Compare 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.

If we have a better understanding of knowledge than we do of such justification or competence, then we can explain the latter through the former.

I am mainly concerned with unqualified knowledge, by contrast with the varieties of expert knowledge: scientific knowledge of various sorts, legal knowledge, medically expert knowledge, and so on.

In 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.

A hunter archer can also be out to shock by taking crazy shots. What makes his shots "crazy" is set by excessive risk, judged by hunting-archery standards, which would tend to draw agreement from knowledgeable observers.

Intuitive seeming is in my view an attraction to assent based on nothing more than understanding of the content that upon consideration attracts one's assent. But such understanding-based attraction can differ dramatically in epistemic quality. Some such attractions represent nothing more than superstition or bias absorbed from the culture, sans ratiocination.

The data on which philosophical theorizing is based are rather the intuited contents themselves, concerning the various thought experiments. At least that is so outside the epistemology of the a priori.