1 For Knowledge, Virtue and Action, (eds.) T. Henning & D. Schweikard, (Routledge). ROBUST VIRTUE EPISTEMOLOGY AND EPISTEMIC DEPENDENCE Jesper Kallestrup and Duncan Pritchard University of Edinburgh ABSTRACT. According to robust virtue epistemology, knowledge is a cognitive achievement, where this means that the knowing subject’s cognitive success is because of her cognitive ability. It is argued that a fundamental problem which faces this view is its inability to accommodate the fact that a subject’s knowledge can be dependent upon factors that are entirely independent of her cognitive agency. This is the problem of epistemic dependence. It is argued that this problem has both a positive and a negative aspect. In the former case, factors entirely independent of a subject’s cognitive agency (even by robust virtue epistemic lights) can ensure that even where that subject fails to exhibit a cognitive achievement she nonetheless knows. In the latter case, factors entirely independent of a subject’s cognitive agency (even by robust virtue epistemic lights), can ensure that she fails to have knowledge even though she exhibits a cognitive achievement. 1. ROBUST VIRTUE EPISTEMOLOGY One of the most important proposals in contemporary epistemology has been virtue epistemology. A range of different views have been described under this general heading, but our interest in this paper is in a specific kind of virtue epistemology which aims to offer an account of knowledge where the knowing agent’s cognitive abilities (i.e., her epistemic virtues, broadly conceived) play a central role. 1 Now one might think that a virtue-theoretic account of knowledge would be obliged to appeal to more than just the proper exercise of the agent’s cognitive abilities on account of the Gettier problem. After all, Gettier-style cases are standardly described such that the agent concerned is both cognitively successful (i.e., she forms a true belief) and displays the relevant cognitive ability. Nonetheless, such cases elicit the intuition that the agent concerned lacks