It is bad to want something that not even God could attain, especially when the impossibility becomes obvious. Ernest Sosa More Quotes by Ernest Sosa More Quotes From Ernest Sosa When the risk of failure is too high, the right choice is to forbear. Ernest Sosa right-choices risk choices Flourishing is properly the main human end, and flourishing is activity of soul that succeeds in accord with virtue. Ernest Sosa succeed virtue soul 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 credit play football A successful account enables us to understand human knowledge in general. Ernest Sosa accounts humans successful 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 curiosity order fall Descartes's epistemology is a special case of Aristotle's virtue ethics. Ernest Sosa ethics virtue special I am mainly concerned with unqualified knowledge, by contrast with the varieties of expert knowledge: scientific knowledge of various sorts, legal knowledge, medically expert knowledge, and so on. Ernest Sosa contrast unqualified experts Normal adults can doodle, amble, and drift with no need to assess risk, since there is normally no risk at all. Jazz improvisation seems less subject to standards of risk than surgery, and less than much formal athletic performance, as in a tennis match. Ernest Sosa tennis athletic risk 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 use needs The risk pertinent to a particular attempt (and to its evaluation as an attempt of its sort) is the risk that the agent will fail to attain the end constitutive of that attempt. This risk of failure is coordinate with how likely or unlikely it may be that the agent will then succeed. Ernest Sosa evaluation succeed risk 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 data reading needs The success of an archery shot may bring food to the hunter's starving family, or may constitute a horrible murder. But these outcomes are irrelevant to the assessment of that shot as a hunter-archery shot, as an attempt to hit prey without running excessive risk of failure. Ernest Sosa archery assessment running Judgment is affirmation with the intention to thereby affirm competently enough, and indeed aptly. That distinguishes judgments from mere guesses. Ernest Sosa affirmation judgment enough 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 color eye exercise There's not much to be done about the impossibility. One must instead get rid of the desire. Ernest Sosa impossibility done desire Lowered reliability obviously yields a lesser competence. But lowered breadth does so as well. Ernest Sosa reliability yield doe 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 faculty projects perspective 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 records needs 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 philosophical views philosophy 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 knowing writing long
