Quote

Normal adults can doodle, amble, and drift with no need to assess risk, since there is normally no risk at all. Jazz improvisation seems less subject to standards of risk than surgery, and less than much formal athletic performance, as in a tennis match.

Ernest Sosa

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Ernest Sosa
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: June 17
Philosopher
University Teacher
Cardenas
Normal
Tennis
Assess
Risk
Performance
Drift
Since
Performances
Improvisation
Less
Jazz
Athletic
Seems
Adults
Normally
Need
Subject
Surgery
Needs
Standards
Formal
Amble
Much
Subjects
Match
Doodle

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Success is better than failure an attempt is a better attempt, it is better as an attempt, if competent than if incompetent and it is better to succeed through competence - aptly - than through sheer luck.
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Judgment is affirmation with the intention to thereby affirm competently enough, and indeed aptly. That distinguishes judgments from mere guesses.
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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?
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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.
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Ultimately, my more significant agreement is with a virtue tradition that features Aristotle and Descartes.
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There isn't a formal definition of success.
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The correctness of much testimonially based belief is no more than minimally creditable to the believer.
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Animal knowledge is metaphysically constituted by apt belief, by belief whose correctness manifests the believer's epistemic competence, a relevant disposition to get it right on the matter at hand when one tries to do so.
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A successful account enables us to understand human knowledge in general.
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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.
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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.
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There's not much to be done about the impossibility. One must instead get rid of the desire.
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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.
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When the risk of failure is too high, the right choice is to forbear.
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It is bad to want something that not even God could attain, especially when the impossibility becomes obvious.
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One does not avoid incompetence if one makes an attempt whose likelihood of success is too low. This seems little more than analytic: when the performance is in a domain that imposes standards of risk, attempts may or may not meet such standards. And the relevant competence of agents then includes reliably enough meeting those standards.
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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.
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We must distinguish judging from guessing.
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The success of an archery shot may bring food to the hunter's starving family, or may constitute a horrible murder. But these outcomes are irrelevant to the assessment of that shot as a hunter-archery shot, as an attempt to hit prey without running excessive risk of failure.
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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.
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