Ernest Sosa Quotes
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There isn't a formal definition of success.
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Flourishing is properly the main human end, and flourishing is activity of soul that succeeds in accord with virtue.
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Attempts are found in domains of human performance, such as sports, games, artistic domains, professional domains like medicine and the law, and so on. These feature distinctive aims, and corresponding competences. Archery, with its distinctive arrows and targets, divides into subdomains. Thus, competitive archery differs importantly from archery hunting.
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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.
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Lowered reliability obviously yields a lesser competence. But lowered breadth does so as well.
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A hunter archer can also be out to shock by taking crazy shots. What makes his shots "crazy" is set by excessive risk, judged by hunting-archery standards, which would tend to draw agreement from knowledgeable observers.
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Descartes's epistemology is a special case of Aristotle's virtue ethics.
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In my view there is a level of human knowledge that involves just getting it right aptly. This "animal" epistemic level is an inferior level in just the way of Diana's long shot in the dark while drunk. That shot is inferior in a certain respect if too poorly selected as a hunter's archery shot, even if not quite as poorly selected as would be a shot aimed at the moon. Even if Diana's too risky shot turns out to be apt by attaining success through sublime archery dexterity, it is still inferior in the particular respect of being so risky and hence so poorly selected.
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Ultimately, my more significant agreement is with a virtue tradition that features Aristotle and Descartes.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Epistemic competence might be posterior to knowledge conceptually, however, while still prior metaphysically.
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Since human good is what humans ought to pursue, the pursuit of interest to Aristotle is then such activity of soul, that which constitutes human good, namely activity that attains desiderata, where the attainment is in accord with virtue.
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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.
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In competitive archery, risk assessment has minimal bearing on quality of performance, since the archer has so little choice over shot selection. By contrast, in a hunt, shots vary in quality according to how well selected they may be.
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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.
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It is possible to produce something that is grammatical either by chance or under the supervision of another. To be proficient in grammar, then, one must both produce what is grammatical and produce it grammatically, that is, in accord with knowledge of grammar in oneself.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If a shot aimed at aptness succeeds aptly, it is then fully apt, since it is not only apt but also aptly apt. But the full aptness of such an attempt is entirely compatible with its being a horrible murder, if the "hunter" is an assassin and the prey his victim. That hunter's shot may still be outstandingly, fully apt, if it manifests the agent's competence in both archery dexterity and shot selection.