Virtuous Deferral

ABSTRACT Virtue epistemology has long struggled with the “Creditability Dilemma”: how can knowledge gained through deference be creditable to the knower if it primarily depends on others’ cognitive work? We propose a novel solution by developing a telic account of doxastic deference as a distinctive kind of social‐epistemic performance. On our view, such deference succeeds when a deferrer forms a true belief that p in domain d , which answers their query, on the basis of the fact that a deferee states that p because of their epistemically superior competence in d . Drawing on Sosa's framework of performance assessment, we identify a metaphysical hierarchy of increasingly creditable achievements in deferential belief‐formation, from mere accurate doxastic deferral through to fully apt doxastic deferral. This hierarchy reveals that the apparent tension between individual credit and epistemic dependence rests on an “inverse creditability” thesis which fails to apply in cases of deferential belief. Instead, the highest forms of deferential achievement often align with and track the cognitive achievements of those deferred to. This framework also illuminates expert identification and epistemic trespassing as problems of exercising deferential skill under suitably normal conditions.