Ernest Sosa

A successful account enables us to understand human knowledge in general.

— Ernest Sosa

Descartes's epistemology is a special case of Aristotle's virtue ethics.

— Ernest Sosa

We must distinguish judging from guessing.

— Ernest Sosa

Any defense of common sense must allow that it is revisable.

— Ernest Sosa

When the risk of failure is too high, the right choice is to forbear.

— Ernest Sosa

There isn't a formal definition of success.

— Ernest Sosa

Judgment is affirmation with the intention to thereby affirm competently enough, and indeed aptly. That distinguishes judgments from mere guesses.

— Ernest Sosa

It is bad to want something that not even God could attain, especially when the impossibility becomes obvious.

— Ernest Sosa

Flourishing is properly the main human end, and flourishing is activity of soul that succeeds in accord with virtue.

— Ernest Sosa

Lowered reliability obviously yields a lesser competence. But lowered breadth does so as well.

— Ernest Sosa

There's not much to be done about the impossibility. One must instead get rid of the desire.

— Ernest Sosa

Philosophers need not much use the word 'intuition' or the concept of intuition, except when they happen to be working on the…

— Ernest Sosa

In order to qualify as a judgment, an affirmation must aim at getting it right aptly, through competence, and not just through…

— Ernest Sosa

Epistemic competence might be posterior to knowledge conceptually, however, while still prior metaphysically.

— Ernest Sosa

We can pursue the Cartesian project without restricting ourselves to theology and a priori faculties. A better, broader perspective is properly sought…

— Ernest Sosa

Success is better than failure; an attempt is a better attempt, it is better as an attempt, if competent than if incompetent;…

— Ernest Sosa

I am mainly concerned with unqualified knowledge, by contrast with the varieties of expert knowledge: scientific knowledge of various sorts, legal knowledge,…

— Ernest Sosa

It is also certain that when we assent to some piece of reasoning when our perception of it is lacking, then either…

— Ernest Sosa

In competitive archery, risk assessment has minimal bearing on quality of performance, since the archer has so little choice over shot selection.…

— Ernest Sosa

The data on which philosophical theorizing is based are rather the intuited contents themselves, concerning the various thought experiments. At least that…

— Ernest Sosa

When I accept someone's testimony, I am thus only a small part of the full seat of epistemic competence, which might include…

— Ernest Sosa

Through our perceptual systems, we represent our surroundings, aiming to do so accurately, where the aiming is functional or teleological, rather than…

— Ernest Sosa

Epistemology now flourishes with various complementary approaches. This includes formal epistemology, experimental philosophy, cognitive science and psychology, including relevant brain science, and…

— Ernest Sosa

Given its more substantial aim, a judgment is apt only if its constitutive alethic affirmation is not only apt but aptly apt.…

— Ernest Sosa

In arriving at the relevant theory about the specifics of our faculty of vision we will presumably use our eyes to gather…

— Ernest Sosa

When we speak of ordinary unqualified knowledge, my thought is that we are implicitly relativizing to the standards imposed by our evolution-derived…

— Ernest Sosa

Intuitive seeming is in my view an attraction to assent based on nothing more than understanding of the content that upon consideration…

— Ernest Sosa

Suppose we wonder whether we should trust the deliverances of our basic epistemic competences. If those are indeed our basic competences, then…

— Ernest Sosa

If a shot aimed at aptness succeeds aptly, it is then fully apt, since it is not only apt but also aptly…

— Ernest Sosa

One does not avoid incompetence if one makes an attempt whose likelihood of success is too low. This seems little more than…

— Ernest Sosa

The correctness of much testimonially based belief is no more than minimally creditable to the believer.

— Ernest Sosa

If we have a better understanding of knowledge than we do of such justification or competence, then we can explain the latter…

— Ernest Sosa

Ultimately, my more significant agreement is with a virtue tradition that features Aristotle and Descartes.

— Ernest Sosa

In my view (animal) knowledge is apt belief, where not only the belief (its existence and content) but also its correctness is…

— Ernest Sosa

When you dream, your perceptual (and other) competence is affected. You are then unable to get it right competently with the beliefs…

— Ernest Sosa

Knowledge in my view is a form of action. It involves endeavors to get it right, and more broadly it concerns aimings,…

— Ernest Sosa

When there are conflicts of observation, when experiments cannot be replicated, scientists may then retreat to a study of the various specific…

— Ernest Sosa

Animal knowledge is metaphysically constituted by apt belief, by belief whose correctness manifests the believer's epistemic competence, a relevant disposition to get…

— Ernest Sosa

Philosophers do need to have intuitions of various specific sorts: ethical, metaphysical, etc., depending on their targeted subject matter. And they must…

— Ernest Sosa

Compare the credit for a football touchdown, which might be shared by the receiver not only with the quarterback, but also with…

— Ernest Sosa