The intellectual virtues include two seemingly quite different types of traits: reliable faculties on the one hand and inquiry‐regulating traits of intellectual character like conscientiousness and openmindedness on the other. Extant virtue theories do not appear to have provided a single account that adequately covers both types of virtue. In this paper, I examine the different ways in which a trait or disposition can contribute to our cognitive goal of acquiring significant true beliefs. I propose that the two types of virtues can be understood as contributing in different ways to our cognitive goal, and develop a general framework for understanding their value.

Reliabilist theories of knowledge face the "generality problem"; any token of a belief-forming processes instantiates types of different levels of generality, which can vary in reliability. I argue that we exploit this situation in epistemic evaluation; we appraise beliefs in different ways by adverting to reliability at different levels of generality. We can detect at least two distinct uses of reliability, which underlie different sorts of appraisals of beliefs and believers.Reliabilism holds that a belief's epistemic status depends in part on whether it was produced by a reliable process. The approach faces the generality problem. Reliability is a property of a process type. But any token belief is produced by a token process instantiating many types that can vary in reliability. Thus, a complete reliabilist theory must determine how to select which process types to evaluate to determine the status of beliefs. While this situation rightly worries reliabilists, it has one advantage for epistemic appraisal; it makes it possible to appraise beliefs in different ways by adverting to reliability at different levels. We can detect at least two uses of reliability in appraisal. One is based on the reliability of the process narrowly construed and evaluates the status of the particular belief. Another makes use of reliability of a more broadly construed process and describes the praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of the agent in having formed the belief.

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Ernest Sosa's virtue perspectivism goes beyond standard reliabilism by requiring that agents with justified beliefs not only derive their beliefs from virtuous cognitive faculties but have an epistemic perspective that explains the origin of the beliefs and makes their belief-set coherent.

Book Reviews/Comptes rendus 811 both conceptually richer and more varied than any empiricist might have imagined. Children appear to have natural affinities for numerical and physical reasoning as well as native conceptual abilities involving concepts of physical objects and causes. 6 Such results might encourage a modern Humean to take advantage of these recently uncovered cognitive capacities in the formation of complex concepts from simple impressions while simultaneously augmenting the theory's representational resources. Perhaps, then, the correct response to Fodor is not an empiricism minus, but an empiricism plus. Notes 1 As Fodor puts it, "Hume's cognitive science is a footnote to Descartes's, and ours is a footnote to his"(p. 8). 2 Fodor also claims that we cannot generate a fully intentional account of cognition from epistemic capacities. Extensions cannot, he argues, suffice for intensions. See pp. 24-26.