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58II_— _Ernest Sosa: Knowledge, Animal and Reflective: A Reply to Michael WilliamsAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 77 (1): 113-130. 2003.I give an exposition and critical discussion of Sellars’s Myth of the Given, and especially of its epistemic side. In later writings Sellars takes a pragmatist turn in his epistemology. This is explored and compared with his earlier critique of givenist mythology. In response to Michael Williams, it is argued that these issues are importantly independent of philosophy of language or mind, and that my own take on them does not commit me to any absurd radical foundationalism on language or mind. M…Read more
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337Rational intuition: Bealer on its nature and epistemic statusPhilosophical Studies 81 (2-3): 151--162. 1996.A discussion of George Bealer's conception and defense of rational intuition as a basis of philosophical knowledge, under three main heads: a) the phenomenology of intellectual intuition; b) the status of such intuition as a basic source of evidence, and the explanation of what gives it that status; and c) the defense of intuition against those who would reject it and exclude it on principle from the set of valid sources of evidence.
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108Are there two grades of knowledge?Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 77 (1). 2003.[Michael Williams] A response to Sosa's criticisms of Sellars's account of the relation between knowledge and experience, noting that Sellars excludes merely animal knowledge, and hopes to bypass epistemology by an adequate philosophy of mind and language. /// [Ernest Sosa] I give an exposition and critical discussion of Sellars's Myth of the Given, and especially of its epistemic side. In later writings Sellars takes a pragmatist turn in his epistemology. This is explored and compared with his …Read more
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56On our knowledge of matters of factMind 83 (331): 388-405. 1974.The traditional conception of knowledge as justified true belief has collapsed under weighty objections. Some of these are well known; but others, though equally weighty and puzzling, have attracted comparatively little attention, and still demand careful study. Only through such study can we approach correct understanding of propositional knowledge.
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118Epistemology: An Anthology (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2000.This volume represents the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of canonical readings in theory of knowledge. It is ideal as a reader for all courses in epistemology
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21Imagery 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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12Reliability andIn Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford University Press. pp. 369. 2002.
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263The epistemology of testimony (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2006.Testimony is a crucial source of knowledge: we are to a large extent reliant upon what others tell us. It has been the subject of much recent interest in epistemology, and this volume collects twelve original essays on the topic by some of the world's leading philosophers. It will be the starting point for future research in this fertile field. Contributors include Robert Audi, C. A. J. Coady, Elizabeth Fricker, Richard Fumerton, Sanford C. Goldberg, Peter Graham, Jennifer Lackey, Keith Lehrer, …Read more
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35Natural theology and naturalist atheology: Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalismIn Deane-Peter Baker (ed.), Alvin Plantinga, Cambridge University Press. 2007.
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3Skepticism and the internal/external divideIn John Greco & Ernest Sosa (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 145--57. 1999.
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133Value 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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233How Must Knowledge Be Modally Related to What Is Known?Philosophical Topics 26 (1-2): 373-384. 1999.
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123RepliesPhilosophical Papers 40 (3). 2004.Philosophical Papers, Volume 40, Issue 3, Page 341-358, November 2011
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151Mind-body interaction and supervenient causationMidwest Studies in Philosophy 9 (1): 271-81. 1984.The mind-body problem arises because of our status as double agents apparently en rapport both with the mental and with the physical. We think, desire, decide, plan, suffer passions, fall into moods, are subject to sensory experiences, ostensibly perceive, intend, reason, make believe, and so on. We also move, have a certain geographical position, a certain height and weight, and we are sometimes hit or cut or burned. In other words, human beings have both minds and bodies. What is the relation …Read more
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1Plantinga on Epistemic InternalismIn Jonathan L. Kvanvig (ed.), Warrant and Contemporary Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Plantinga's Theory of Knowledge, Savage, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. pp. 73-87. 1996.
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971For the Love of Truth?In Abrol Fairweather & Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski (eds.), Virtue epistemology: essays on epistemic virtue and responsibility, Oxford University Press. pp. 49-62. 2001.Rational beings pursue and value truth . Intellectual conduct is to be judged, accordingly, by how well it aids our pursuit of that ideal. I ask whether these platitudes mean, and whether they are true.
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27Replies 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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7Philosophical Issues, Action TheoryWiley-Blackwell. 2012.This is a collection of papers on action theory, very broadly conceived. It contains cutting-edge work by some of the most important contributors in the field
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196Knowledge and Intellectual VirtueThe Monist 68 (2): 226-245. 1985.An intellectual virtue is a quality bound to help maximize one’s surplus of truth over error; or so let us assume for now, though a more just conception may include as desiderata also generality, coherence, and explanatory power, unless the value of these is itself explained as derivative from the character of their contribution precisely to one’s surplus of truth over error. This last is an issue I mention in order to lay it aside. Here we assume only a teleological conception of intellectual v…Read more