Day 22: Sosa (Part 1)

•      Review / Questions

•      Finish Day 20: Objections and Replies

•      Apt-justification

•      Adroit-justification

•      Types of Knowledge

•      Reflective Knowledge: Some Commitments

•      Read Sosa’s “Knowing Full Well: The Normativity of Beliefs as Performances”

Finish Day 20: Objections and Replies

•      Can you justify your beliefs about what you believe without basic/foundational beliefs?  (BonJour’s worry)

•      Does coherence isolate belief (or acceptance) from the world?

Apt-justification

•     (For all w) (B is apt-justified in w only if  B derives in w from the exercise of one or more intellectual virtues that in that world w virtuously would produce a high ratio of true beliefs)

Adroit-justification

•      The New Evil Demon problem

•      (For all w) (B, in w, is adroit-justified only if B derives in w from the exercise of one or more intellectual virtues that in our actual world virtuously would produce a high ratio of true beliefs)

Types of Knowledge

•      Animal (or non-reflective) knowledge

•      Reflective knowledge

     “If a faculty operates to give one a belief, and thereby a piece of direct knowledge, one must [1] have some awareness of one’s belief and its source, and [2] of the virtue of that source both in general and in the specific instance.  Hence it must be  that [3] in the circumstances one would (most likely) believe P only if P were the case; i.e., one’s belief must be safe; or, more strictly, one’s belief must be based on an indication, a safe deliverance of a virtuous source.  And, finally, [4] one must grasp that one’s belief non-accidentally reflects the truth of P through accepting an indication of P, thus manifesting a cognitive virtue.”  – (from Epistemic Justification)

Reflective Knowledge: Some Commitments

•      Notice:

   (1) Sosa does not take an inside-out approach to epistemology;

   (2) he does retain the internalist proclivity for having some awareness or grasp of the source of reflective knowledge, and

   (3) he does the above while at the same time defining normative terms without the use of normative language