The Epistemology of Sosa

The Epistemology of Sosa Richard Foley Philosophical Issues, Vol. 5, Truth and Rationality. (1994), pp. 1-14. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1533-6077%281994%295%3C1%3ATEOS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5 Philosophical Issues is currently published by Ridgeview Publishing Company.

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PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES,5 Truth and Rationality, 1994

The Epistemology of Sosa Richard Foley

Ernest Sosa has been at the center of debates on epistemology for more than two decades. His recent book, Knowledge in Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) collects some of his most important essays on epistemology, and out of these essays emerges a view that is both distinctive and deep. It is a view that Sosa calls "virtue perspectivism", since it emphasizes the importance of intellectual virtues and emphasizes also issues of perspective, both the perspective of the would-be knower and the perspectives of those who attribute knowledge. In what follows, I will (1) describe what I take to be the core aspects of Sosa's view; (2) consider briefly whether the view is properly thought of as an instance of virtue epistemology; (3) suggest that the view places too great an emphasis on social and pragmatic considerations in the definition of knowledge; (4) identify an internal tension in the view, and (5) formulate a difficulty that afflicts not just Sosa's view but also any similar view. 1. According to Sosa, knowledge is always the product of intellectual virtue:

. . .knowledge is true belief out of intellectual virtue, beliefs that turn out right by reason of the virtue and not just by coincidence. For reflec-

tive knowledge you need moreover an epistemic perspective that licenses your belief by its source in some virtue or faculty of your own. You trust your own correctness, holding your belief to be right through its origins in a reliable faculty or virtue (277). In this passage, Sosa makes reference to reflective knowledge, which he contrasts with animal knowledge. As the terms suggest, animal knowledge requires less cognitive sophistication than reflective knowledge. In particular, it doesn't require knowers to have opinions about how they acquired their beliefs, whereas reflective knowledge does. But since we cannot, in Sosa's words, "climb infinite ladders of reflection" (290), even reflective knowledge rests ultimately on animal knowledge, where one conforms "to virtuous intellectual procedure: conforms not just by accident.. . but out of one's intellectually virtuous nature" (291). The distinction between animal and reflective knowledge is related to another distinction that is important for Sosa, that between apt belief and justified belief. Aptness is to be understood in terms of the reliability of the faculty generating the belief; the faculty is suitable for the production of true beliefs and the avoidance of false ones in the environment in which the faculty is operating. Hence, the faculty is a virtuous one for that environment, and the beliefs it produces are apt. Justification, on the other hand, is a matter of having reasons for one's beliefs, and the reasons, according to Sosa, consist of there being appropriate inferential and coherence relations with one's other beliefs; justification "amounts to a sort of internal coherence'' (289). Animal knowledge, says Sosa, involves apt belief but not justified belief. By contrast, reflective knowledge involves both. Sosa also invokes the distinction between aptness and justification to help understand evil demon cases, brain-in-the vat cases, and other such skeptical scenarios. If unbeknownst to you, an evil demon tampers with you or your environment in such a way that you are radically deceived perceptually, then your perceptual beliefs about your immediate environment may still be justified, since by hypothesis you have no reason to suspect that you are under the influence of the demon. However, your perceptual beliefs are not apt, and thus they are not candidates for knowledge, even if a few turn out to be true. So, for Sosa, knowledge involves apt belief, and an apt belief is a belief that is a product of intellectual virtues, and the virtues, in turn, are truth conducive dispositions rooted in our various abilities and faculties.

Expressed somewhat more precisely, S's belief P constitutes an instance of knowledge, on Sosa's account, only if the belief derives from the exercise of a faculty that detects truth well enough in a field of propositions F under circumstances C , where P is in F and S is in C . Sosa admits that this is still not precise enough, since as stated the account remains subject to two problems that afflict many externalist accounts of knowledge, the accidental reliability problem and the generality problem. Consider the generality problem first. The problem is that in saying that knowledge derives from the exercise of a faculty that detects truth well enough in a field of propositions F under circumstances C , not just any F and C will do. If the field of propositions F and the cirumstances C are specified too broadly, then the account will not allow us to make distinctions that we want to make. For example, if F includes all propositions about what S seems to perceive and if C includes all circumstances that are encountered with some frequency on earth, the account won't distinguish between visual beliefs about medium-sized physical objects seen in daylight at medium range and visual beliefs about seen in fog or at great distances. But the former kinds of beliefs, if true, we are prepared to regard as good candidates for knowledge, whereas the latter kinds of belief, even if true, we are more reluctant to regard as knowledge. On the other hand, if there are no limits on how narrowly the field F and cirumstances C can be specified, then for any true belief, there presumably will be some combination of C and F that will satisfy Sosa's conditions of knowledge. The second problem, the accidental reliability problem, arises because a faculty can be reliable with respect to a field propositions F and set of circumstances C , and yet its reliability may be merely a fortuitous coincidence. And when this is so, we are inclined to say that the true beliefs it produces aren't instances of knowledge. Sosa gives the following example:

. . .suppose you have established your credentials as a judge of the shape of certain objects reflected on a screen, but that the lenses in your eyes become distorted while, unbeknownst to anyone, the images on the screen coincidentally become distorted in a compensating way. In such circumstances, your next judgement would of course be right only by accident and would represent no knowledge. Here your past success has been due to the stable development of each of two causal processes (one for your eyes, etc.; one for the screening device). Now each of these suffers a jerky change not smoothly integrable with its earlier development, the

two yet coinciding, for no discernible deeper reason, in such a way that the basis for your success remains (283). Part of the attraction of Sosa's overall view is that it holds out the hope that by emphasizing issues of perspective, plausible solutions can be found both to the generality problem and the accidental reliability problem. Perspectivism provides a solution to the generality problem, says Sosa, by placing constraints on how narrowly and how broadly the field of propositions F and the circumstances C can be characterized. S's belief P constitutes an instance of knowledge, Sosa has already said, only if the belief derives from the exercise of a faculty that detects truth well enough in a field of propositions F under circumstances C . He now adds two further conditions: (a) that F and C be such that they usefully and reasonably can be generalized upon by us in the epistemic community of S (and if S doesn't belong to our epistemic community, then the knowledge attribution must be explicitly relativized to either S's or our epistemic community); and (b) that F and C be such that they can be usefully and reasonably generalized upon by S as S bootstraps up from animal to reflective knowledge. Condition (a) is a condition of both animal knowledge and reflective knowledge, whereas condition (b) is a condition only of reflective knowledge. (An exception, according to Sosa, is the unreflective meta-knowledge underlying reflective knowledge; for it, the relevant F and C have to be accessible to the knower). So, Sosa's way of trying to solve the generality problem is to require that F and C not be characterized so narrowly or so broadly that they cannot be the bases of useful and reasonable generalizations by S and S's epistemic community. The idea is that F and C must be at a level of generality appropriate for human intellectual life, and the sharing of information that is an integral part of this life. Having a faculty reliable with respect to F and C must constitute a human intellectual virtue, with the emphasis on 'human'. The phrase 'human intellectual virtue' is mine, not Sosa's, but it captures the spirit of Sosa's recommendation. A human intellectual virtue is a disposition that is epistemically desirable and feasible for us to develop, exercise, retain and admire both in ourselves and in others. And for this to be case, it has to be a disposition that we can recognize; it has to be accessible to us, at least in the ordinary course of things. Hence, there is a perspectivism implicit in conditions (1) and (2). Sosa thinks perspectivism also provides a solution to the accidental reliability problem. A faculty is only accidentally reliable, says Sosa,

when the basis of the reliability is not accessible enough to the knower and/or attributors of knowledge. On this view, accidents which are mere coincidences derive from irregularities in causal processes. . . , irregularities which lack any accessible enough explanation b y appeal to deeper regularities. To bring in "explanation" is of course to suggest the relativity and context dependence of our notion of an accident which is a mere coincidence (283). Thus, to return to Sosa's example of accidental reliability, suppose that unbeknownst to you and everyone else, the lenses of your eyes become distorted and the reflections of the objects on the screen you are looking at also become distorted in a comparable way, so that the basis of your reliability remains. Then, your vision is only accidentally reliable, and Sosa's explanation for why it is only accidentally reliable is perspectival: neither you nor anyone else has any idea of the actual basis for your reliability. Sosa admits that in the eyes of God, your reliability may not be accidental, but this doesn't matter. The basis of your reliability is inaccessible to you and others, and hence from our un-Godlike perspective, the reliability is accidental. 2. Can Sosa's virtue perspectivism be legitimately thought of as an instance of virtue epistemology? Since the view emphasizes the intellectual virtues, it might seem obvious that the answer is 'yes'. Nevertheless, it is at least potentially misleading to think of Sosa's view an a virtue epistemology, especially if we conceive of virtue epistemology as an analogue of virtue ethics. Virtue ethics is ordinarily contrasted with both consequentialist ethics, which is closely associated with but not limited to utilitarianism, and deontological ethics, which is closely associated with but again not limited to Kantianism. In trying to say what makes an action or decision right, consequentialists focus on its consequences, actual or apparent, whereas proponents of deontological ethics instead emphasize the agent's moral duties, which are typically captured in a set of rules. The proponents of virtue ethics, by contrast, emphasize neither consequences nor rules but rather moral virtues, which are typically thought of as behavioral dispositions; an action is right insofar as it is product of such virtues. But to talk of what each of these approaches "emphasizes" is to mark the distinctions among them in only a very loose way. Consequences, rules and virtues all play an important role in our moral lives, and thus, any approach to ethics, if it is to be at all plausible, must do justice to all three. So, consequentialists must be able to

account for the importance of rules and virtues, just as deontologists must be able to account for the importance of consequences and virtues, and just as virtue theorists must be able to account for the importance of consequences and rules. What separates consequentialists, deontologists, and virtue theorists is their views about the theoretical foundations of ethics. They disagree on what is to be taken as fundamental -consequences, rules, or virtues. Consequentialists insist that it is consequences that are to be taken as fundamental, and it is in terms of them that they try to give an account of moral rules and moral virtues. By contrast, deontologists and virtue theorists take duty and virtue to be fundamental, respectively, and then try to treat the other two notions as derivative. Keeping this in mind, let's ask, what is a virtue ethics? Suppose an ethicist says that a right action is a virtuous action, i.e., an action that is a product of moral virtues, and when we ask what a virtue is, the ethicist tells us that a virtue is a habit or disposition that tends to produce good consequences. This is not enough to make the view an instance of virtue ethics. On the contrary, consequentialists can and often do endorse this kind of view. In a genuine virtue-based ethics, virtue cannot be defined in terms of consequences, or for that matter in terms of rules, and the good cannot be defined independently of the virtues. For an approach to ethics to be virtue-based, it must treat virtue as the fundamental notion, not rules or consequences. Epistemological theories can be categorized in an analogous fashion. Epistemic consequentialism can be understood as the view that defines key epistemic terms, such as rational belief, in terms of desirable epistemic consequences, either actual or apparent. For example, suppose you are a reliabilist who claims that it is rational for S to have beliefs of kind K if having beliefs of this kind will tend to promote S's having true and comprehensive beliefs. Alternatively, suppose you are sympathetic with my own subjectivist views about epistemology, which imply (roughly) that the beliefs of S are rational if under appropriate conditions S would think that believing them is an effective means to having true and comprehensive beliefs.' On either view, you are endorsing a consequentialist approach to epistemology. On the other hand, Roderick Chisholm has, at various times, endorsed a deontological approach to epistemology. He takes the notion 'See R. Foley, T h e Theory of Epistemic Rationality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987); and R. Foley, Working Without a Net (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

of an intellectual duty to be fundamental, and in terms of this notion, he defines other epistemic terms (e.g., evident, beyond reasonable doubt, etc.) and formulates various epistemic principles governing perception, memory, coherence, e t ~ . ~ A virtue-based approach to epistemology contrasts with both a consequentialist approach and a deontological approach. Suppose one said that a belief is rational just if it is the product of intellectual virtues, such as impartiality, independence, thoroughness, and ingenuity, where the virtuousness of these traits isn't dependent upon their having a tendency to produce true beliefs and likewise isn't dependent upon their being in accordance with some independently defined notion of intellectual duty. Then one would be advocating a virtue-based approach to epistemology. So, there is room for an approach to epistemology that is genuinely analogous to the virtue-based approach taken by some contemporary ethicist^.^ But somewhat surprisingly, no contemporary epistemologist, to my knowledge, has developed such an approach. In particular, Sosa's approach to epistemology, despite the fact that he calls it 'virtue perspectivism', is not an example of virtue epistemology in this sense, since he defines intellectual virtues in terms of desirable intellectual consequences, i.e., a virtue is a disposition to produce true beliefs and avoid false ones. It is for this reason that I say it is potentially misleading to say that Sosa is endorsing a virtue epistemology.

3. Sosa's treatments of the generality problem and accidental reliability problem imply that the concept of knowledge has a significant pragmatic component -the emphases on usefulness and accessibility- and also a significant social component -the emphasis on usefulness and accessibility to the epistemic community. According to Sosa, knowledge and justification are important to us in part because they indicate that the individual knower is a useful source of information for the rest of us. We care about justification [and knowledge] because [they tend] to indicate a state of the subject that is important and of interest to his community, a state of great interest and importance to an information'See, e.g., R. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 3rd. ed. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1989). 3See, e.g., Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981); Jorge Garcia, "The Primacy of the Virtuous", Philosophia, vol. 20 (1990), 69-91; Michael Slote, From Morality to Virtue (New York: Oxford University Press).

sharing species. What sort of state? Presumably the state of being a dependable source of information over a certain field in certain circumstances. In order for this information to be obtainable and to be of later use, however, the sort of field F and the sort of circumstances C must be projectible, and must have some minimum objective likelihood of being repeated in the careers of normal members of the epistemic community (282). I t is hard to quarrel with these observations on why we care about knowledge, but when they are made into defining conditions of knowledge, the results are extremely strong pragmatic and social constraints on knowledge. Why shouldn't it be possible for you to have knowledge as a result of the exercise of faculties that are virtuous with respect to field of propositions F and circumstances C, where C don't have "some minimum objective likelihood of being repeated"? Suppose your environment is radically altered for a brief period of time and that this alteration is unlikely ever to occur again. Why should the fact that you find yourself in such circumstances automatically preclude you from having knowledge? Shouldn't the relevant consideration be whether you have faculties that are well suited to pick out truths in these unusual circumstances, and not whether the circumstances themselves are unusual? Admittedly, if the circumstances aren't likely to repeated, neither you nor the rest of us will be able to make much use of your abilities to operate reliably in them, but this suggests not that you cannot have knowledge in these cirumstance but rather that we shouldn't take usefulness as one of the defining characteristics of knowledge. Sosa may be right that we care about knowledge because it is generally useful to know when we and others have knowledge as opposed to mere true belief. On the other hand, why we generally care about knowledge is one thing; its defining characteristics are something quite different. 4. Sosa admits that his solution to the problem of accidental reliability is somewhat vague, especially his proposal that the basis of S's reliability be "accessible enough". In itself, this vagueness isn't a serious problem; any plausible acount of knowledge is bound to be vague in certain crucial respects. But in this case, the vagueness makes it easy to miss an internal tension in Sosa's account. The tension arises because even in ordinary, unproblematic instances of knowledge, neither S nor anyone else is likely to be able to identify in a precise way the basis of S's reliability.

Sosa is aware of the general difficulty. In his discussion of reflective knowledge, he worries about how precisely one needs to be able to specify the field of propositions F and the circumstances C with respect to which one is reliable. He handles the worry in the following way:

. . . one need not know with precision and detail the exact character of the relevant F and C. Some grasp of them is required, however, even it remains sketchy and generic. Thus it may appear to you that there is a round and red object before you and you may have reason to think that for middle-sized objects in daylight at roughly arm's length (C) you would be likely to turn out right about their shapes and colors (F) if guided by your perceptions; so long as conditions remained relevant like those in the past when you had been guided by your perceptions, in daylight, about such matters; all on the assumption, allowable in the context, that such conditions would remain unless one had some sign to the contrary (278). Presumably, Sosa would respond in a similar way to my worry about accessibility to the basis of S's reliability. He would insist that neither S nor anyone else need be able to specify in a precise way the basis of S's reliability. Only a "sketchy" awareness is required. This looks like a plausible enough position for Sosa to take on accessibility, especially when the focus is on ordinary, unproblematic cases of knowledge. It is a reassuring position as well, since it doesn't put overly stringent requirements on knowledge. But plausible and reassuring as the position may be, it also constrains Sosa in using his perspectivism to solve the accidental reliability problem. His proposed solution to that problem, remember, is to insist that the basis of S's reliability be accessible enough to others, if the interest is animal knowledge, and to S as well, if the interest is reflective knowledge. So, the non-standard cases, the ones in which S's faculties are only accidentally reliable, are handled by saying that although S and others may correctly think in a general way that S's belief is the product of reliable faculties, they are unaware of the specific, bizarre mechanism that produces the reliability. Hence, says Sosa, their faculties are only accidentally reliable, and they don't have knowledge. But the problem, to repeat, is that most of us aren't aware of the specific mechanisms that are the bases of our reliability in ordinary, unproblematic cases of knowledge either. Indeed, whatever awareness we do have is typically so sketchy as to be compatible with a wide range of specific mechanisms, including some that are reliable

only by fortuitous accident. With respect to visual beliefs, for example, many of us are aware only that as our physical environment changes our eyes somehow produce comparable changes in our visual beliefs. But this may be true of our eyes even when they are only accidentally reliable, as Sosa's own example of accidental reliability illustrates. So, there is a tension in Sosa's view. If his perspectivism is to solve the problem of accidental reliability, he must require us to have relatively specific awareness of the bases of our reliability. But the more specific Sosa requires this awareness to be, the more stringent his account of knowledge becomes. In particular, it becomes more doubtful whether very many individuals, much less very many epistemic communities, actually have the required degree of awareness, and hence it becomes more doubtful whether any of us very often have knowledge. 5. In conclusion I want to discuss briefly a problem for the reliabilist movement characterized broadly, so as to include not just the positions of paradigmatic reliabilists, such as Armstrong, Goldman, Dretske, and Nozick, but also closely related positions, such as the virtue perspectivism of Sosa and the proper functionalism of ~ l a n t i n ~ The a . ~ problem is underappreciated in the literature, and it is a problem that undermines all of these positions. It indicates that they are all mistaken, and mistaken not just in detail but irrevocably mistaken. They are the last gasps of a tradition inspired by Gettier. Gettier asked a simple question that spawned an enormous literature, what has to be added to true belief to get knowledge? He pointed out that justification alone is not what has to be added, at least if justification is understood in any of the traditional foundationalist or coherentist ways.5 This initiated a search for a fourth condition of knowledge, and the most popular fourth condition has been some sort of non-defeasibility ~ o n d i t i o n .But ~ in the last decade 4 ~ . Armstrong, ~ . Belief, Troth, and Knowledge (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1973); Fred Dretske, Knowledge and the Flow of Information (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981); Alvin Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986); Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981); Alvin Plantinga, Warrant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). ' ~ d m u n d Gettier, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", Analysts (1963), 121-3. 'For a survey of the literature, see Robert Shope, T h e Analysis of Knowledge (Princeteon: Princeton University Press, 1983).

or so, many epistemologists have come to agree that non-defeasible justification isn't what turns true belief into knowledge either. Indeed, the whole idea of looking for something that can be added to justified true belief is increasingly regarded as misguided, since in many cases of knowledge nothing that looks like justification in a traditional sense is taking place at all, e.g. in cases of what Sosa calls "animal knowledge". So, these epistemologists have tried to find something less explicitly intellectual than justification that could function much like justification was supposed to in the definition of knowledge, in that it's what turns true belief into a candidate for knowledge. What they have found is reliability or one of its variants. In order for true belief to count as knowledge, they say, it has to be reliably produced, or it has to be the product of intellectual virtues, or it has to be the product of cognitive equipment functioning properly. No approach of this sort will do, and an example will help illustrate why. Suppose you have a perfectly verific belief system, or as close to this as is humanly possible, and suppose that your belief system is explanatorily perfect as well. You have true beliefs about the basic laws of the universe, and in terms of these basic laws, you can explain everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen. For example, you can explain the origin of the universe, how life came into existence on earth, the mechanisms by which cells age, and so on. You can even explain how you came to have all of this information. You have as comprehensive and as accurate belief system as it is possible for a human to have. Then I am comfortable in saying that you have more knowledge about our world than I do, and you have more knowledge than most other people as well. But notice, your having this perfectly veridical and explanatorily perfect belief system is consistent with your beliefs being unvirtuous in Sosa's sense. It is also consistent with your beliefs having been unreliably produced in Goldman's sense. Likewise, it is consistent with your cognitive faculties not functioning properly in Plantinga's sense. For example, it is at least possible that your perfectly verific belief system is the product of your having been struck by a lightning bolt, and not the product of intellectual virtues or of cognitive equipment functioning reliably or properly. If we were to take the position of Sosa or Goldman or Plantinga seriously, we would be forced to deny that you have knowledge in this case. And on the assumption that I have a modicum of intellectual virtue and that my cognitve faculties sometimes operate reliably and properly, we would be forced to say that I know more than you

do about the origin of the universe, how life came into existence on earth, the mechanisms by which cells age, etc. But this is a conclusion will seem plausible only to handful of people, almost all of which, not coincidentally, will have been trained in twentieth century analytic epistemology. Epistemologists trained in this tradition insist on a distinction between strict, or real, or genuine knowledge and ordinary knowledge,7 and so they will be inclined to say that in the above case you don't have real knowledge. But I want to insist that if anyone has ever had real knowledge, then you have it in the above situation. After all, by hypothesis, you have true beliefs about almost everything that has happened, and you can explain, in terms of the basic laws of the universe, why it happened. Depending on one's views about mental content, one might object that in the above case you could not possibly have the knowledge about the world that I claim you have, since you could not possibly even have a rich set of beliefs about the world if your internal states were caused by a lightning bolt; having a rich set of beliefs about the world requires that one have a rich and systematic set of relations, presumably causal, with the objects that make up the world. This objection, of course, is only as strong as the account of content on which it is based, and it is an understatement to point out that no account of content is uncontroversial. Besides, the objection only pushes the problem I am raising back a level, where there is a dilemma lurking. Take any account of content. Given the account, either it is the case that the prerequisites of having a rich set of beliefs imply that the conditions of knowledge are generally met, or this is not the case. If the account of content does imply that the conditions of knowledge are automatically met, then the account is ipso facto too strong. An account of content will be plausible only to the extent it leaves room for the possibility that relatively few of our beliefs constitute knowledge.8 On the other hand, if it is possible, given the account of content, for the prerequisites of having a rich set of beliefs to be met without the conditions of knowledge being generally met, then problems of the sort I am raising for reliabilist-inspired accounts of knowledge 7See, e.g., Peter Klein, "Real Knowledge", Synthese, vol. 55 (1983). 8See Richard Foley, Working Without a Net;especially pp. 67-75; also see Colin McGinn, "Radical Interpretation", and Peter Klein, "Radical Interpretation and Global Skepticism", bo t h in E. LePore (ed.), Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).

will remain. It will be possible for someone to have close to a perfectly verific and explanatorilyy perfect belief system even though the beliefs don't meet the conditions laid down by Sosa, Goldman, Nozick, Plantinga, or Dretske. For example, suppose it is something close to the world in its totality, rather than a lightning bolt, that causes you to have a perfectly verific and explanatorily perfect belief system. And suppose that the way in which the world produces these beliefs is maximally delicate; if anything had been slightly different about the world or about you, then you wouldn't have come to have a perfect belief system. In this revised case, there should not be a major concern as to whether the conditions of content are met. Whatever the minimum conditions of content are, it is hard to think that they aren't met in this case. And yet, the sketched scenario in this case, as in the original case, is consistent with your beliefs being unvirtuous in Sosa's sense; it is also consistent with your beliefs having been unreliably produced in Goldman's sense and with your cognitive faculties not functioning properly in Plantinga's sense. So, the original problem remains. Despite what is implied by the accounts of Sosa, Goldman, Plantinga and others, you have knowledge, indeed lots of it, in this case. Another possible objection is that in the above cases either your belief system is stably verific, so that it would also be verific in close counterfactual situations, or it is not. If it is stable, then it cannot help but be reliable. If it is not, then your true beliefs are not knowledge. They are not stable enough to count as knowledge. But this reply simply begs the question. Part of what I am questioning is whether knowledge really does have to be stable in this sense. I am suggesting that it does not. It is not impossible for us to have fleeting moments of insight. I may suddenly see how to complete a proof but then almost immediately lose it. Does this necessarily mean that for that brief moment, I lacked knowledge? There are also more exotic examples. Witness the mystic tradition. Some parts of this tradition suggest that mystical knowledge cannot be cultivated, because it is so delicate. When every circumstance is exactly right, powerful insight is possible, but when the smallest detail is altered, the mystical insight is lost. So, mystical knowledge, on this view, cannot help but be unstable and of short duration. I am not claiming that any of the historical figures who have claimed to have mystical knowledge actually did have knowledge of this sort. My point is the more modest one that we shouldn't say that by definition that they cannot possibly have had such knowledge, because by definition knowledge is stable.

If the problem I am raising for reliabilism and its close relatives is taken seriously, as I think it should be, it points to a different way of thinking about knowledge, one that suggests knowledge is more adequately thought of as comprehensive-enough and explanatoryenough true belief. But I won't defend this claim here. My current claim is only that this problem dooms any approach such as Sosa's, and for that matter, any approach such as Goldman's, Nozick's, and Plantinga's as well. In the above case, you do have knowledge, indeed lots of it, and thus no reliabilist or reliabilist-inspired condition can be a necessary condition of knowledge.

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[Footnotes] 5

Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Edmund L. Gettier Analysis, Vol. 23, No. 6. (Jun., 1963), pp. 121-123. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-2638%28196306%2923%3A6%3C121%3AIJTBK%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1

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