In this book, Ernest Sosa explains the nature of knowledge through an
approach originated by him years ago, known as virtue epistemology. Here
he provides the first comprehensive account of his views on epistemic
normativity as a form of performance normativity on two levels. On a
first level is found the normativity of the apt performance, whose
success manifests the performer's competence. On a higher level is found
the normativity of the meta-apt performance, which manifests not
necessarily first-order skill or competence but rather the reflective
good judgment required for proper risk assessment. Sosa develops this
bi-level account in multiple ways, by applying it to issues much
disputed in recent epistemology: epistemic agency, how knowledge is
normatively related to action, the knowledge norm of assertion, and the
Meno problem as to how knowledge exceeds merely true belief. A full
chapter is devoted to how experience should be understood if it is to
figure in the epistemic
competence that must be manifest in the truth of any belief apt enough
to constitute knowledge. Another takes up the epistemology of testimony
from the performance-theoretic perspective. Two other chapters are
dedicated to comparisons with ostensibly rival views, such as classical
internalist foundationalism, a knowledge-first view, and attributor
contextualism. The book concludes with a defense of the epistemic
circularity inherent in meta-aptness and thereby in the full aptness of
knowing full well.
