Epistemic Justice: Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Psychiatry

The value turn in epistemology generates a particularly influential position titled as virtue epistemology. It is a popular and influential epistemological project that postulates intellectual virtues of knower, not a truth of propositions, as central epistemic values. In the first part of the article, we explain briefly on what value turn we refer to and the main thesis of virtue epistemology, pointing to the diversity of attitudes of epistemologists who are inclined to this approach. We would like to stress the significant role of this project in the spreading of horizons, i.e. epistemological scopes and themes. The second part focusses on the virtues of epistemic responsibility and epistemic justice as particularly appropriate for evaluation of social epistemic processes such as testimony and communication, or conversation in general. In the third part, we will show how specific epistemic activity - communication act in psychiatry and psychotherapy - can be more appropriately analysed and evaluated rather from the perspective of epistemic virtues of justice, than from the epistemic approach built on the value monism of the truth.