Abstract

Intellectual virtues such as curiosity, open-mindedness, attentiveness, intellectual courage, and intellectual tenacity are clearly important to educational theory and practice. Hence, if situationist critiques of moral character and virtue ethics are successful, this may spell trouble for the application of virtue epistemology to educational theory and practice. Baehr introduces three criteria according to which virtue possession can be evaluated: scope, frequency, and motivation. A person might also exhibit these aspects of virtue maximally, robustly, or minimally. Baehr carefully articulates conditions for maximal, robust, and minimal virtue with respect to scope, frequency, and motivation, and argues that a viable defense against situationist challenges for the educational use of virtue epistemology is available once the above distinctions are respected. He also concedes that the project of educating for intellectual virtues must listen closely to developments in situationist psychology.