Know-How, Performance Enhancement, and Guidance Control

If intellectualism about knowledge-how is true (and so, if knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that), then to the extent that we need an autonomy condition on know-how, it will be (simply) an autonomy condition on know-that: a condition on propositional knowledge-apt belief. However, the anti-intellectualist—according to whom know-how is fundamentally dispositional rather than propositional—would need an entirely different story here––one that places an autonomy-related restriction not on propositional-knowledge-apt belief but, instead, on know-how-apt dispositions. Chapter 4 develops exactly this kind of restriction, by cobbling together some ideas about know-how and virtue epistemology with recent thinking in the moral responsibility literature about freedom, responsibility, and manipulation. The proposal is that one is in a state of knowing how to do something, φ‎, only if one has the skill to φ‎ successfully with guidance control, and one’s φ‎-ing exhibits guidance control (and furthermore, manifests know-how) only if one’s φ‎-ing is caused by a reasons-responsive mechanism that one owns. Unsurprisingly, the devil is in these details—and this chapter aims to spell them out in a way that rules out certain kinds of radical performance enhancing cases while not ruling out that, say, one knows how to do a maths problem when one’s performance is just mildly boosted by Adderall.

Knowing Full Well from Testimony?

Testimony poses a challenge to systematic epistemology. I cite two kinds of testimony situation where the recipient's belief is not safe, yet intuitively counts as knowledge. Can Sosa's more sophisticated virtue reliabilism, which theorises animal knowledge as apt belief, yield the intuitively correct verdict on these cases? Sosa shows that a belief can be apt, though it is not safe, and so it may seem a quick positive answer is forthcoming. However, I explore complications in applying his AAA framework, regarding what we take as the circumstances in which the subject's attempt is made: the AAA framework does not mandate a particular choice, yet this affects whether the attempt (in particular, a believing in the endeavour to attain truth) comes out as apt or not. I conclude that Sosa's theory is subject to a familiar charge: it does not give a reductive account of knowledge, since we must deploy independent intuitions about whether knowledge is gained in a case, in order to apply it.

Hoops and Barns: a new dilemma for Sosa

This paper critically assesses Sosa’s normative framework for performances as well as its application to epistemology. We first develop a problem for one of Sosa’s central theses in the general theory of performance normativity according to which performances attain fully desirable status if and only if they are fully apt. More specifically, we argue that given Sosa’s account of full aptness according to which a performance is fully apt only if safe from failure, this thesis can’t be true. We then embark on a rescue mission on behalf of Sosa and work towards a weakened account of full aptness. The key idea is to countenance a distinction between negligible and non-negligible types of risk and to develop an account of full aptness according to which even performances that are endangered by risk can be fully apt, so long as the risk is of a negligible type. While this alternative account of full aptness solves the problem we developed for Sosa earlier on, there is also bad news for Sosa. When applied to epistemology, the envisaged treatment of barn façade cases as cases in which the agent falls short of fully apt belief will no longer work. We show that, as a result, Sosa faces a new version of a familiar dilemma for virtue epistemology. Either he construes full aptness as strong enough to get barn façade cases right in which case his view will run right into the problem we develop. Or else he construes full aptness as weak enough to avoid this problem but then he will not be able to deal with barn façade cases in the way envisaged.

Epistemología de virtudes grupal

Resumen De acuerdo con Sosa (2007; 2009; 2011), el conocimiento es creencia apta, donde una creencia es apta cuando es correcta debido a la destreza (competente). Sosa (2010; 2015) añade a su análisis CAD del conocimiento un análisis RFS de la competencia, en donde una competencia completa combina su recinto, su forma y su situación. Una gran parte del in uyente trabajo de Sosa supone que los agentes epistémicos son individuos que adquieren conocimiento cuando dan con la verdad mediante el ejercicio de sus habilidades individuales, de maneras apropiadas y en situaciones apropiadas. Este artículo explora una extensión del modelo de Sosa al escenario social en el que los grupos constituyen agentes epistémicos adicionales a sus miembros individuales. La a rmación es que es posible adscribir conocimiento a los grupos en virtud de que dan con la verdad mediante el ejercicio de sus competencias en formas apropiadas y situaciones apropiadas. Mientras que el conocimiento en el nivel colectivo podría divergir del conocimiento en el nivel individual, las competencias grupales no son nada adicional a las competencias combinadas de sus miembros. La postura resultante tiene, por lo tanto, implicaciones para el debate sobre la reducción y la sobreveniencia en epistemología colectiva. Palabras Clave: epistemología colectiva, competencia grupal, creencia apta, competencia completa. Abstract According to Sosa (2007; 2009; 2011), knowledge is apt belief, where a belief is apt when accurate because adroit (competent). Sosa (2010; 2015) adds to his triple-A analysis of knowledge, a triple-S analysis of competence, where a complete competence combines its seat, shape and situation. Much of Sosa’s in uential work assumes that epistemic agents are individuals who acquire knowledge when they hit the truth through exercising their own individual skills in appropriate shapes and situations. This paper explores an extension of Sosa’s framework to a social setting in which groups constitute epistemic agents over and above their individual members. The claim is that groups can be ascribed knowledge in virtue of hitting the truth through exercising their competences in appropriate shapes and situations. While knowledge at the collective level may diverge from knowledge at the individual level, the competences of groups are nothing over and above the combined competences of their members. The ensuing view thus has implications for the debate over reduction and supervenience in collective epistemology.Keywords: collective epistemology, group competence, apt belief, complete competence.

Reflective Knowledge and Intellectual Assurance

In this discussion of Sosa's second volume on reflective knowledge, I focus on the question of whether Sosa's account of knowledge is flawed for failing to capture a connection between possessing knowledge and gaining assurance of truth. In particular, I worry that if there is no more to reflective knowledge than apt belief about apt belief, where the understanding of aptness is the same at both the first and the second level, Sosa hasn't given us a way of gaining philosophically satisfying knowledge.