Latest Ernest Sosa Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Epistemology now flourishes with various complementary approaches. This includes formal epistemology, experimental philosophy, cognitive science and psychology, including relevant brain science, and other philosophical subfields, such as metaphysics, action theory, language, and mind. It is not as though all questions of armchair, traditional epistemology are already settled conclusively, with unanimity or even consensus. We still need to reason our way together to a better view of those issues.

  Ernest Sosa

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Views

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• We can pursue the Cartesian project without restricting ourselves to theology and a priori faculties. A better, broader perspective is properly sought if we pursue the project with reliance on science broadly and on our full span of epistemic competences, including the empirical as well as the a priori.

  Ernest Sosa

  Perspective, Projects, Faculty

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• Compare the credit for a football touchdown, which might be shared by the receiver not only with the quarterback, but also with the linesmen who make crucial protective plays, etc. The success of the touchdown play depends on the receiver, it is true; but in a particular case it might depend far more on the work of others.

  Ernest Sosa

  Football, Play, Credit

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• When I accept someone's testimony, I am thus only a small part of the full seat of epistemic competence, which might include many others in a long chain. My own contribution might then be slight, just through the perceptual and linguistic competence involved in knowing what someone is saying or writing, etc.

  Ernest Sosa

  Writing, Knowing, Long

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• In my view (animal) knowledge is apt belief, where not only the belief (its existence and content) but also its correctness is creditable to the subject's competence.

  Ernest Sosa

  Animal, Views, Belief

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• The correctness of much testimonially based belief is no more than minimally creditable to the believer.

  Ernest Sosa

  Belief, Believer, Correctness

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• Epistemic competence might be posterior to knowledge conceptually, however, while still prior metaphysically.

  Ernest Sosa

  Might, Competence, Stills

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• Animal knowledge is metaphysically constituted by apt belief, by belief whose correctness manifests the believer's epistemic competence, a relevant disposition to get it right on the matter at hand when one tries to do so.

  Ernest Sosa

  Animal, Hands, Trying

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• Intuitive seeming is in my view an attraction to assent based on nothing more than understanding of the content that upon consideration attracts one's assent. But such understanding-based attraction can differ dramatically in epistemic quality. Some such attractions represent nothing more than superstition or bias absorbed from the culture, sans ratiocination.

  Ernest Sosa

  Views, Understanding, Quality

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• If we have a better understanding of knowledge than we do of such justification or competence, then we can explain the latter through the former.

  Ernest Sosa

  Understanding, Latter, Justification

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• The concept of intuition is more often used in philosophical theorizing than is the concept of observation in scientific theorizing (proportionately). One reason is that there is (proportionately) more ostensible conflict of philosophical intuitions than there is ostensible conflict of scientific observations. So much for the use of a concept of intuition in philosophical theorizing.

  Ernest Sosa

  Philosophical, Intuition, Use

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• The data on which philosophical theorizing is based are rather the intuited contents themselves, concerning the various thought experiments. At least that is so outside the epistemology of the a priori.

  Ernest Sosa

  Philosophical, Data, Epistemology

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• When there are conflicts of observation, when experiments cannot be replicated, scientists may then retreat to a study of the various specific observations so as to explain the conflict, in the course of which they would make use of the concept of observation, or of some specification of that concept.

  Ernest Sosa

  Use, May, Retreat

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• Philosophers need not much use the word 'intuition' or the concept of intuition, except when they happen to be working on the epistemology of the a priori.

  Ernest Sosa

  Intuition, Needs, Use

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• Philosophers do need to have intuitions of various specific sorts: ethical, metaphysical, etc., depending on their targeted subject matter. And they must make intuition reports, as they record the contents of their intuitions. But they need not go into whether an intuition has been enjoyed.

  Ernest Sosa

  Intuition, Needs, Records

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• Suppose we wonder whether we should trust the deliverances of our basic epistemic competences. If those are indeed our basic competences, then in order properly to satisfy our curiosity we will inevitably rely on one or more of them. So, either we squelch our curiosity or we will have to fall into the circularity or regress to which the skeptic objects.

  Ernest Sosa

  Fall, Order, Curiosity

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• There is no need for the scientist to go into whether an observation was made, nor into the who, what, when, or where. The data on which scientific theorizing is based are rather the propositional contents of the instrument readings recorded, or the facts detected thereby.

  Ernest Sosa

  Reading, Data, Needs

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• In arriving at the relevant theory about the specifics of our faculty of vision we will presumably use our eyes to gather relevant data. Based on such data we come to know about the optic nerve, the structure of our eyes, the rods and cones, etc., so as to explain how it is that vision gives us reliable access to the shapes and colors of objects around us. In reliably arriving at that theory we thus exercise the very faculty whose reliability is explained by the theory. There is no vice in this sort of circularity.

  Ernest Sosa

  Eye, Exercise, Color

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• There's not much to be done about the impossibility. One must instead get rid of the desire.

  Ernest Sosa

  Desire, Done, Impossibility

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• A successful account enables us to understand human knowledge in general.

  Ernest Sosa

  Successful, Accounts, Humans

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• You attain aptness by judging while in good shape and in a good situation (good light, good distance, etc.), through the exercise of good barn-sorting epistemic competence.

  Ernest Sosa

  Distance, Exercise, Light

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• It is bad to want something that not even God could attain, especially when the impossibility becomes obvious.

  Ernest Sosa

  Want Something, Want, Obvious

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• When you dream, your perceptual (and other) competence is affected. You are then unable to get it right competently with the beliefs in your dream.

  Ernest Sosa

  Dream, Belief, Competence

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• Arguably, if you view a real barn in bright sunlight and close by, while fully alert and otherwise in good shape, then you do know whether or not you see a barn. You have "animal" knowledge, says my virtue theory, through the first-order aptness of your judgment.

  Ernest Sosa

  Real, Animal, Order

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• If the agent aims to make the attempt if and only if it would be apt, then a distinctive element of risk assessment becomes relevant: How probably would the agent succeed in attempting that fuller end?

  Ernest Sosa

  Ifs And, Assessment, Risk

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com