Knowledge Tree
Ernest Sosa
Facts (59)
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Virtue Epistemology | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu 20 facts
claimIn later work, such as in 1991, Ernest Sosa distinguishes between 'animal knowledge' and 'reflective' or 'human knowledge,' where the latter requires an 'epistemic perspective' on the known proposition.
claimErnest Sosa argues that standard foundationalist accounts of justification are flawed because they rely on the premise that the justification of non-basic beliefs derives from basic beliefs, which are themselves justified by sensory experience, memory, and rational insight.
claimErnest Sosa identifies reason, perception, introspection, and memory as qualities that satisfy the conditions of an intellectual virtue or faculty.
claimErnest Sosa argues that traditional versions of foundationalism are incapable of explaining the unity of foundationalist principles, especially when considering the possibility of creatures with perceptual or cognitive mechanisms that differ from human mechanisms.
claimErnest Sosa has contributed more to the discussion of intellectual virtues as reliable cognitive faculties or abilities than any other virtue epistemologist.
referenceThe Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Virtue Epistemology cites Ernest Sosa's 1980 article 'The Raft and the Pyramid: Coherence versus Foundations in the Theory of Knowledge' as a key reference in the field.
claimErnest Sosa attempts to resolve the conflict between foundationalism and coherentism by proposing an externalist version of foundationalism.
claimErnest Sosa and John Greco have argued against internalism and advocated for externalism as the primary method to resolve skepticism.
claimErnest Sosa proposes a 'stratified' model of epistemic justification where primary justification is attached to intellectual virtues, such as sensory experience and memory, and secondary justification is attached to beliefs produced by those virtues.
claimIn his 1980 paper "The Raft and the Pyramid," Ernest Sosa argued that an appeal to intellectual virtue could resolve the conflict between foundationalists and coherentists regarding the structure of epistemic justification.
claimIn Ernest Sosa's stratified model of epistemic justification, a belief is considered justified if it originates from an intellectual virtue.
claimErnest Sosa claims that justification consists in a belief having its source in an intellectual virtue, which allows for a belief to be justified without the believer being aware of the source or having a reason for thinking the belief is true.
quoteErnest Sosa characterizes an intellectual virtue, very generally, as “a quality bound to help maximize one’s surplus of truth over error.”
claimThe Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy suggests that if Ernest Sosa's criticisms of traditional coherentist and foundationalist views and his positive proposal are plausible, virtue reliabilism can address significant problems in contemporary epistemology.
claimErnest Sosa's model explains the unity of foundationalist epistemic principles by categorizing foundationalist sources of justification as intellectual virtues and asserting that beliefs grounded in these virtues are justified because they are likely to be true.
claimErnest Sosa claims that an adequate version of foundationalism must explain the apparent unity of the various foundationalist principles that connect the ultimate sources of justification with the beliefs they justify.
claimErnest Sosa's proposed view of justification is an externalist version of foundationalism because a belief can be justified by an intellectual virtue without the person holding the belief being internally or subjectively aware of that source.
claimErnest Sosa's initial appeal to intellectual virtue in his essay “The Raft and the Pyramid” was intended to resolve the dispute between foundationalism and coherentism regarding the structure of epistemic justification.
quoteErnest Sosa defines an intellectual virtue or faculty relative to an environment E as follows: “One has an intellectual virtue or faculty relative to an environment E if and only if one has an inner nature I in virtue of which one would mostly attain the truth and avoid error in a certain field of propositions F, when in certain conditions C.”
claimErnest Sosa argues that coherentism is flawed because it fails to give adequate epistemic weight to experience, as a belief can cohere with one's other beliefs while conflicting with one's experience.
Virtue epistemology - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 9 facts
claimErnest Sosa uses the analogy of a hunter to explain "fully apt" belief, stating that a hunter must not only hit the target with precision but also take a shot that they should have taken.
claimErnest Sosa argued that appealing to intellectual virtue could resolve the conflict between foundationalists and coherentists regarding the structure of epistemic justification.
referenceErnest Sosa authored the chapter 'The Place of Truth in Epistemology' in the book 'Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology', edited by Michael DePaul and Linda Zagzebski and published by Clarendon Press in 2003.
claimErnest Sosa posits that more virtuous faculties are related to direct sensory perception and memory, while less virtuous capacities relate to beliefs derived from primary memory or sense experience.
claimErnest Sosa introduced intellectual virtue into contemporary epistemological discussion in his 1980 paper titled 'The Raft and the Pyramid'.
claimErnest Sosa's account of virtue epistemology can circumvent Cartesian skepticism by requiring the interaction of externalism and internalism.
referenceErnest Sosa authored the chapter 'For the Love of Truth?' in the book 'Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility', edited by Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski and published by Oxford University Press in 2001.
claimErnest Sosa defines a "fully apt" belief as one that is "meta-justified" (the agent hit the truth) and "apt" (the agent displayed virtuous capacities in claiming the belief).
claimErnest Sosa suggested in a paper that virtue might resolve the intractable disputes between coherentists and foundationalists.
Virtue Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jul 9, 1999 9 facts
claimErnest Sosa identifies knowledge with apt belief, which is a special case of creditable, apt performance, a status that applies across various human activities.
claimErnest Sosa argues that knowledge can exist even in cases where an agent might easily have been wrong, provided the belief is apt.
referenceErnest Sosa's conventional virtue epistemology (1991, 2003) attempts to define knowledge as true belief held out of intellectual virtue and seeks to settle the dispute between internalists and externalists regarding epistemic justification through detailed definitions and counterexamples.
accountIn the fake-barn thought experiment, Henry drives through a region where most barns are fake, but he happens to look at the one real barn. Duncan Pritchard argues that while Ernest Sosa's view would classify Henry's belief as knowledge because it is apt, it is intuitively obvious that Henry does not know, thus serving as a counterexample to Sosa's AAA-model.
claimContemporary virtue epistemology began as a distinctive movement in the early 1980s with the work of Ernest Sosa.
claimErnest Sosa argues that the suspension of judgment is a manifestation of the competence to recognize when one is not in a position to know whether a proposition is true.
claimErnest Sosa applied his 'virtue perspectivism' to resolve disputes in contemporary epistemology, including debates between foundationalists and coherentists, and between internalists and externalists.
claimLorraine Code, James Montmarquet, Jonathan Kvanvig, and Linda Zagzebski contributed early work to virtue epistemology, arguing that Ernest Sosa's approach did not sufficiently emphasize the central role of virtues like responsibility or conscientiousness, their social and developmental bases, or the relationships between intellectual and ethical virtues.
claimErnest Sosa distinguishes between character and competence in his 2015 paper 'Virtue epistemology: Character versus competence'.
Epistemological Problems of Testimony plato.stanford.edu Apr 1, 2021 4 facts
referenceErnest Sosa authored the essay 'Knowledge: Instrumental and Testimonial,' published in the 2006 volume edited by Jennifer Lackey and Ernest Sosa.
referenceErnest Sosa published the book 'Knowing Full Well' in 2010 through Princeton University Press.
claimElizabeth Fricker and Ernest Sosa defend the position that testimony should be identified with assertion, meaning one testifies that a proposition is true if and only if one asserts that the proposition is true.
referenceErnest Sosa authored the essay 'Testimony and Coherence,' which was published in the 1994 collection 'Knowing from Words,' edited by Bimal Krishna Matilal and Arindam Chakrabarti.
Epistemology - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 3 facts
claimInterest in epistemic virtues has increased since Ernest Sosa formulated virtue epistemology in the 1980s.
referenceJonathan Dancy authored the chapter 'Moral Epistemology' in the book 'A Companion to Epistemology,' edited by Jonathan Dancy, Ernest Sosa, and Matthias Steup and published by John Wiley & Sons in 2010 (ISBN 978-1-4443-1509-7).
claimVirtue epistemologists, including Ernest Sosa and Linda Zagzebski, analyze the process of belief formation by examining the intellectual virtues or cognitive competencies involved.
Virtue Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jul 9, 1999 3 facts
claimJohn Greco (2009, 2012) and Ernest Sosa (2003, 2007) argue that knowledge is a form of achievement, defined as intellectual success through ability for which the knower is creditable.
claimErnest Sosa (2007) argues that an agent like Morris deserves partial credit for a belief even if it relies on a socially seated competence, as this is sufficient for the belief to be apt and count as knowledge.
referenceS.R. Grimm published 'Ernest Sosa, Knowledge and Understanding' in Philosophical Studies in 2001, which analyzes the work of Ernest Sosa regarding knowledge and understanding.
Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Dec 14, 2005 2 facts
Epistemic Justification - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu 1 fact
referenceLaurence BonJour and Ernest Sosa co-authored 'Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs. Virtues' in 2003.
Naturalism in Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jan 8, 2016 1 fact
claimHelen Longino published 'Feminist Epistemology' in the 1999 book 'The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology', edited by John Greco and Ernest Sosa.
Wikipedia and the Epistemology of Testimony | Episteme cambridge.org Jan 3, 2012 1 fact
referenceRichard Moran's 2006 essay 'Getting Told and Being Believed' is published in the book 'The Epistemology of Testimony', edited by Jennifer Lackey and Ernest Sosa.
Social Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Aug 28, 2019 1 fact
referenceJames Van Cleve published 'Reid on the Credit of Human Testimony' in the book 'The Epistemology of Testimony', edited by Jennifer Lackey and Ernest Sosa, in 2006.
Epistemology | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu 1 fact
referenceJonathan Dancy and Ernest Sosa edited 'A Companion to Epistemology,' published in 1993.
The Analysis of Knowledge - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Feb 6, 2001 1 fact
claimErnest Sosa proposes the 'AAA' model of evaluation for any action or object with a characteristic aim, which consists of three components: accuracy, adroitness, and aptness.
Epistemology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2019 Edition) plato.stanford.edu Dec 14, 2005 1 fact
referenceErnest Sosa authored 'Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in Epistemology' in 1991.
Self-Consciousness - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jul 13, 2017 1 fact
referenceErnest Sosa authored the 2003 paper 'Knowledge of Self, Others, and World', published in the book 'Donald Davidson', edited by Kirk Ludwig.
Epistemology of Testimony | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu 1 fact
referenceJennifer Lackey and Ernest Sosa edited the book 'The Epistemology of Testimony', published by Oxford University Press in 2006.