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2Chapter three. Value Matters in EpistemologyIn Knowing Full Well, Princeton University Press. pp. 35-66. 2010.
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19Value Matters in EpistemologyJournal of Philosophy 107 (4): 167-190. 2010.In what way is knowledge better than merely true belief? That is a problem posed in Plato’s Meno. A belief that falls short of knowledge seems thereby inferior. It is better to know than to get it wrong, of course, and also better than to get it right by luck rather than competence. But how can that be so, if a true belief will provide the same benefits? In order to get to Larissa you do not need to know the way. A true belief will get you there just as well. Is it really always better to know t…Read more
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6Imagery and ImaginationGrazer Philosophische Studien 25 (1): 485-499. 1985.1. Sensa and propositional experience. 2. An option between propositions and properties (as objects or contents of sensory experience). 3. The property option and adverbialism. 4. Sensa as images, images as intentionalia. 5. Do we refer directly to sensa? 6. Focusing and the supervenience of images and our reference to them: a question raised. 7. Internal and external properties of images and characters. Strict vistas introduced. 8. A correction on strict vistas. 9. Focusing and experience: the …Read more
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6Replies to commentators on A Virtue EpistemologyPhilosophical Studies 144 (1): 137-147. 2009.Paul Boghossian discusses critically my account of intuition as a source of epistemic status. Stewart Cohen takes up my views on skepticism, on dreams, and on epistemic competence and competences and their relation to human knowledge. Hilary Kornblith focuses on my animal/reflective distinction, and, along with Cohen, on my comparison between how dreams might mislead us and how other bad epistemic contexts can do so. In this paper I offer replies to my three critics.
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1Minimal IntuitionIn Michael Raymond DePaul & William M. Ramsey (eds.), Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and its Role in Philosophical Inquiry, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 257-269. 1998.
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19Chapter eight. Epistemic CircularityIn Knowing Full Well, Princeton University Press. pp. 140-158. 2010.
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3Human knowledge, animal and reflectivePhilosophical Studies 106 (3). 2001.Stephen Grimm finds me inclined to bifurcate epistemic assessment into higher and lower orders while showing awareness of this only in recent writings. Two untoward consequences allegedly follow: (a) my rejection of Virtue Reliabilism, and (b) my knowledge-based account of the value attaching to our knowledge on the higher level. By contrast, Grimm considers Virtue Reliabilism a perfectly adequate account of knowledge, while the higher epistemic state he believes to be, rather, understanding, wh…Read more
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5Knowledge in context, skepticism in doubt: The virtue of our facultiesPhilosophical Perspectives 2 139-155. 1988.
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ConditionIn Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 149. 1995.
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7Two conceptions of knowledgeJournal of Philosophy 67 (3): 59-66. 1970.Knowledge of the nature of knowledge is deplorably scarce. Fortunately, the reason is not lack of interest. On the contrary, the bewildering variety of competing theories is part of the problem. It is to, be hoped, however, that intensive discussion of such theories will help reduce the scarcity. In what follows I want to contribute to this end by briefly discussing two of the theories.
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18Proper Functionalism and Virtue Epistemology (review)In Jonathan L. Kvanvig (ed.), Warrant and Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga's Theory of Knowledge, Savage, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. pp. 253-270. 1996.Comprehensive and packed, Alvin Plantinga's two-volume treatise defies sum- mary. The first volume, Warrant: Current Views, is a meticulous critical survey of epistemology today. Many current approaches are presented and exhaustively discussed, and a negative verdict is passed on each in turn. This prepares the way for volume two, Warrant and Proper Function, where a positive view is advanced and developed in satisfying detail. The cumulative result is most impressive, and should command attenti…Read more
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11Fregean reference defendedPhilosophical Issues 6 91-99. 1995.What is involved in acquiring a russellian proposition (x, φ) as content of an attitude: what does it take for one to acquire such an attitude de re? How do we gain access to x itself so as to be able to have (x, φ) as content of our thought?
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9Reliabilism and Intellectual VirtueIn Guy Axtell (ed.), Knowledge, Belief, and Character: Readings in Virtue Epistemology, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 33-40. 2000.
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26Reflective knowledge in the best circlesJournal of Philosophy 94 (8): 410-430. 1997.According to Moore, his argument meets three conditions for being a proof: first, the premiss is different from the conclusion; second, he knows the premiss to be the case; and, third, the conclusion follows deductively.2 Further conditions may be required, but he evidently thinks his proof would satisfy these as well. As Moore is well aware, many philosophers will feel he has not given “...any satisfactory proof of the point in question."3 Some, he believes, will want the premiss itself proved.…Read more
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18A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, Volume IOxford University Press. 2007.Ernest Sosa presents a new approach to the problems of knowledge and scepticism. He argues for two levels of knowledge, the animal and the reflective, each viewed as a distinctive human accomplishment. Sosa's virtue epistemology illuminates different varieties of scepticism, the nature and status of intuitions, and epistemic normativity.
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7Sosa on propositional attitudes de dicto and de re: Rejoinder to HintikkaJournal of Philosophy 68 (16): 498-501. 1971.
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6Epistemology and primitive truthIn Michael P. Lynch (ed.), The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives, Mit Press. 2001.
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2Intuitions and truthIn Patrick Greenough & Michael Patrick Lynch (eds.), Truth and realism, Oxford University Press. pp. 208--26. 2006.
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43Abilities, concepts, and externalismIn Pascal Engel (ed.), Mental causation, Oxford University Press. 1995.
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Offtrack bets against the skepticIn Luper-Foy Steven (ed.), The Possibility of Knowledge: Nozick and His Critics, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 314. 1987.
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200Davidson's EpistemologyIn Kirk Ludwig (ed.), Contemporary Philosophy in Focus: Donald Davidson, Cambridge University Press. 2003.Davidson’s epistemology, like Kant’s, features a transcendental argument as its centerpiece. Both philosophers reject any priority, whether epistemological or conceptual, of the subjective over the objective, attempting thus to solve the problem of the external world. For Davidson, three varieties of knowledge are coordinate—knowledge of the self, of other minds, and of the external world. None has priority. Despite the epistemologically coordinate status of the mind and the world, however, the …Read more
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148The place of reasons in epistemologyIn Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity, Oxford University Press. 2018.This paper considers the place of reasons in the metaphysics of epistemic normativity and defends a middle ground between two popular extremes in the literature. Against members of the ‘reasons first’ movement, we argue that reasons are not the sole fundamental constituents of epistemic normativity. We suggest instead that the virtue-theoretic property of competence is the key building block. To support this approach, we note that reasons must be possessed to play a role in the analysis of ce…Read more