Abstract
What is the relationship between virtue and safety? This paper argues that Sosa’s positions in A Virtue Epistemology and in Judgment and Agency regarding this question are, despite appearances to the contrary, in fact consistent. Moreover, Sosa’s position there is well motivated—his Virtue Epistemology explains why knowledge should require apt belief, and why aptness should imply safety. Finally, the paper shows how two kinds of safety are importantly related to Sosa’s response to the Pyrrhonian Problematic. Specifically, reflections on the modal profiles of first-order and second-order safety allow us to answer two prominent objections to Sosa’s position.
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27 August 2018
Shortly after the publication of this paper, I had the opportunity to discuss related issues with Thomas Grundmann, who convinced me that the final section contains a demonstrable mistake.
Notes
For example, consider his treatment of the Lottery Problem above: “The right requirement is a requirement of sufficient safety, of truth in enough of the near-enough worlds.”
For a detailed exposition (and endorsement) of Sosa's response, see Greco (2013).
Here I have substituted "non-circular" for "legitimating." Earlier in Sosa's essay, we are told that a legitimating account, in the relevant sense of "legitimating", must be "without circularity or endless regress" (Sosa 2009, p. 159).
I use the term “n-order knowledge regarding p” to mark knowledge constituting the requisite n-order apt perspective. For example, second-order knowledge regarding p would be knowledge that one’s belief that p is reliably formed from appropriate skill, in appropriately normal shape and situation. Third-order knowledge regarding p would be knowledge that one’s belief that one’s belief that p is reliably formed from appropriate skill, in appropriately normal shape and situation is reliably formed from appropriate skill, in appropriately normal shape and situation.
Thanks to Ernie Sosa and John Turri for help with an earlier draft of the paper.
References
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Greco, J. Safety in Sosa. Synthese 197, 5147–5157 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1863-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1863-z