Suppose we wonder whether we should trust the deliverances of our basic epistemic competences. If those are indeed our basic competences, then in order properly to satisfy our curiosity we will inevitably rely on one or more of them. So, either we squelch our curiosity or we will have to fall into the circularity or regress to which the skeptic objects.
Ernest SosaEpistemology now flourishes with various complementary approaches. This includes formal epistemology, experimental philosophy, cognitive science and psychology, including relevant brain science, and other philosophical subfields, such as metaphysics, action theory, language, and mind. It is not as though all questions of armchair, traditional epistemology are already settled conclusively, with unanimity or even consensus. We still need to reason our way together to a better view of those issues.
Ernest SosaIf a shot aimed at aptness succeeds aptly, it is then fully apt, since it is not only apt but also aptly apt. But the full aptness of such an attempt is entirely compatible with its being a horrible murder, if the "hunter" is an assassin and the prey his victim. That hunter's shot may still be outstandingly, fully apt, if it manifests the agent's competence in both archery dexterity and shot selection.
Ernest SosaSince human good is what humans ought to pursue, the pursuit of interest to Aristotle is then such activity of soul, that which constitutes human good, namely activity that attains desiderata, where the attainment is in accord with virtue.
Ernest SosaWhen we speak of ordinary unqualified knowledge, my thought is that we are implicitly relativizing to the standards imposed by our evolution-derived humanity. These are standards that determine when we consider it appropriate to store beliefs just as a human being, rather than in one's capacity as an expert of one or another sort. Such stored beliefs are to be available for later use in one's own thought or in testimony to others.
Ernest Sosa