Hybrid virtues

The controversies about cases such us of epistemic injustice, epistemic paternalism and epistocracy indicate that knowledge needs to be considered as socially situated phenomena and, consequently, that epistemic attitudes, social practices and institutions require evaluation from both an epistemic and an ethical/political perspective. The project titled as ethics of knowing and, especially, promising concept of hybrid virtues or corresponding hybrid view provides a desirable framework for the comprehensive evaluation of beliefs, social institutions and practices that embrace intellectual as well as ethical and political values. In the paper, I will start with exploring testimonial justice as a form of epistemic justice or, more precisely, by questioning of both epistemic and ethical justificatory status of credibility deficit and credibility excess in everyday epistemic practices. I will argue that not only an epistemic attitude such as credibility excess, but also social practices such as epistemic paternalism or epistocracy demonstrate the conflict of epistemic and ethical/political values and impose on us various doubts concerning the content of a hybrid view. Consequently, I will address the questions of the minimal conditions of epistemic attitude, practice or institution that deserve an ascription of virtuous in a hybrid sense.