‘Virtue epistemologists have changed the typical analysis of the concept of knowledge: instead of defining it in terms of various properties of belief, they have defined it in terms of certain properties of the epistemic subject, i.e. its intellectual virtues. Two major varieties of virtue epistemology have emerged in the literature: the reliabilist variety, which identifies intellectual virtues with those faculties that reliably guide the epistemic subject to form true beliefs (vision, memory, deductive reasoning etc.), and the responsibilist variety, which identifies virtues with intellectual character traits like open-mindedness, thoroughness, perseverance, courage etc.
The purpose of my presentation is to tackle the problem of what justifies our beliefs about modalities and how we gain knowledge of what is possible/necessary, from a virtue-theoretic perspective. I will argue that both kinds of intellectual virtues, i.e. faculty-virtues and character-virtues, play an essential role in explaining modal knowledge and justifying modal beliefs.’