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p.1 Chapter One Descartes's Pyrrhonian Virtue Epistemology
p.6 Recall Descartes insistence that no one ever seriously doubts the deliverances of the senses and that his habitual opinions are highly probable opinions that it is more reasonable to affirm than to deny.
[JLJ - Descartes knew that the senses were a 'trick that worked', and therefore that they could be trusted. Humans curiously do not need to know the absolute truth of things in order to 'go on.' We construct or imagine what is real based on our perceptions and an amazing ability to fill in the gaps with what is likely. We proceed cautiously when it is important to do so, especially if things are not crystal clear, or when much as at stake, and with planned fallback positions. With adaptive capacity we never truly become surprised to the point of inaction, when things are not as they seem.]
p.6-7 Descartes... emphatically distinguishes two faculties. There is first a faculty of understanding, whose deliverances, received passively, are "perceptions" with some degree of clarity and distinctness. And there is a second faculty of judgment based on the subject's free will.
p.7 Descrates thought pretense... would counteract our normal automatic tendency to judge in line with our stored credences, but it would not make it impossible for us to so judge... we would now be more free to judge in line with true reason and not just custom.
p.7-8 Consider the Cartesian "perceptions" that can have various degree of clarity and distinctness. These are not just sensory perceptions. Indeed, the most clear and distinct of them include a priori intuitions involving rational rather than sensory awareness. These are rather seemings, including not only sensory seemings but also a priori seemings. Moreover, we should focus not just on initial seemings... We should focus rather on resultant seemings, credences involving some degree of confidence
p.8 As did the Pyrrhonian skeptics long before him, Descartes believes that we can guide our lives practically through such confident-enough seemings or appearances, ordinary opinions that it would be laughable to put in serious doubt as one navigates an ordinary day.
[JLJ - Yes, practical tricks that work or schemes - which involve appearances, cues and simple actions and responses - are useful to the point that - if they are truly practical, ethical and effective - we can simply execute them blindly, like picking an apple from a tree, and benefit from the rewards we gain.]
p.11 the evil demon
[JLJ - ...glad we clarified that the demon in question is of the evil variety. For a moment there, I had confused it with a benevolent demon...]
p.11 In order to attain true certainty on a question whether p, we must be so constituted that we can not go wrong (given adequate care and attention).
[JLJ - Why worry obsessively about certainty? Usually good enough is good enough to 'go on'.]
p.15 The essence of error is said to reside in a judgment that does not manifest the sort of competence required, one whose manifestation would leave little enough to chance.
[JLJ - The essence of error is a tendency to trust - without appropriate levels of mindful attention - in an experienced, practical, yet time- or resource-constrained scheme, calculation, classification or general-purpose trick of sorts, which has been elevated to a place of importance after any amount of internal conversation, and - when operating as an experienced judgement or guide to action - is usually correct or effective, but due to explained or unexplained reasons usually related to mindful attention, happens to be incorrect or improper or produce the wrong result or suggestion, in the current predicament.]
p.17 to endorse a belief is to regard it as correct
[JLJ - One can 'essentially' agree with a belief, which is somewhat less than 'endorsing' that it is 'correct.' My point: we have to synthesize how to 'go on' out of something, and this must come from our values and beliefs, even ones loosely held. Are we capable of being captured by a belief system - one made up by others or created by ourselves? Perhaps one does not so much hold a belief, as to be held or captured by it. A member of a criminal gang of four people, out on a scouting mission for some house to break into or something to steal, does not necessarily believe that crime pays; it is just possible that he/she fell on to hard times, and in with the wrong people, and is currently held by a system of mutual trust and support among the four criminals. Perhaps there are plans to leave the gang soon, perhaps when his/her fortunes change, or a big heist is made, but for now the system as it is will have to do. There is no belief here that the support system or the criminal activities or enterprise are correct - it just has to do for now, in order to 'go on.']
p.18 In the view here defended, Descartes uses his principle of clarity and distinctness in order to raise his first-order judgments to the scientia level. He must assure himself that judgmens rationally based on clear and distinct perceptions avoid error. Error is what one must avoid, not just falsity. So he seeks not just truth but also aptness. And aptness requires a good enough competence, one that is reliable enough. You are to assure yourself that you attain such aptness, which is required for confidence that you avoid error, and attain certainty. But this assurance is forthcoming only with assurance that the operative source of your judgment is indeed a reliable-enough competence. And this includes your present judgments as well as those you made in your past or will make in your future. This raises an issue of circularity
[JLJ - ...which is why in practical matters of everyday living, since we have to 'go on,' we ought to dispense with concepts like confidence and assurance - unless they are truly necessary - and proceed instead with tested schemes of ethical and practical 'tricks' that 'ought to work', combined with adaptive capacity, for those times when things are not as they seem, or when the 'tricks' on rare occasion do not 'work' as planned. The world is too complex to rely on clarity of perception and distinctness. You need practical and ethical tricks to unravel the complexity of your predicament, and arrive ultimately at potentials which are useful for maneuver towards those goals you have that are difficult to attain. How many people sit in job interviews and claim that they have 'clarity and distinctness'? Instead, one claims to have so many years of experience, which implies that one has acquired a wide variety of useful skills useful to meet the job requirements.]
p.21 Chapter Two Dream Skepticism
[JLJ - A completely useless chapter on the epistemology of dreams. I detect a faint odor of garbage coming from the pages of my book...]
p.22 A claim might be irrefutable, however, without being true.
[JLJ - A claim might be irrefutable, but that does not mean that 'evidence' of sorts cannot be gathered and mounted against it, or weak arguments made, or similar 'irrefutable' claims made in opposition.]
p.26 A lot rides epistemically on just how dreams are constituted.
[JLJ - Ummm... just when I thought Sosa had some valid thoughts. My response is simply, dream on buddy.]
p.37 By imagining we do not thereby know. Imagining can be very important in presenting hypotheses to consider. However, unlike believing, it is not constitutive of knowledge.
[JLJ - ...unless by imagining we can construct diagnostic tests which ultimately give us more insight into the nature of a complex position.]
p.39 Chapter Three Regress Skepticism
p.41 Not only is Descartes a reliabilist, however. He is also a virtue epistemologist among whose main epistemological conecpts is that of the apt belief or judgment.
p.45 Call such first-order knowledge animal knowledge. This would be knowledge unsupported by higher-order attitudes on the part of the subject. Call the higher-level knowledge gained through a reassuring prespective reflective knowledge. By acknowledging both kinds of knoweldge we subscribe to a "bilevel epistemology."
p.49 In conclusion, let us draw a distinction among competencies, between those that are and those that are not fundamental.
p.50 Some practices or faculties or competencies... are not checkable independently. Which are these? They are practices or faculties or competencies that are "fundamental."
[JLJ - ...yet, it is the genius of the human condition to be able to construct how to 'go on' from incomplete, partial, incorrect information, heresay, and other kinds of tricks that work. One has simply to open one's eyes to see tricks that work, in the process of being executed. There is nothing more fundamental than a scheme for going on that is likely to work. One simply has to execute it. If practical, we do not need an independent check.]
p.55 Chapter Four Knowledge: What It Is and How We Might Have It
p.55 knowledge... At a minimum, how might we determine the conditions necessary and sufficient for its attainment?
[JLJ - Once more, I insist that knowledge - when isolated from its ability to be grasped at in order to 'go on' - is bound to be ultimately inscrutable. It is simply an intermediate step in cognition, a package of pre-decided material, graspable in a predicament of sorts, and outside of that usage destined only for a general-purpose breakdown, and certainly this will proceed no further than to a status of a 'trick' that often 'works' in determining how to 'go on.']
p.56 Perhaps we need not a true belief that has a good rational basis but rather one that is sensitively true... Sensitivity Condition: In order for a true belief to be a case of knowledge, it must be sensitive: it must be one that the believer would not hold if its content were false rather than true.
p.60 one need not explain plausibility in terms of truth. Many false things are plausible; we can explain why they are plausible without having to consider them true... We are said to face illusions at every turn
[JLJ - Think of a detective looking for suspects in a recent murder. He or she would first reconstruct the deceased's actions over the last several days, including people he or she came into contact with and other existing relationships. The detective would look to those who would have means, motive and opportunity. Now, if you have the means, motive and opportunity it does not mean that you are the murderer - many false things are plausible - but rather that you are likely worth the time and resources for being the subject of further investigation, at least in the early stages. It is worth a knock on the door and responding to a few questions concerning where you were at the time of the murder, and the names of anyone who can back your claim, and how you personally felt about the deceased, and whether you owned any weapons, and whether you know things that only the murderer would know, etc.]
p.62 The English schema "S knows that p" has fascinated philosophers and linguists, who have sought an account of its meaning. Others have focused - alternatively, or in addition - on the concept (or concepts) expressed by that schema. Philosophers have also been interested in knowledge itself, however, in a way that goes beyond semantics and conceptual analysis.
[JLJ - S knows that p... It seems to me that the stress of the predicament that S is in - a predicament that requires him or her to decide at every moment how to 'go on,' in the midst of the driving forces and competing agents, and fleeting opportunities, and the passage of time that both creates and destroys all things, causes S to adopt a scheme where certain matters are pre-decided ahead of time. 'p' is simply a chunk of pre-determined material ready to be grasped at, in a practical and strategic and wise way, in order to 'go on,' or to be ready to 'go on.' Evolution selects which of the Ss survive and produce offspring, and their p-acquiring tactics certainly appear in the following generation, although the actual p-acquired does not. Should we even say 'S knows that p'? Perhaps it is more correct to say is that 'S is prepared to act, relying on p, to a certain extent, and might even do so directly and immediately, based on the demands of the current or perceived predicament, and the need of S at all times to decide how to go on.']
p.71 Chapter Five Knowledge as Action
p.71 Judgment and knowledge itself are forms of intentional action - that is the thesis to be argued in this chapter.
p.72 Here is the AAA structure, which applies as follows to that shot...
A shot is accurate iff it hits the target.
It is adroit iff it is an exercise of competence.
It is apt iff it is accurate because it is adroit.
p.73 Generalizing to attempts generally, because these all have constitutive aims, we can also distinguish as follows:
An attempt is successful iff it attains its aim.
It is competent iff it is an exercise of competence.
It is apt iff it is successful because competent.
p.73 Epistemology concerns a domain of epistemic performance, such as belief and judgment (and also inference, learning, teaching, inquiry, and so on).
p.79 Consider next an example in which a guess, surprisingly enough, might still qualify as a case of "knowedge." Please recall your yearly eye exam... I am asked to read the lines of a chart with letters that shrink line by line, from a huge single letter at the top to those barely visible at the bottom.
[JLJ - Sosa touches on my previous ideas concerning the use of expertly and carefully constructed diagnostic tests to assess and ultimately to guide future action. A diagnostic test is a special kind of performance which allows for a certain amount of guessing, but has an underlying result that - due to the nature of the test - an otherwise difficult to determine quality heretofore unknown and directly unobservable, can (often) be reliably estimated via the construction of revealing tests, of a certain sort. Academic tests and exams, eye tests, even automobile test drives, job interviews, theater auditions, even police questioning, are certain situations where much can be inferred from performance in carefully designed test cases. A failure to answer questions correctly in a job interview is not necessarily a bad thing - it just suggests that you will not be a good match for the specific job that is open. It might not address your other qualities and skills, temperament, character, nature, and might even be dismissed as unimportant once the proper job is located which reflects your skills and abilities.]
p.82 one may do something as a means to more than one end
[JLJ - ...especially when one can/will settle for a variety of outcomes. Perhaps when playing a complex game of strategy, we often must aim for multiple objectives, or instead a general-purpose capacity to coerce, and rely on the emergence of events in the unknown future to further guide us towards our higher level goals. Perhaps we can only diagnose our ability to coerce in the unknown future, or our adaptive capacity to mobilize coercion.]
p.87 Chapter Six Varieties and Levels of Knowledge
p.92-94 human knowledge intimately involves higher-order phenomena. Here are some reasons...
(a) Judgement is affirmation with the intention to thereby affirm competently enough, and indeed aptly. That distinguishes judgments from mere guesses... (b) Suspension of judgment is an intentional double-omission whereby one omits affirmation, whether positive or negative... (c) For competence of judgment on a first-order question, epistemic negligence must be avoided through responsiveness to reasons that a fully proper judgment must weigh... (d) ...It is not enough that my first-order affirmation attain correctness, or even that it do so aptly... It is required in addition that this aptness of one's affirmation be itself attained aptly.
p.95-96 Why does it matter whether one has merely animal knowledge or "ascends" rather to the more reflective levels? ...Why should the second-order knowledge improve the knowledge on the first order, raising it to a better level of knowledge? Reflective quality is important for human knowledge largely for the reasons already suggested: (a) because of the nature of judgement and how it differs from guessing, (b) because of the nature of suspension, and (c) because of how competence must avoid negligence and insensitivity to defeaters. All of these - a, b, and c - involve ascent to a second order, in the ways noted. And as a bonus, (d) we gain insight into the special status of the Cartesian cogitio.
p.99 Fully apt performance goes beyond the merely successful, the competent, and even the reflectively apt. And it is the human, rational animal that can most deeply and extensively guide his performances based on the risk involved, in the light of the competence at his disposal.
p.99 The dimension of cognition is, moreover, just the special case in which our modularly competent seemings must be subject to a rational competence that assigns them proper weights.
p.106 Chapter Seven The Value of Human Knowledge
p.106 We assume that knowledge requires, at a minimum, a belief that is true.
p.108 The aim for belief is said to be truth.
p.111 All sorts of things can "perform" well or ill when put to the test.
p.112 Performances generally admit this threefold distinction: accuracy, adroitness, and aptness. At least so do performances with an aim
p.113 Belief aims at truth and is accurate or correct if true.
p.115 for any endeavor one undertakes, it is always necessarily proper to prefer that one succeed, and indeed succeed aptly, not just by luck.
[JLJ - Is it? Consider the eye exam previously mentioned that is diagnostic, the failure point indicates the degree of perception one is capable of. Here a failue to read a line of letters in a directed action has little in the way of consequences - in fact one would hope to fail the character-reading exercise at the appropriate point where one receives in consequence a useful prescription for glasses. One can come up with a variety of exceptions to the above. What if you have just been kidnapped and are being taken away from your apartment by a group of thugs and your phone rings. The kidnapper puts a gun in your back and tells you to "tell the caller in a normal voice that everything is ok and that you have to go at once, or we will harm you." When you tell the caller, who may be a friend, that everything is ok and that you have to go right now, you secretly hope that you did not succeed, that the caller got the impression that everything was not ok, and that you are in danger. What if you are completing exams your freshman year in college, in a field that you are not too happy with, but it meets one of your wants, that is, you want to make a lot of money when you graduate. You might be indifferent to the results of the exams - if you pass the exams you will continue on in your chosen career field. If you fail, you get to choose another career, but one you will be happier doing. A boarderline pass this year might mean you do not pass exams next year, and so have wasted two years rather than one. "Learning failures" possibly are not really failures at all. What if one tries hard to make the High School football team. If you succeed, then you get to spend four years working at something that you most likely will not use later in life. If you do not make the team, you can focus on other pursuits and perhaps be better prepared for college, and so on. What if someone decides to determine the degree of fidelity of one's spouse by hiring successively enticing, attractive, youthful and otherwise persuasive suitors to attempt to seduce her, in order to determine her degree of fidelity. Sounds like the plot of a B-grade movie. Does one hope to succeed in this ill-fated and doomed-from-the-start mission?]
p.120 Chapter Eight Mind-World Relations: Action, Perception, Knowledge
p.122 Performance whose success manifests the relevant competence of the performer avoids thereby a kind of luck.
p.124 X perceives M iff X hosts a sensory experience for which M is causally responsible in the right way.
p.131 a complete competence can be broken down into three components: the relevant Skill, Shape, and Situation.
p.131 Take, for example, our complete driving competence on a certain occasion, including [JLJ - text formatted for readability]
- (a) our basic driving skill (retained even when we sleep), along with
- (b) the shape we are in at the time (awake, sober, and so on), and
- (c) our situation (seated at the wheel, on a dry road, and so on).
p.134 When something shows its true colors through manifestation, we can take notice and revise our view of what to expect from the host of the manifest disposition.
[JLJ - When programming a machine to play a complex game of strategy, perhaps we ought to concern ourselves with the latent potentials of both sides, and the ability of these potentials to manifest themselves through the emergence of good moves, that coerce. We cannot claim a competence for our machine-playing without examining the promising, the unexpected, and a certain subset of the unlikely but remote moves in order to reliably estimate (via a diagnostic test) the adaptive capacity of the present posture to mobilize coercion.]
p.136 Manifestation enables us to go beyond the need to appeal to "the right way." The manifestation of competencies and other dispositions, then provides a solution to the problem of specifying "the right way" as it pertains to action, perception, and knowledge.
[JLJ - I have proposed the execution of practical schemes, themselves composed of tricks that often work, that are activated when needed. Such schemes, when mature and real-world-tested, become competencies when expertly and skillfully executed.]
p.138 We need not be restricted to concepts used when we began our inquiry, as our inquiry may properly lead to revision.
p.140 Chapter Nine Two Forms of Virtue Epistemology
p.140 Two quite distinct forms of virtue epistemology are generally recognized. One of these finds in epistemology important correlates of Aristotle's moral virtues... The other form of virtue epistemology cleaves closer to Aristotelian intellectual virtues while recognizing a broader set of competences still restricted to basic faculties of perception, introspection, and the like.
p.157 Chapter Ten Knowledge, Time, and Negligence
p.157 How is KNOWLEDGE affected by negligence and the passage of time?
p.158 When are we right, all things considered, to close our minds?
[JLJ - Just ask the editors of academic Journals, where the question is reversed: When is it right, all things considered, to open our pre-closed minds, to consider your newly developed point of view?]
p.163 first-order animal competence or, alternatively, the second-order reflective competence... Which perspective should have priority in your own continued believing and judging?
[JLJ - Should believing and judging be looked at in isolation? They are part of and ought to be tied to, practical schemes to 'go on.']
p.164 We have been considering this question: What should determine one's judgment and its quality at the present moment?
p.165 If you already know the answer to a given question, how weighty is the prima facie reason that this gives you to close your mind?
[JLJ - The problem with Philosophy and the term 'know' is that there are degrees of certainty, with the standard one being, enough to guide action in the future. We are sometimes wrong when we think we know. Only practical wisdom will tell you how much prima facie evidence you need to consider practically closing youor mind. To say that one 'knows' anything is nothing more than to say that one has a number of tricks that are likely to work, and that one might use them in the future to determine how to 'go on.']
p.171 Chapter Eleven Virtue Theory against Situationism
p.179 There is substantial evaluatively interesting variation in human behavior. People can and do behave variably regarding honesty, kindness, courage, temperance, etc.
p.191 Chapter Twelve Virtue Epistemology and a Theory of Competence
p.191 A competence is a disposition (ability) to succeed when one tries.
[JLJ - A competence is a deemed ability to perform to some degree of success in a designated arena, under routine and certain critically non-routine conditions. Perhaps one who is competent is experienced to the point one where one can diagnostically assess, and can continuously synthesize 'what to do, and what to do next,' and determine enough situational awareness to self-guide oneself toward and away from desired obstacles and goals, to form postures with potential in uncertain environments, and as importantly, self-guide both away from typically dangerous or non-favorable conditions, and towards opportunities which present.]
p.191-192 we can distinguish three sorts of dispositions: the innermost (seat), the inner (seat + shape), and the complete (seat + shape + situation). With regard to one's competence in driving, for example, we can distinuish between (a) the innermost driving competence that is seated in one's brain, nervous system, and body, which one retains even while asleep or drunk; (b) a fuller inner competence, which requires also that one be in proper shape, that is, awake, sober, alert, and so on; and (c) complete competence or ability to drive well and safely (on a given road or in a certain area), which requires that one be well situated, with appropriate road conditions pertaining to the surface, the lighting, etc. The complete competence is thus an SSS (or an SeShSi) competence.
p.193 Every competence is, again, a disposition to succeed when one aims at a given objective, in certain (favorable enough) conditions while in (good enough) shape. But not every disposition to succeed is a competence.
p.196 A competence is a disposition to succeed, but it must be such a disposition properly restricted with respect to the three Ss - seat, shape, and situation.
p.197 judgment is automatically on a reflective higher order.
[JLJ - A judgement is called for by a scheme, usually both strategic and practical in nature, involving one or more tricks that usually work, and is executed in a timely, resource and space-conserving way, often in order to 'go on.']
p.199 Competences are a very special case of dispositions.
p.207 Chapter Thirteen Knowledge and Justification
p.216 Performances are very generally based on guiding means/end beliefs and assumptions, and the quality of those beliefs and assumptions. But what is that required epistemic quality?
p.216-217 Human performance seems unaffected by any such element of luck, epistemic performanc eincluded.
p.217 We properly assume, as a default, that relevant background conditions will actually hold. By contrast, we need not rule out the mere danger that a background condition might fail to hold. Although background conditions must actually hold, they can hold by luck, despite grave danger. Of course, not just any kind of luck affects the quality of an attained success, of an achievement... Many essential elements of achievement can depend on luck that does not diminish achievement.
JLJ - Ernest Sosa presents a collection of very odd examples, cataloged here:
p.57 An evil demon feeds one directly a natural course of common-sense experience
p.212 a subject with his brain in a vat (BIV)
p.212 squashing a rabbit by falling on it when pushed unconscious off a cliff
p.215 a rogue state led by a maniac has a hydrogen bomb sufficient to destroy all life and normality on Earth in extremely short order
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