Intellectual Virtues in Education: Digital Challenges

Abstract

The study discusses the issue arising at the intersection of the virtue epistemology, the philosophy of education, and the contemporary philosophy of technology. Education turns out to be a field of application of the virtue epistemology, and attention to digital technologies gives it an expanded character. From an epistemological point of view, it is obvious that intellectual virtues have advantages in the field of education, concretizing its goals, justifying the acquisition of knowledge, endowing educational practices with value meaning. However, from a pedagogical point of view, there are doubts on the possibility of including intellectual virtues in specific educational strategies. The hypothesis is that it is precisely because of the interaction of digital technologies and intellectual virtues that the latter can become a distinct concern in education. In the first section, we analyze the intellectual virtues in relation to education and explicate the issue. In the second, we clarify the approach of the virtue epistemology to the education by including digital technologies in these practices. We demonstrate that the action of digital technologies provokes the “breaking” of intellectual virtues, which makes it necessary and concrete to move towards them. We relate the understanding of such provocative action with not only instrumental, but also social character of technologies. As a result, we expand the virtue epistemology, which does not consider this aspect, by referring to the critical theory of technology and offer the basis for improving specific educational strategies.