1 Sosa 1991, pg. 9 2 Ibid, pg Ibid, pg Ibid, pg. 179

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1 How does Sosa s Virtue Reliabilist account of knowledge seek to dissolve central problems of epistemology and is his approach credible? Ernest Sosa has over the last number of decades sought to solve several problems in Epistemology by developing a Reliabilist account of justification and a virtue epistemic theory of knowledge. There is the suggestion that a significant amount of problems and divides within epistemology are dissolved by these sorts of virtue epistemic of approaches Sosa 1 has specifically made this claim about his approach s ability to circumvent two significant dichotomies of epistemology: the debate between foundationalists and coherrentists, and that between internalists and externalists. Indeed, the basics of his Reliabilist theory first emerge as a way of solving these two problems. This essay will first discuss his proposed solutions to these, and how his theory emerges from them before examining his more recent AAA-model development of it and suggest several problems that arise with it. It will argue that Sosa s theory, while fleshing out the intuitive appeal within these divisions, only replicates them in the Reliabilism it defines. Resolving dichotomy of Coherrentism and Foundationalism: Sosa s approach to the dispute between Coherrentism and Foundationalism, similar to his approach more generally, is to suggest that there is some correct element in both but each has missed a more fundamental truth. In an area so long and intensively explored it is not unlikely that each of the main competing alternatives has grasped some aspect of the manysided truth not wholly-accessible to any one-sided approach 2 He outlines in The Raft and the Pyramid how Virtue Epistemology can grasp better this many sided truth. Central to Sosa s analysis of knowledge and his argument in the paper, is the very plausible idea that that epistemic justification is subject to the supervenience 3 of the evaluative on the nonevaluative. Supervenience relates two set of qualities: P properties supervene on Q properties if no two things can differ in P-Properties without also doing so in their Q properties there is some sense in which P properties occur in virtue of Q properties. Evaluative properties can be said to be those involved when we pass normative judgement, they are ascribed when we use of words like good, fit, right etc. Non-evaluative properties are those which we talk of in giving neutral, non-normative description of a thing, the more fundamental facts about it, that something is square, large, red etc. If some action is good, it isn t good simply as a brute fact there is some explanation of why the act is good. Supervenience seems to capture the nature of this relation: an act is good in virtue of certain facts about the fact. So if a car is a good car, then any physical replica of that car must be just as good. If it is a good car in virtue of such properties as being economical, little prone to break down etc. then any exact replica would share all such properties and would thus be equally good 4 Epistemic properties are evaluative in saying a belief is justified, one is saying that one evaluates it in certain ways and so should, ultimately, supervene on non-evaluative properties. Sosa classifies theses of supervenience as formal foundationalism which might be held about any property P, such that the conditions (actual or possible) within which [P] would apply can be specified in general, perhaps recursively. Epistemic supervenience is the lowest form of such a formal foundationalism about epistemic properties. A higher grade of such a formal foundationalism would state we can specify the basic properties in general. The highest grade holds we can specify these properties comprehensively and simply. 1 Sosa 1991, pg. 9 2 Ibid, pg Ibid, pg Ibid, pg. 179

2 Surprisingly, under this analysis, Coherrentism is a form of formal foundationalism, indeed even of the highest form - as long as the concept of coherence (its base property) is simple enough and without normative import. Disagreement between coherrentists and foundationalists arises only about what the correct base properties are that which justification supervenes on. Sosa uses this to diffuse several antifoundational arguments, especially of the Doxastic Ascent form, by showing how such arguments for a source of justification always include some epistemic component and so are logically incompatible with supervenience. 5 A further problem of Coherrentism is suggested by Sosa in that beliefs on the periphery of our set of beliefs have few logical ties to the whole; one is able to replace some small, slight belief ( I have a headache ) with its negation and so long as several other corresponding changes are made to preserve coherence, the new belief will be as justified as the old. 6 However, Sosa also argues the substantive Foundationalism account of the base properties for justification is fault. Substantive foundationalism must have some sort of epistemic principle which specifies what justification depends on this might say that one is justified in having the belief that a cat is before one if one has the visual experience of seeing a cat. But is such a relation some fundamental about justification or just an instance of something more general about it: perception (visual, audio etc..), introspection, inference and memory are all possible sources of that base property of justification. But what unifies these, what is the general base property they serve, in certain circumstances, as instances of? Sosa presses this point by suggesting hypothetical extra-terrestrial being 7 with different sensory inputs, but who thrive on their home planets; requiring further epistemic principles to relate their particular senses and cognitive processes to justification. Sosa instead wishes to propose more abstract principles that can cover both human and extra-terrestrial foundations. 8 This then introduces Sosa s constructive project, his virtue epistemology. He draws parrellel s with Virtue Ethics stratification of justification : The important move for our purpose is the stratification of justification. Primary justification attaches to virtues and other... stable dispositions to act, through their greater contribution of value when compared with alternatives. Secondary justification attaches to particular acts in virtue of their source in virtues or other such justified dispositions. 9 Sosa extends this line of thinking to intellectual/epistemic virtue 10, which primary justification arises out of through through their greater contribution toward getting us to the truth Secondary justification to particular beliefs in virtue of their source in intellectual virtue 11 Sosa uses this line of analysis to explain the appeal of both Coherrentism and Foundationalism without accepting their flaws. It is virtuous to believe in claims that cohere with what we believe, because this will reliably lead to truth but coherence is not what justification consists in. Likewise, the sources of justification relied upon in Foundationalism memory, perception etc. and the sorts of faculties an alien might rely on arise from intellectual dispositions that are reliable. The crucial restriction on the sorts of things that are such virtues is that they cannot have an evaluative base because that would violate the supervenience principle instead they all have the same property, how good they are for acquisition of truth, how reliable they are.. 5 Ibid, pg Ibid, pg Ibid Ibid Ibid Sosa interchanges the terms virtues, competencies and disposition across his work without changing the substance of what is referred to, this essay will do likewise. 11 Ibid 189

3 Resolving Internalism and Externalism: Sosa has also developed his virtue theory to give an account of justification which seeks to retain the core appeal of Internalism within a broadly externalist framework. The debates between externalism and Internalism (or versions thereof) centre on the grounds of evaluation for epistemic properties. Internalism in the Ontological 12 sense holds that the all factors which contribute to justifying a belief must be part of the believer s psychology; Externalism in this sense says that it is possible for some of these factors to not be within a believer s psychology. Chisholmian Internalism (after Roderick Chisholm 13 s defence of Internalism.) advances this further, saying that all factors contributing to justification will be freely accessibly to the believer: the view that we have special access to the epistemic status of our beliefs... by means of armchair reflection 14 Externalism in this sense holds that it s possible for some factors contributing to justification to be inaccessible to the believer. He seeks to reconcile these two approaches by, once again, giving an account which retains the appealing qualities of each while jettisoning the problematic ones: externalism must find some way of doing justice to the appeal of epistemically internalist intuitions 15 Sosa tries to show the deficiency of an outright internalist approach by posing the hypothetical of the New Evil Demon: comparing ourselves to some twin version who is a the victim of an evil demon that is some force able to produce sensations and experiences as if real who is being made to have mental states identical to your own. That is if you have a certain belief, so does your counterpart; if you would defend your belief by appeal to certain reasons, so would your counterpart; and vice versa Must you then be equally epistemically justified, in some relevant sense, in each such belief that by hypothesis you share? 16. It seems that under any Internalist account there can be no difference in justification. Sosa himself says that they would be internally justified in every relevant respect, even to the point of being flawlessly, and indeed brilliantly internally justified 17 - yet one is fundamentally and totally deceived. Sosa explains the internal justification of our twins as arising from their intellectual virtue which obtains from their inner nature the internal quality of their minds is the same, and thus equal in that sense. But Internalism cannot here explain what makes these inner natures virtuous. This can only be achieved by some kind of externalist virtue theory: our inner nature makes us virtuous because we become suitable to perform well, that is acquire true beliefs, in the world we inhabit. That we can perform well in such a world arises from non-psychological facts about that world the same inner nature won t suit us well in different environments. Indeed, by extension of Sosa s imaginary extra-terrestrial we can see that they are intellectually virtuous because they are well-equipped to acquire beliefs about their particular world. Likewise, virtuous internal states are of little use if we are in a world trapped by demonic forces. This example illustrates several points about Sosa s conceptions of such virtues. Dispositions relate to environment: a good disposition in one setting is a poor one in another how reliable a virtue is in acquiring truth depends on the environment it operates in. Any judgement about whether a belief is justified involves some relativizing to 12 Sosa 2003a, pg Chisholm Sosa 2003a. pg. 145). 15 Sosa 2009, pg. 44). 16 Sosa 2003a, pg. 150) 17 Sosa 1991, pg. 289

4 the environment it is acquired in, although normally we will think of normal human environment 18, and not be conscious of our relativisation, adjusting through contextual features not present to... consciousness 19. Someone s virtues arise out of their inner nature our cognitive disposition to not come to a belief at particular times arises from certain internal properties about our minds. Sosa s virtue theoretic account of justification arises out of this example that ties it to virtue, reliability and environment: My proposal is that justification is relative to environment. Relative to our actual environment A, our automatic experience-belief mechanisms count as virtues that yield much truth and justification. 20 Sosa next turns to Chisholmian Internalism which stands over a universal claim of there being no reflectively inaccessible factors that matter to a belief s justification which he rejects on the basis of counter-example. In one case 21 he compare s one remembering having oatmeal for breakfast because one experienced it and one remembering because one was conjured into existence a moment ago with a range of supporting, related beliefs: are the two really on par in terms of justification? He says not, that in such cases inaccessible factors make a dramatic difference to how justified we should find each person. What he acknowledges as partially correct in valuing for its justificatory role reflection. It is here that Sosa introduces the dual system aspect of his Epistemology: he distinguishes between two sorts of justification and knowledge. There is a level of justification which does have an access requirement, reflective justification, which is contrasted with animal justification. 22 A subject S with belief B at time T is animally justified in holding B if it was reliable formed its source was the exercise of some intellectual virtue; S has further, reflexive justification for B if she holds some belief B, which itself is animally justified, that B was reliably formed. When one is reflexively justified one develops a affirmation view of one s own cognitive virtue and epistemic environment, approving one s method of belief formation. Moreover, the more detail and coherent B, the greater sophistication with which S understands and judges how she has come to hold B, the greater reflective justification S has to hold B. Unreflective (animal) justification arises out of any cognitive disposition which will reliably (with respect to the particular environment we re situated in) get us truth: justification can thus come all manner of inquiry. However, here is the resuscitated access restriction: reflective justification can only arise from factors one has access to. It is where the armchair, as it were comes into play, comes into play for Sosa, where we involve higher order epistemic virtues of selfawareness and critical reflection, combining virtue and insight to ourselves. This sort of virtue is important, because for Sosa, the subject must attain some minimum of coherent perspectives on her own situation in the relevant environment, and on her modes of reliable access to information about her environment. 23 This addition of perspective constitutes epistemic ascent. Virtue and Aptness: A parallel duality within Sosa s virtue epistemology has emerged more recently as he has developed the details of his theory. While it has from the beginning held that knowledge is true belief deriving from intellectual virtues that is reliably truth conducive processes. 18 Sosa 1991, pg a, pg Sosa 1991, pg Sosa 2003a, pg , pg. 291; 2003a, pg. 228; , pg. 143

5 However this theory of virtue has in the last decades been developed 24 by Sosa to include an account of epistemic performance the AAA-model, and to show how his earlier virtueepistemic solutions to typical epistemological divides was in some ways just an application of this model. The AAA-model arises from a very intuitive and basic concern for justification it suggests that any performance can be assessed in terms of its accuracy, adroitness and aptness. Our belief seem to aim for truth in that when we believe propositions, we hold them to be true when our beliefs are true there is some sort of match, our act of belief seems correctly preformed in some sense. Our desire for some sort of justificatory component to an analysis of knowledge arises, at least in part, from a concern that it is not knowledge to believe something that is true for poor reasons or none at all: that in some sense we would get it right by accident. This concern suggests that we think of knowledge as an achievement, something for which someone should be able to take credit. This is why Sosa s AAA model is a model of performances with aims more generally, and why it is often explained in terms of a metaphor of an archer. The goal of archery is to hit the mark (have a true belief) but in assessing any particular shot it is not simple whether it hits that mark but how the archer s skill lead that to happen, for one bulls-eye does not a skilled archer make. Believing then is a psychological act with an aim. Beliefs are accurate insofar as they are true (they achieve their aim), adroit inasmuch as they manifest virtue (demonstrate competence) and aptness in being true as a result of virtuousness (achieve their aim because of the competence demonstrated. A virtue, or intellectual competence, is a disposition, one with a basis resident in the competent agent, one that would in appropriately normal conditions ensure (or make highly likely) the success of any relevant performance issued by it 25 Knowledge then consists in apt-belief. There are a number of strengths to this account of epistemic performance. It gives a very clear and intuitive basis for Sosa s earlier attempts to solve epistemic debates: it retains and explains the environment dependent Reliabilism that characterised Sosa s virtue epistemology till now. For an archer to be skilled in shooting apt shots, she must be reliably accurate in human archery s normal environment. A disposition is a virtue/competence if it would in appropriately normal conditions ensure (or make highly likely) the success of any relevant performance issued by it. It simultaneously draws analogy with performances and uses that to explain our desire for justification and so the value of knowledge over true belief: success through luck is different and inferior to success from competence, which is what knowledge is. 26 The dual level of adroitness and aptness capture the distinction between the mere presence of competence and it leading to the particular belief. It also purports to resolve the infamous set of Gettier problems where belief is both true and arises from competence, but the truth of the belief does not arise from such epistemic competence and so it can t be knowledge Beginning with 2003b 25 Sosa 2007, pg Ibid, ch Ibid, pg. 95-7

6 While Sosa s approach to some of the more vexing epistemological disputes is fruitful, there remain deep and persistent problems with his approach both in general and specifically. First is the example of the Chicken-Sexer 28 : a chicken-sexer having been raised around chickens has acquired a highly reliable trait with which they can distinguish male from female chicks. However, chicken sexers tend to have false beliefs about how they accomplish this distinguishing because they tend to suppose they can make the distinction on the basis of what they can feel and touch tests show however that it is actually by smell that they are distinguishing. Suppose further that one of these sexers not only has false beliefs about how she distinguishes but also doesn t know that she s even reliable in this respect. Can we really speak of this person knowing the two chicks before her are of different sex? She seems to satisfy the AAA model in that she will hold an accurate belief, arising from a epistemic competency and the competency is the reason an accurate belief was formed. Indeed, it is a genuine cognitive achievement of the sexer, it is not a matter of luck that she s correct. But at the same time she has no good reason to make any assertion about a chick being male or female. It seems that there is the reoccurrence of the Internalist/Externalist divide, but shouldn t Sosa s analysis diffuse the problem? To some extent the reply will be as before: the sexer has animal justification for her belief, but not reflective justification for it. But this begins to feel like a dissatisfying answer little better than saying that the Sexer is justified on an externalist basis and not on an internalist basis which is justification we should be really interested in. Indeed, this relates to an ambiguity with Sosa about whether animal or reflective knowledge (that is justified true belief, where the justification is animal or reflective respectively) is true knowledge the kind we should really be interested in. At some points 29 he suggests animal knowledge is true knowledge, reflective knowledge being a higher knowledge, a rarer, more philosophical achievement comparable to Descartes s distinction between unreflective cognition and the more rigorous result of philosophic work scientia. Frequently however, Sosa suggests that animal knowledge falls short of properly human knowledge, it is mere animal and that even thinking of it as knowledge is metaphorical 30. Two positions seem possible: either (i) most human knowledge is unreflective but humans are capable of the special and rare achievement of reflective knowledge or (ii) human knowledge is reflective knowledge, non-reflective falls short of proper human knowledge, the use of knowledge is only in an extended sense. Sosa seems more often to fall in with (ii) and it is the view which will defend him against the sorts of counter-examples as Pritchard s above knowledge must have some sort of condition of epistemic perspective. But it does not seem plausible that we humans actually have the required perspective on our beliefs and epistemic capabilities, whenever we have true knowledge. In the usual case of knowledge, people do not have any beliefs about their beliefs, or beliefs about the epistemic source of such belief, 28 Pritchard, pg This is not to deny that there is a kind of animal knowledge properly so called, that falls short in respect of broad coherence animal knowledge as we might call it. It is rather only to affirm that beyond animal knowledge we humans, especially those of us who are philosophical, or at least reflective, aspire to a higher knowledge (Sosa 1995) 30 Sosa 1991, pp : To my mind the key is the requirement that the field F and the Circumstances C must be accessible within one s epistemic perspective viewing the attribution of knowledge to such beings as metaphorical

7 The chicken sexer case is no different to ordinary, unreflexive belief. Sosa has at points suggested that for ordinary knowledge one needs only a very sketchy perspective on one s own beliefs and their derivation 31 and that such perspective need just be implicit 32 But then where is the positive coherence Sosa seems to imply when first explaining epistemic perspective. This seems to hollow out any substantial value in Reflective Belief except when some plausible defence against counter-example is needed. Indeed, at any rate, it seems Sosa s virtue epistemology does not dissolve the externalist/internalist divide so much as replicate it within the theory. Why require this epistemic ascent at all? Even if a level of meta-knowledge is epistemically beneficial, which seem likely, why is that higher level a different kind of knowledge? If such ascent is required it is unclear why only one step should occur shouldn t an ever building positive coherence be beneficial, as it s easy to pose hypotheticals to show similar epistemic problems might arise at the second level as at the first, there s no obvious cut-off point for steps so as to half a regress. This however is not the end of such problems: there seems something more fundamentally wrong with Reliabilism, at the core of Sosa s account: for his theory ultimately implies that epistemic rationality can be embodied in truth-reliable virtues. Then the set of all beliefs it would be epistemically rational for some subject to believe must contain more truths than falsehoods. Because it must hold that what is rational to believe is a reliable indicator of what s true, because that s what this sort of rationality consists in. To return to the example of the evil demon, if one generally has at least some beliefs which it is epistemically rational for us to believe in (there seems to be at least some of these), it seems that even if we were the demonically molested twin the sorts of things that make it epistemically rational for one to hold such rational beliefs would still hold even when the beliefs themselves are false but where, of course, the demon is hiding this from one by making the world one perceives indistinguishable from the ordinary one. So indistinguishable is it that we would believe, what we would believe on reflection, what we seem to remember and what we experience would all be identical to what we would in the current world. We can learn from this example that such a demon could cause us to have false beliefs and thereby not automatically cause us to be irrational, but then it is possible for more of what we epistemically rationally believe to be false rather than true. Sosa will of course try to avoid this line of attack by noting that justification is relative to environment that, as seen already, the victim s faculties are not reliable relative to demon environment D and, hence, not virtuous in that environment, these same faculties are virtuous relative to the actual environment. But this line of defence can only be justified with the assumption that our environment is as we think it is if we suspended this belief, and assumed our environment was the demonic one, and the beliefs of the victim would just be justified even in a reliable sense. Sosa might specify that not just any environment is relevant: only those environments similar to what we take to be our actual environment. But who is the we supposed to be those of our community of the evaluator, those in the community of the evaluated, all people alive, all people who ve ever lived? There is no principled reason for it to be any of these and under any understanding of we this amounts to a collapse of any Reliabilism. For an epistemic competency can be virtuous relative to environment similar to what we take our own to be and yet completely unreliable in terms of what our environment actually is. 31 Sosa 1994, Ibid, pg. 47

8 Sosa s Virtue Reliabilist account ultimately succeeds only in part: it can give us a sense of what appeals to us in the dichotomies of epistemology by building an understanding of knowledge as an achievement like any other. Coherence and good foundations are both features of belief which will reliably lead to truth but his account can t deal with tensions between these two features as it only stipulates, rather than justifies, valuing a certain amount of coherence and no more. Indeed, when it comes to questions of Internalism, Sosa s account likewise avoids dichotomy only by specifying two distinct answers rather than justifying which we should care about. This then leaves the account foundering when confronted with the classic epistemic problem of the evil demon which draws on our conflicting internalist/externalist intuitions; Sosa s response will end up hinging on whether truth reliable is externalist (what our environment actually is) or internalist (what we take it to be). Thus Sosa s account does not escape from these dichotomies, rather such tensions are smuggled into the account and become apparent any time we wish to use it to answer certain difficult scenarios. Bibliogrpahy: Chisholm, Roderick M (ed.), Philosophy. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,Prentice-Hall Pritchard, Duncan What is this Thing called Knowledge? Rouledge Sosa, Ernest Knowledge in perspective. Cambridge University Press. Sosa, Ernest Virtue Pesspectivism: A response to Foley and Fumerton.. Philosphical Issues 5 (1994): Sosa, 1995 A Response to Dancy and Bonjour Philosophical Studies 78: 233 reprinted in Axtell, G. (ed) 2000 Knowledge, Belief and Character. Rowman and Littlefield Sosa, Ernest How to defeat opposition to Moore. Philosophical perspectives 13: Sosa, Ernest. 2003a. Beyond internal foundations to external virtues. Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs. Virtues. Blackwell. Sosa, Ernest. 2003b. The place of truth in epistemology. Intellectual virtue: perspectives from ethics and epistemology. Ed. Michael DePaul and Linda Zagzebski. Oxford University Press. Sosa, Ernest Apt belief and reflective knowledge, volume 1: a virtue epistemology. Oxford University Press.

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