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We need some standard that will determine how likely a belief is to be true given just that it is stored in one of us, including strangers that one can ask for directions, and with whom one might collaborate.

Ernest Sosa

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Ernest Sosa
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: June 17
Philosopher
University Teacher
Cardenas
Standards
Collaborate
Needs
Including
Stored
Asks
Directions
Belief
Strangers
Given
Standard
Stranger
True
Likely
Might
Determine
Need

More quotes by Ernest Sosa

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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.
Ernest Sosa
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When you dream, your perceptual (and other) competence is affected. You are then unable to get it right competently with the beliefs in your dream.
Ernest Sosa
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You attain aptness by judging while in good shape and in a good situation (good light, good distance, etc.), through the exercise of good barn-sorting epistemic competence.
Ernest Sosa
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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.
Ernest Sosa
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It is bad to want something that not even God could attain, especially when the impossibility becomes obvious.
Ernest Sosa
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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.
Ernest Sosa
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Judgment is affirmation with the intention to thereby affirm competently enough, and indeed aptly. That distinguishes judgments from mere guesses.
Ernest Sosa
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Lowered reliability obviously yields a lesser competence. But lowered breadth does so as well.
Ernest Sosa
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We must distinguish judging from guessing.
Ernest Sosa
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The correctness of much testimonially based belief is no more than minimally creditable to the believer.
Ernest Sosa
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If the agent aims to make the attempt if and only if it would be apt, then a distinctive element of risk assessment becomes relevant: How probably would the agent succeed in attempting that fuller end?
Ernest Sosa
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In order to qualify as a judgment, an affirmation must aim at getting it right aptly, through competence, and not just through a lucky guess.
Ernest Sosa
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There's not much to be done about the impossibility. One must instead get rid of the desire.
Ernest Sosa
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There isn't a formal definition of success.
Ernest Sosa
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There is no need for the scientist to go into whether an observation was made, nor into the who, what, when, or where. The data on which scientific theorizing is based are rather the propositional contents of the instrument readings recorded, or the facts detected thereby.
Ernest Sosa
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A successful account enables us to understand human knowledge in general.
Ernest Sosa
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When the risk of failure is too high, the right choice is to forbear.
Ernest Sosa
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Through our perceptual systems, we represent our surroundings, aiming to do so accurately, where the aiming is functional or teleological, rather than intentional. And the same goes for our functional beliefs. Through our judgments, however, we do intentionally, even consciously, attempt to get it right.
Ernest Sosa
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Ultimately, my more significant agreement is with a virtue tradition that features Aristotle and Descartes.
Ernest Sosa
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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.
Ernest Sosa