The Economy of Research and the Proper Defense of Knowledge and Intellectual Virtues

Nominalism seems natural for defending a decent economy of research. However such a program may and has been achieved by such a strongly realistic pragmatism as the one endorsed by Peirce: he shows that there is no risk of "blocking inquiry", no tension between adopting a cost-benefit program and aiming at truth and knowledge, provided, on the negative side, our economy of research is able to stress the impossible reduction of theoretical matters to vital ones, the impossible assimilation of epistemic virtues to mere ethical virtues; and on the positive side, it is able to embrace a strong conception of normative rationality and epistemic virtues, make room as much to "uberty" degrees of belief, propensities as to validity, full-fledged justifications, absolute certainties and mere practical concerns, and develop a conception of knowledge as a virtuous process of inquiry within a genuine intellectual ethics firmly based on a Critical Commonsensist approach.