It is bad to want something that not even God could attain, especially when the impossibility becomes obvious.
Ernest SosaPhilosophers do need to have intuitions of various specific sorts: ethical, metaphysical, etc., depending on their targeted subject matter. And they must make intuition reports, as they record the contents of their intuitions. But they need not go into whether an intuition has been enjoyed.
Ernest SosaCompare the credit for a football touchdown, which might be shared by the receiver not only with the quarterback, but also with the linesmen who make crucial protective plays, etc. The success of the touchdown play depends on the receiver, it is true; but in a particular case it might depend far more on the work of others.
Ernest SosaAnimal knowledge is metaphysically constituted by apt belief, by belief whose correctness manifests the believer's epistemic competence, a relevant disposition to get it right on the matter at hand when one tries to do so.
Ernest SosaSuccess is better than failure; an attempt is a better attempt, it is better as an attempt, if competent than if incompetent; and it is better to succeed through competence - aptly - than through sheer luck.
Ernest SosaIn arriving at the relevant theory about the specifics of our faculty of vision we will presumably use our eyes to gather relevant data. Based on such data we come to know about the optic nerve, the structure of our eyes, the rods and cones, etc., so as to explain how it is that vision gives us reliable access to the shapes and colors of objects around us. In reliably arriving at that theory we thus exercise the very faculty whose reliability is explained by the theory. There is no vice in this sort of circularity.
Ernest Sosa