Day 23: Sosa (Part 2)

•      Review / Questions

•      The AAA Structure of Performance Assessment

•      Withholding or Forbearing

•      Animal and Reflective Knowledge

•      Reflective Knowledge; Knowing Full Well

•      Comparisons and Contrasts

•      Look at the final exam study questions, and start studying.

The AAA Structure of Performance Assessment

•      Accuracy (achieving the goal)

•      Adroitness (possession of skill)

•      Aptness (accurate because adroit)

•      Can have (a) accuracy without adroitness, (b) adroitness without accuracy, & (c) the presence of accuracy and adroitness without aptness (Gettierized action)

•      Archery, ballet, cooking….

•      Belief formation and revision

Withholding or Forbearing

•      Why is withholding or forbearing a possible problem for the AAA approach?

•      Sosa’s approach: treat withholding or forbearing as its own kind of action with its own kind of goal, the avoidance of failure or error

•      Hunting archer example (avoiding a miss)

•      An epistemic example (avoiding falsehood)

Animal and Reflective Knowledge

•      Animal Knowledge is simple AAA, without higher-order reflection guiding belief formation or revision.  It is apt belief.

•      Reflective knowledge involves apt belief that is aptly noted, which involves

–  meta-aptness, &

–  full aptness

Reflective Knowledge; Knowing Full Well

•      What is meta-aptness?

–  Meta-apt only if the appropriate level of risk is taken, i.e. neither too much nor too little

–  Action can be apt but not meta-apt

–  Action can be meta-apt but not apt

•      What is it to be fully apt?

–  Fully apt only if aptness manifests one’s meta-aptness

Reflective Knowledge; Knowing Full Well

•      One starts to have reflective knowledge when one starts to develop meta-aptness

•      Knowing full well is a very high level of reflective knowledge that becomes possible when our aptness manifests our meta-aptness, when we are apt because we are meta-apt (which means we are fully apt)

•      Animal knowledge as involving an externalist foundation; reflective knowledge as building  on animal knowledge (apt belief fully aptly noted) and involving internalism and coherence

Comparisons and Contrasts

•      Sosa

•      Goldman

•      Lehrer

•      Brandom

•      BonJour