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Epistemic Explanations is an important book by the world's most eminent epistemologist. Sosa develops an improved virtue epistemology and uses it to explain several epistemic phenomena.
List of contents
- Part I: Insight and Understanding, and Two Sides of Epistemology
- 1: Insight and Understanding
- 2: Gnoseology and Intellectual Ethics
- Part II: The Nature and Varieties of Suspension
- 3: The Place of Suspension and Problems for Evidentialism
- 4: Suspension, Confidence, and Inquiry
- 5: When and How is Suspension Apt?
- 6: More on Suspension: Its Varieties and How It Relates to Being in a Position to Know
- Part III: The Telic Nature of Knowledge, and Some Main Varieties
- 7: Knowledge, Default, and Skepticism
- 8: Grades of Knowledge
- 9: Reflection and Security
- 10: Competence and Justification
- Part IV: A Historical Antecedent
- 11: The Relevance of Moore and Wittgenstein
About the author
Born in Cuba, Ernest Sosa immigrated to the USA as a teenager. After his BA from the University of Miami, and his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, he has taught at Brown University and then at Rutgers, each for decades. During that time he has had numerous dissertation students who have attained distinction. He was a President of the American Philosophical Association (Eastern) and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1980 he inaugurated the virtue theoretic approach in epistemology, which he has developed through a half dozen books, many published articles, and replies in many author/critic sessions and books. He has given several distinguished lectures, including the Locke and the Carus Lectures, and has received several prizes. The APA has established a prize lectureship and a fellowship in his honor for excellence in epistemology.
Summary
Epistemic Explanations is an important book by the world's most eminent epistemologist. Sosa develops an improved virtue epistemology and uses it to explain several epistemic phenomena.
Additional text
No one has done more for analytic virtue epistemology than Ernie Sosa; indeed, one is tempted to delete 'virtue'. This is his latest development of his teleological version of the virtue-theoretic perspective. It is characteristically excellent and will no doubt be a classic contribution to epistemology. I highly recommend it.
