greco spoke of cognitive agents countenan-
cing norms or rules of good reasoning. See John Greco, “Internalism
and Epistemically Responsible Belief,” Synthese 85 (1990): 250-51;
John Greco, “Virtues a n d Vices of Virtue Epistemology,” C a n a d i a n
Journal of Philosophy 23, no. 3 (1993): 423-29. More recently, however,
he has expressed skepticism t h a t all or even much of human thought
should be understood as governed by rules of good reasoning. See John
Greco, Putting Skeptics in Their Place, 192-200.
21 James Montmarquet is one who warns of t h e potential fanati-
cism of agents motivated by a conscientious pursuit of t h e truth. He
argues t h a t conscientiousness as a virtue needs to be regulated by
other virtues. See James Montmarquet, “Epistemic Virtue,” Mind 96
(1987): 483. Christopher Hookway brought to my attention the way in
which the protagonist in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the
Dog in the Night-Time (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2003) illustrates a
way in which a relentless pursuit of the truth can be inconsistent with
good cognitive agency.
22 This would seem not to be a n instance of the conditional fallacy,
identified by Robert K. Shope in “The Conditional Fallacy in Contem-
porary Philosophy,” Journal of Philosophy 75, no. 8 (1978): 397-413.
The claim is not t h a t cognitive agents aspiring to be better ought to
have just those beliefs t h a t excellent cognitive agents have, but t h a t
aspiring cognitive agents want to be motivated by dispositions and
faculties t h a t characterize and motivate excellent cognitive agents.
Aspiring cognitive agents will have different beliefs, will s t a n d i n
different evidential relations to the world, and, most importantly, will
have different dispositions t h a n do excellent cognitive agents. Until
aspiring cognitive agents succeed i n instilling t h e dispositions by
which they wish to be motivated, they may well have to use tricks to
induce them to believe well, tricks t h a t excellent cognitive agents
would not use. And beliefs may be subjectively justified for excellent
cognitive agents when those same beliefs are not subjectively justified
for aspiring cognitive agents. Pursuing the overall goal of becoming a n
excellent cognitive agent is consistent with holding beliefs or adopting
strategies that excellent cognitive agents do not hold or do not have to
adopt.
23 John Greco, Putting Skeptics in Their Place, 188.
24 It is not clear t h a t “correct” is the best term: we do not think of

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beliefs about t h e t h r e e dimensionality of objects a s resulting from

corrections for the two-dimensionality of our visual appearances.
25 E r n e s t Sosa distinguishes a n i m a l knowledge a n d reflective
knowledge, ar g u i n g t h a t a n i ma l knowledge c a n be a p t , w h e r e a s
reflective knowledge is the sort of knowledge t h a t can be subjectively
justified. See, for example, E r n e s t Sosa, “Intellectual Virtues i n
Perspective,” i n Knowledge i n Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991), 270-93. As is apparent, I am tempted by t h e
claim t h a t many cases of animal knowledge a r e merely apt, and not
subjectively justified. My position differs from Sosa’s in t h a t I do not
require for subjective justification t h a t a g e n t s g r a s p t h a t a n y
particular belief they have be grounded in one of their reliable cogni-
tive dispositions. The beliefs about cognitive dispositions and faculties
that character reliabilism requires are beliefs that inform the develop-
ment of cognitive character in maturing cognitive agents. They are not
beliefs about the origin of particular beliefs in particular dispositions.
One consequence of this is that, over the course of becoming a mature
cognitive agent, the kind of true beliefs t h a t a n agent once had as a p t
knowledge may well become subjectively justified for that agent.
26 Linda Zagzebski, “From Reliabilism to Virtue Epistemology,” 118.
27 Apart from t h e h a z a r d s of a possible fanaticism alluded to i n
note 21 above, a further reason to think t h a t t h i s motivation is too
narrow is that the higher-order intellectual virtue of integrity, as well
a s virtues like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness, might get
excluded if the relevant motivation were “to believe the truth.”
28 I would like to acknowledge t h e helpful comments on earlier
versions of this paper by J o h n Greco, Christopher Hookway, Wayne
Riggs, Neil Tennant, Jay Wood, and three anonymous referees.

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