The relevance of the normative question to responsibilist Virtue Epistemology and the possibility of a deontological epistemology

Abstract

In this article, I question the performance of the responsabilist approach in Virtue Epistemology to answer the normative question. To do this, I indicate that the concept of virtue is not enough to acknowledge the motivation for our epistemic acts neither individually nor socially. For this reason, I suggest drawing on the Kantian epistemology of testimony to show how the underlying ethic would allow us to conceive a theory of knowledge based on a proposal that can indeed answer the normative question. Thus, I present an alternative approach to  analyze the possibility of a deontological epistemology, that is, an epistemology whose moral foundation (and therefore, normative respect to all actions that involve people and not mere processes in the acquisition and diffusion of knowledge) stands on its own. In this way, I concluded that it is necessary to consider the Kantian approach as a ground for epistemological research because it hasn’t been taken seriously.