Reflective Knowledge: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, Volume II, by Ernest Sosa.

Abstract

Reflective Knowledge is the second volume of Sosa’s Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, following A Virtue Epistemology (2007). Reflective Knowledge extends his account of virtue epistemology, primarily by focusing on reflective knowledge and issues of epistemic circularity. Part one prepares the way for Sosa’s own views through a series of critical discussions of Moore, Chisholm, Strawson, Reid, Sellars, and Davidson. These are models of philosophically informed history of philosophy that engage philosophical issues but are sensitive to interpretative issues and take our understanding beyond textbook history. In part two, Sosa defends the value of reflective knowledge, and argues that virtue epistemology neither undermines knowledge nor makes it ‘too easy’. The most striking aspect of the book is the defence of an externalist analysis of the idea of a virtuous circle. Sosa argues for a form of virtue reliabilism according to which a belief is knowledge only if it is true and apt by virtue of its ‘correctness deriving from its manifesting certain cognitive virtues of the subject, where nothing is a cognitive virtue unless it is a truth-conducive disposition’ (p. 135). He is thus an externalist who criticizes Moore for thinking that ordinary perceptual knowledge requires knowing one is not dreaming, rather than simply not dreaming. However, he also distinguishes ‘reflective’ knowledge from ‘animal’ knowledge. The former requires defensibly apt belief, that is, belief about the aptness of one’s belief and a sufficiently coherent perspective on its aptness that allows one to defend it against relevant sceptical objections. So at the level of reflective knowledge, Sosa is also a coherentist, criticizing Moore for thinking that reflective knowledge requires prior knowledge that one isn’t dreaming rather than simply presupposing it in a web of mutually supporting belief that enhances the justification of all. The reflective/animal distinction, Sosa argues, corresponds to Descartes’ distinction between scientia, which Descartes enjoys once he has achieved his theological perspective on the truth-conduciveness of his clear and distinct judgements, and cognition, possessed by atheist mathematicians who lack such a reflective perspective. It is also key, Sosa thinks, to the understanding of his own epistemological project. Sosa thus rejects Reid’s criticism of Descartes’ project as viciously circular.