Virtuous Thoughts: The Philosophy of Ernest Sosa, ed. by J. Turri, Springer (2013)

HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS: SOSA’S PERSPECTIVE ON THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL TRADITION

Baron Reed

Northwestern University b-reed@northwestern.edu

Ernest Sosa’s work has long been marked by a careful attention to the historical tradition in epistemology. His prolonged reflection on Descartes, Reid, Moore, Chisholm, Sellars, and other central epistemologists has been extraordinarily fruitful in shaping the course of his own work. In this essay, I will trace some of the developments in Sosa’s epistemological views as they are prompted by his recognition of both the virtues and the failings of those historical theories. As will become clear, there is an organic unity to his evolving view—from foundationalism to virtue epistemology and then on to virtue perspectivism and his current focus on performance normativity—that is perhaps best seen in light of his historical reflections. 1 . FROM FOUNDATIONS TO VIRTUES Sosa began his career as a foundationalist, defending the view that all knowledge ultimately rests on a foundation of basic beliefs.1 Although this sort of view has traditionally been formulated in an internalist way—so that the basic beliefs are justified in virtue of their relation to the “given” element in experience—Sosa’s version of foundationalism was characterized from the start by a recognition that an adequate account of knowledge requires broader resources. It is not enough, for example, that the structure of beliefs built upon the foundation of basic beliefs be merely justified. Rather, they must also be true, where the truth of those beliefs is typically not a given part of the subject’s consciousness.2

1 See, e.g., Sosa (1964) and (1974), both reprinted in Sosa (1991). 2 The requirement that the beliefs in the subject’s pyramid of beliefs supporting a non-basic belief be true (as well as justified) stems from Sosa’s early attempt to solve the Gettier problem (see Gettier (1963) and Sosa (1991), p. 26). Sosa also was sensitive in his early papers to

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A more decisive break with traditional internalism can be found in Sosa’s landmark paper, “The Raft and the Pyramid.”3 Must the basic beliefs that serve as the foundation of all other knowledge themselves be known with infallibility? Reflection on matters in ethics, the other broad normative domain in addition to epistemology, leads Sosa to answer this question in the negative:

Take the physician attending to Frau Hitler at the birth of little Adolf. Is it not possible that if he had acted less morally, that would have proved better in the fullness of time? And if that is so in ethics, may not its likeness hold good in epistemology? Might there not be justified (reasonable, warranted) beliefs that are not even true, much less infallible? [1991, p. 171]

In delivering Frau Hitler’s son, the physician has done something that is justified but not optimal. Surely, that is possible in epistemic affairs as well: the subject might form a belief that is justified but not optimal—i.e., true. But how are we to understand the justification of basic beliefs if these can sometimes be false? Sosa goes on to suggest that the doctor’s action is justified, though not optimal, because his action is the product of “certain stable virtues” that do better at leading to good outcomes than any other virtues or dispositions available to the doctor.4 Analogously, in epistemology, beliefs are justified through their connection with intellectual virtues, which are the best ways we have of acquiring true beliefs. As in the ethical case, primary justification attaches to the underlying virtue or disposition; the particular product of that virtue or disposition—the belief or action—is justified in only a secondary sense. Sosa traces another route to this conclusion by reflection on a central, longstanding objection for traditional foundationalism, first raised by A.J. Ayer.5 The problem of the speckled hen, as it is called,

the “social aspect” of knowledge, in light of the need for the subject to meet the reasonable expectations of her epistemic community (see Harman (1973), pp. 143-4, and Sosa (1991), p. 27). 3 Sosa (1980); reprinted in Sosa (1991). 4 Sosa (1991), p. 189. 5 See Ayer (1940), p. 122. See also Chisholm (1942).

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arises for those versions of foundationalism that take the foundations of knowledge to be grounded in the subject’s infallible awareness of her own experiences. Suppose that S is looking at a hen with 48 speckles on the feathers on the side of its body facing S. Because there is good lighting, S is not too far away, etc., it is plausible to suppose that S’s visual experience is of a hen with 48 speckles. However, it is also plausible to suppose that S is not aware of the fact that her experience of the hen contains 48 speckles. Even if she were to correctly guess that the experience contains 48 speckles, this is surely not the sort of thing she could know, just on the basis of her experience.6 S’s belief that her experience contains 48 speckles would be unjustified. Contrast this with what would be the case if her experience contained only 3 speckles: her belief would surely be both justified and correct. How can we account for the difference between these two introspective beliefs? In both cases, all of the speckles clearly do belong to S’s experiences, whether there are 3 or 48. So, there doesn’t seem to be anything about S’s experiences that grounds the difference in justification. The best explanation seems to be that we humans simply are good at grasping when there are 3 items in consciousness but are not good at grasping when there are 48 items in consciousness. As Sosa puts it, “[t]he relevant distinction is that the [3-speckle] judgment is competent, intellectually virtuous.”7 Sosa’s proposal to put intellectual virtues at the center of epistemology has proven to be tremendously influential. Some philosophers, Linda Zabzebski most notably, have taken the virtues in question to fit the Aristotelian model: virtues are acquired habits of mind, grounded in motivational states which regularly lead to successful belief.8 Sosa’s preference is to understand the virtues in a broader, “Platonic” sense, whereby a virtue is simply an excellence of the subject that has the virtue.9 In this sense, he says, the exceptional sharpness of a knife may be one of its virtues.

6 She might try counting the speckles on the part of the hen facing her, but in that case she would be acquiring the knowledge through a means other than simply relying on her present experience. 7 Sosa (2009), p. 33. 8 Zagzebski (1996). 9 Sosa (1991), p. 271.

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Understood in this way, virtue epistemology is a version of reliabilism, which holds that a belief is justified only if it is the product of a reliable belief-producing process or faculty.10 The view needs to be, and has been, fleshed out in various ways; in particular, an account of what it means for a process to be reliable needs to be provided.11 There are various ways in which this later task might be accomplished. For example, Alvin Goldman suggests that it amounts either to the actual frequency with which a process produces true beliefs or to a propensity to produce true beliefs.12 These are both, he notes, historical accounts; by contrast with “current time-slice” theories, which take the subject’s justification to consist only in properties she possesses at the time of belief, historical theories are centered on the causal etiology of the belief.13 Initially, Sosa’s preferred way of capturing reliability focused on the modal properties of a belief and, in that sense, counted as a current time-slice theory. In particular, he argued that a belief must be safe in order to count as knowledge, where safety consists in the fact that the subject wouldn’t easily believe that p unless it were true that p.14 However, Sosa seems to have moved in the direction of embracing an historical version of reliabilism in his more recent work, where he abandons safety for aptness. The latter is to be understood as requiring “the manifestation of a competence,” where the competence is a disposition with some basis in the agent and which makes it highly likely that performances arising from the competence will be successful

10 See Goldman (1979) for the classic presentation of reliabilism. 11 Notice, too, that the view as stated provides only a necessary condition for epistemic justification. In response to a series of objections that show reliability can be divorced from what it is rational for a subject to believe (see BonJour (1985), ch. 3), many externalists have added another necessary condition to their account, which requires that there be no undefeated defeaters for their justification. 12 Goldman (1979), p. 11. 13 Goldman (1979), p. 14. See Nozick (1981) for an example of a current time-slice theory. 14 See Sosa (1996) for the initial statement of this sort of condition, which he there calls “Cartesian tracking.” The label is meant to distinguish the view from Nozickian tracking. He began to call this condition “safety” in (1999).

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in normal conditions.15 Understood in this way, aptness seems to construe reliability as arising from a propensity for truth. As a version of reliabilism, virtue epistemology inherits one of its most significant objections: the problem of generality.16 For any belief a subject has, there are many different belief-producing processes to which it may be attributed. Consider a typical belief acquired through testimony: Mary is told by a man on the sidewalk that the public library closes at 8 pm. What is the process that has produced this belief? There are various answers to this question: (a) testimony in general, (b) testimony from a stranger, (c) testimony from a strange man, (d) testimony from someone who appears to be in his 40s, (e) testimony from someone dressed in a police uniform, (f) testimony from this particular person on this particular occasion, etc. There is no single answer that is obviously correct. But notice that the reliability of the processes in question can vary significantly. For example, it is plausible that testimony from a stranger is much less likely to be true than testimony from someone wearing a police uniform. The belief in question is justified only if it was produced by a reliable process. So, if there is no way to determine which process in fact is responsible for its production, it is also impossible to determine if the belief is reliable and therefore justified.

Sosa acknowledges that this problem will arise for a virtue epistemology centered on those faculties that are virtues. A virtue is a competence that allows one, with respect to a field of propositions F and in circumstances C, to reliably distinguish the true from the false. But, he says, “whenever one happens to have a true belief B, that belief will manifest many such competences, for many field/circumstance pairs F/C will apply.”17 In response to this problem, Sosa introduced what has come to be perhaps the most distinctive feature of his view: “To my mind the key is the requirement that the field [of propositions] F and the circumstances C must be accessible within one’s epistemic perspective.”18 What makes it the case that it is one competence rather

15 Sosa (2007), p. 29. 16 See Goldman (1979), p. 12, for an initial statement of the problem. See also Feldman (1985) and Conee and Feldman (1998). 17 Sosa (1991), p. 274. 18 Sosa (1991), p. 274. Sosa goes on to say that knowledge attributed to

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than another that is operative is the fact that the subject herself is actively involved in her own belief acquisition. She sees herself as responding to a particular proposition, with a specified field of propositions as backdrop, and in a particular set of circumstances.19 Because this is how she understands her own doxastic response to the situation, it is plausible that she would respond in a similar way to analogous situations. For that reason, then, we can see her response as modally stable and thereby a proper candidate for being assessed as reliable. 2 . VIRTUES IN PERSPECTIVE According to Sosa, “Virtue epistemology is distinguished by its emphasis on the subject as seat of justification.”20 This has been a distinguishing characteristic of virtue epistemology from the outset. As we have seen above, the subject’s reliable belief-producing processes are to be understood, not merely as self-contained processes that regularly output true beliefs, but as virtues of the subject herself. They are ways in which she is responding appropriately to her environment. With the addition of the subject’s perspective on her own virtues, Sosa is able to explain, in a deeper way, how it is that the subject is the seat of justification and of knowledge. Not only does she have individual competences for attempting to reach the truth, but she must also integrate them into a coherent, rational whole. Thus, she will have “a faculty of faculties, a faculty that makes use of our brute animal

animals, who do not have an epistemic perspective, may be only metaphorical (275). But if the introduction of an epistemic perspective is meant to solve the generality problem, even this weakened claim is probably too strong. Without an epistemic perspective, there is no fact of the matter as to which of the animal’s processes are producing its beliefs. A fortiori, there is no fact of the matter as to whether the animal’s beliefs are reliable. Given this, it is hard to see how attribution of knowledge to animals can be correct, even in a merely metaphorical way. 19 See Sosa (2011), ch. 1, for a detailed account of the way one’s epistemic perspective (or “meta-apt” competence) interacts with one’s first-order apt competences. 20 Sosa (2009), p. 187.

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endowments to raise us above that level and make of us the animal that is rational.”21 The addition of the subject’s perspective to his epistemology allows Sosa to capture, within an externalist framework, as much of the intuitive plausibility of internalism as possible. For example, some of the early defenses of externalism took it to be a virtue of the view that it could explain how animals and very young children have justified beliefs and knowledge, even though they seem not to engage in much reasoning from evidence. But many epistemologists worried that externalism, understood in this way, provides an understanding of knowledge that is too reductive. As Sosa argues, “A mere thermometer reaction to one’s environment cannot constitute real knowledge.”22 Although a thermometer—or an unsophisticated animal or child—might have the right belief at the right time, its cognitive interaction with its environment is too simple-minded to serve as a model for full, adult human knowledge. Fully mature humans do not simply mirror their environment in a mechanical way. Rather, when one has knowledge in the full-blooded sense, one has “some awareness of the status of one’s belief, some ability to answer that one does know or that one is epistemically justified.”23

Requiring the subject to have a perspective on the excellence of her own virtues thus moves virtue epistemology in the direction of internalist theories, which have typically taken the subject’s ability to defend or justify her beliefs as central to our intellectual lives. There is, of course, a longstanding skeptical challenge that arises from this intellectual need to justify our beliefs. As the ancient Pyrrhonists pointed out, different people will often disagree about what the best general methods of coming to have knowledge might be. How can they resolve that sort of disagreement? And, at perhaps an even more basic level, how can epistemic subjects justify to themselves their own reliance on the belief-forming faculties they take to be virtues?

It is in response to this skeptical challenge—sometimes called the problem of the criterion—that Sosa engages in his most fruitful reflections on the history of epistemology. He draws inspiration from the structure

21 Sosa (1991), p. 284. 22 Sosa (2007), p. 132. 23 Sosa (2007), p. 132.

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of Descartes’s attempt to provide a defense of clear and distinct perception, though Sosa provides a different content to that structure: where Descartes argues that we should rely only on clear and distinct perception for our most important theoretical concerns, Sosa also would have us use perception, memory, introspection, and testimony. In the next section, then, I shall turn to Sosa’s interpretation of Descartes’s epistemology—both its structure and its aims. Although that interpretation is correct in many ways, I think that Sosa underestimates the significance of how the content of Descartes’s view interacts with its structure. There is something special about clear and distinct perception that allows it to fit into an apparently circular structure without actually being circular. After identifying what it is about clear and distinct perception that allows it to work in this way, I shall argue that it is lost when we move to a broader conception of intellectual virtues, as Sosa does. Finally, I shall consider the implications for Sosa’s answer to skepticism and for the value of having a reflective perspective on one’s knowledge. 3 . THE VIRTUES OF EXTERNALIST CARTESIANISM The basic outline of the Meditations is well-known—and puzzling: Descartes begins by calling all of his beliefs into question. He doubts, not only his perceptual beliefs about the external world, but also all of his simple, rational beliefs like 2+3=5. Descartes then discovers that the proposition that he exists cannot be doubted, so long as he is thinking of it. He concludes from this that he can “lay it down as a general rule” that whatever he perceives very clearly and distinctly is true. But then—and this is where the most puzzling part of his project comes in—Descartes returns to his doubts of the First Meditation. He says, “I must examine whether there is a God, and, if there is, whether he can be a deceiver. For if I do not know this, it seems that I can never be quite certain about anything else.”24 (He calls this doubt a “very slight and, so to speak, metaphysical one.”) Descartes then uses clear and distinct perceptions, which he has just called into question, to prove

24 Descartes (1984), p. 25 [AT VII 36 = page 36 of volume seven in the Adam and Tannery edition of Descartes’s works; this pagination is reprinted in the margins of the translation by Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch].

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that God does exist—apparently, with the hope that this proof will put to rest the doubt he has just raised about clear and distinct perceptions. Arnauld seems to have been the first to raise the complaint that Descartes is “reasoning in a circle.”25 For how can we know that God exists if we do not first know that our clear and distinct perceptions are true? And, given what Descartes has said (when he raises the “slight, metaphysical doubt” in the Third Meditation), how can we know that our clear and distinct perceptions are true if we do not first know that God exists? If both claims (that God exists and that our clear and distinct perceptions are true) have to be known first, neither can be known at all. Over the years, there have been many interpretations offered of what Descartes is doing in the Meditations. Some people think he does argue in a circle and his project can’t succeed. Others have thought that he was trying to vindicate memory, or trying to vindicate the internal coherence of reason, or trying merely to lead his readers to the most psychologically compelling worldview (whether or not it is true).26 The interpretation that has seemed most plausible (to me, at least) and most fruitful, epistemologically, rejects half of the supposed Cartesian Circle. Although it is true that one must first know that God exists in order to know that one’s clear and distinct perceptions are true, it is not true that one must first know that one’s clear and distinct perceptions are true in order to use them to prove that God exists. So long as they are true—whether or not one knows it—one acquires knowledge with them. I take it that Sosa regards this interpretation, which has been put forth by Anthony Kenny and James Van Cleve, as largely correct but incomplete.27 The problem with it is that it seems to flatly contradict Descartes’s claim in the Third Meditation, noted above, that without knowing that God exists he “can never be quite certain about anything else.” Indeed, Van Cleve says of this sentence that it “is an embarrassment for almost any interpretation of Descartes. Here he digs himself into a pit so deep, there can be no climbing out.”28 In making

25 Descartes (1984), p. 150 [AT VII 214]. 26 See Doney (1955), Frankfurt (1970), and Loeb (1992), respectively, for these interpretations. See Hatfield (2006) for a different, but helpful, way of characterizing the interpretive options. 27 See Kenny (1968) and Van Cleve (1979). 28 Van Cleve (1979), pp. 67-8, fn. 30.

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this problematic claim, Descartes seems to be casting doubt on the general rule; even if it is true that clear and distinct perceptions are true, Descartes seems to think that this is not enough for certainty.

We can approach the problem from a different angle, as Mersenne does in the Second Set of Objections when he points out that “an atheist is clearly and distinctly aware that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; but so far is he from supposing the existence of God that he completely denies it.”29 If Descartes is serious in saying that he is “certain” that he is a thinking thing (just before he goes on to raise the “metaphysical” doubt), then why isn’t an atheist just as certain about the things that he perceives clearly and distinctly? Why bring God into it at all? Either clear and distinct perceptions work perfectly well by themselves—in which case the atheist can use them just as well as Descartes—or they don’t work and can’t be used at all.30

In reply to Mersenne, Descartes concedes that an atheist can be “clearly aware” that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. “But,” he says, “I maintain that this awareness of his is not true knowledge, since no act of awareness that can be rendered doubtful seems fit to be called knowledge.”31 The “clear awareness” (cognitio) of the atheist falls short of the “true knowledge” (scientia) of the meditator in that the atheist “cannot be certain that he is not being deceived on matters which seem to him to be very evident… And although this doubt may not occur to him, it can still crop up if someone else raises the point or if he looks into the matter himself. So he will never be free of this doubt until he acknowledges that God exists.”32

29 Descartes (1984), p. 89 [AT VII 125]. Mersenne also points out that, if Descartes is serious in his claim that he cannot be certain of anything without knowing that God exists, he will have to take back his claim to being certain that he is a thinking thing. The same would apply, presumably, to the cogito as well. 30 Notice that, on the Kenny/Van Cleve interpretation, Descartes seems not to have a good answer to Mersenne’s objection: there is no good reason to deny that the atheist can have the same certainty as Descartes’s theistic meditator. 31 Descartes (1984), p. 101 [AT VII 141]. This passage is cited by Sosa (2009) at p. 140 and at p. 193; see also Sosa (1997). 32 ibid.

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On Sosa’s interpretation, Descartes’s meditator does not fall into any problematic sort of circularity because he does not accept the claim that one must know clear and distinct perceptions are true before using them to get knowledge. Given that they do serve as a ground for knowledge, they can be used even by those who are not aware that they work this way. But someone who is unaware of their reliability is not in the best possible position, epistemically. His knowledge can be improved through reflection on how he is able to have it. Mersenne’s dilemma is a problem when the end result is no different than what one has at the beginning. But, for Descartes (on this interpretation) as for Sosa himself, this is not the case; the outcome of reflection is a higher grade of knowledge—scientia for Descartes and reflective knowledge for Sosa.

Thus, for Descartes and for Sosa, knowledge falls into a structure that begins with a lesser form of foundational knowledge. The subject then acquires more knowledge of that sort, but which is now directed at her own epistemic position rather than at the world around her. The second-order knowledge transforms the original, first-order knowledge into something more valuable.33 The first-order knowledge acquires this extra value through being the object of a higher order perspective, which exhibits comprehensive coherence. Sosa diverges from Descartes only in allowing that foundational knowledge to come, not only from rational intuition (i.e., clear and distinct perceptions), but also from sense perception, memory, introspection, testimony, and (presumably) any reliable faculty that can count as an intellectual virtue. So, Descartes and Sosa share the perspectival structure in their epistemologies; they differ only in what they regard as fundamental virtues.34

33 This is the point at which Sosa’s interpretation diverges from that of Kenny and Van Cleve. All three take it to be important that the meditator acquires second-order knowledge (e.g., he comes to know that his clear and distinct perceptions are true), but only Sosa takes the second-order knowledge to have a transformative effect on the first-order knowledge (e.g., his knowledge that he is a thinking thing). For Kenny and Van Cleve the second-order knowledge is just more knowledge, exactly like the first-order knowledge. 34 Speaking of an externalist Moorean approach like his own, which allows for a broader range of intellectual virtues, Sosa says that it allows for one to come to have “a comprehensively coherent view of one’s

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What are the benefits of an epistemology with this sort of perspectival structure? Sosa says that Descartes “thinks he can defend against [skeptical] doubts only by coherence-inducing theological reasoning yielding an epistemic perspective on himself and his world, through which he might confidently trust his faculties.”35 And, given Descartes’s reply about the atheist mathematician, it does seem quite plausible to take this part of his project to be aimed at providing an answer to skepticism. There may be other benefits as well. Sosa identifies five different epistemic values: truth, safety, understanding, coherence, and what we might call the accomplishment of discovery.36 Of these, the first two—truth and safety—are attained merely through the operation of one’s intellectual virtues. But, arguably, the second two—understanding and coherence—are put in place through one’s acquiring a perspective on one’s knowledge and faculties, and the fifth—the accomplishment of discovery—may at least be enhanced when it occurs within a fully reflective perspective.

Is this how Descartes himself conceived of his epistemological project in the Meditations? It does seem pretty clear that at least one of his motives was responding to the skeptical arguments he raised in the First Meditation. But, as I shall argue now, Descartes did so in pursuit of another epistemic value—one not on Sosa’s list. In the course of explaining what this epistemic value is, I’ll challenge some of the details of Sosa’s interpretation of Descartes. In particular, I shall argue that the structure of Descartes’s project is not so easily separable from its rational content.

knowledge of the external world. And its epistemologically significant features would not distinguish it in any fundamental respect from the procedure followed by Descartes” (2009, p. 185, emphasis in the original). See also Sosa (1997) and (2007), pp. 127-33, for presentations of this interpretation of Descartes. 35 Sosa (2009), p. 141. More strongly, Sosa says: “Descartes can see that reason might take him to a position that is sufficiently comprehensive and interlocking—and thereby defensible against any foreseeable attack, no holds barred, against any specific doubt actually pressed or in the offing, no matter how slight” (p. 184). 36 Sosa (2009), pp. 136-7.

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4. IS THERE SOMETHING UNIQUE ABOUT CLEAR AND DISTINCT

PERCEPTION? Does Descartes really call into question his clear and distinct perceptions? There are four options here: (1) yes, (2) no, (3) a little bit, and (4) sometimes. The first option is unpalatable. If clear and distinct perceptions are of doubtful value, then it would seem that the Cartesian Circle is inescapable. For that reason, Kenny and Van Cleve are in effect committed to the second option—saying that Descartes does not really doubt the reliability of his clear and distinct perceptions. Although taking that option has the virtue of showing how Descartes does not fall into circularity, it has the vice of contradicting what Descartes actually says. In both the First and the Third Meditations, Descartes is quite explicit in saying that we can and should doubt our clear and distinct perceptions. As we have seen, this is the motivation for Sosa’s interpretation, which takes the third option mentioned above: Descartes doubts the reliability of his clear and distinct perceptions a little bit, but not so much that he refrains from using them. But this does not get Descartes’s attitude toward his clear and distinct perceptions quite right, I think. To see this, it is helpful to turn to the passage in the Third Meditation, just after Descartes has laid it down as a general rule that whatever he clearly and distinctly perceives is true. His first thought is to apply this general rule to the beliefs he rejected in the First Meditation; he notes that he “previously accepted as wholly certain and evident” the things he “apprehended with the senses.”37 Does the general rule show that these beliefs are true after all? No; Descartes now thinks that they were not well grounded enough. He then turns his attention to simple truths of mathematics. Did he perceive these things clearly and distinctly enough to affirm their truth? Here is his answer:

…the only reason for my later judgment that they were open to doubt was that it occurred to me that perhaps some God could have given me a nature such that I was deceived even in matters which seemed most evident. And whenever my preconceived belief in the supreme power of God comes to mind, I cannot but admit that it would be easy for him, if he so desired, to bring it about that I

37 Descartes (1984), p. 24 [AT VII 35].

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go wrong even in those matters which I think I see utterly clearly with my mind’s eye. Yet when I turn to the things themselves which I think I perceive very clearly, I am so convinced by them that I spontaneously declare: let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something; or make it true at some future time that I have never existed, since it is now true that I exist; or bring it about that two and three added together are more or less than five, or anything of this kind in which I see a manifest contradiction.38

Three points are worth noting. First, it is just after saying this that Descartes raises the “slight, metaphysical doubt” and proposes eliminating it through coming to know that a non-deceiving God exists.39 Second, his ability to doubt his clear and distinct perceptions is tied to what he is thinking of at that very moment. When he is having the clear and distinct perception, it is absolutely convincing and indubitable. But when he is instead thinking of his preconceived belief in the supreme power of God (notice: he is not then having a clear and distinct perception of God’s nature), doubt does become possible. Third, this dynamic applies not only to the cogito but to anything that he clearly and distinctly perceives.40 It is certain for him that 2+3=5 when he

38 Descartes (1984), p. 25 [AT VII 36], italics added. 39 The passage continues: “And since I have no cause to think that there is a deceiving God, and I do not yet even know for sure whether there is a God at all, any reason for doubt which depends simply on this supposition is a very slight and, so to speak, metaphysical one. But in order to remove even this slight reason for doubt, as soon as the opportunity arises I must examine whether there is a God, and, if there is, whether he can be a deceiver. For if I do not know this, it seems that I can never be quite certain about anything else.” 40 I point this out only because some scholars attribute a distinctive epistemic status to the cogito, as somehow more certain or better grounded than any other belief the meditator might have. In fact, the cogito is no better epistemically than any other very clear and distinct perception. Why, then, does Descartes seem to place so much weight on it in the Second Meditation? Although a full discussion of that question

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perceives it clearly and distinctly but capable of being doubted when he does not.41 As Descartes notes in the Second Set of Replies, this may happen when one thinks of the conclusion of an argument without also thinking of the proof. And, as we shall see in a moment, this sort of doubt can also occur in a more general way (and it is this general worry that turns out to be the most important). The difference between this interpretation and the one offered by Sosa should be clear. To doubt one’s clear and distinct perceptions at some times but not at others is not the same as always doubting them a little bit. On the interpretation I have been offering, clear and distinct perceptions provide one with all the certainty one could ever hope for—at least, while one is entertaining them.42 Further reflection on them at that time doesn’t make them any more certain or convincing. But Descartes must think further reflection does something—if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have taken his own position as a theist to be superior to the position of the atheist mathematician.

is outside the scope of this paper, my suggestion is that he does so for rhetorical purposes: it allows him to begin investigating his own nature as a thinking thing and to begin putting in place the pieces for his argument for dualism. 41 It might be objected that this interpretation is not consistent with the way in which Descartes raises these doubts in the First Meditation. Doesn’t he there call into question the clear and distinct perception that 2+3=5? And, if he does this, isn’t he calling it into question when he is actually entertaining it? It has to be granted that this is the point at which Descartes comes closest to doubting an occurrent clear and distinct perception. However, what he actually says is: “since I sometimes believe that others go astray in cases where they think they have the most perfect knowledge, may I not similarly go wrong every time I add two and three or count the sides of a square, or in some even simpler matter, if that is imaginable?” (Descartes 1984, p. 14 [AT VII 21]). Here, he is describing an activity one can engage in that would lead one to have a clear and distinct perception (adding two and three, counting the sides of a square), but he does not actually engage in that activity. So, he does not actually have the clear and distinct perception in question at that time. 42 On this point, see also Cottingham (1986), pp. 66-70.

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Descartes returns to this question at the end of the Fifth Meditation. He says that, “whatever method of proof I use [to show that my idea of God is not fictitious], I am always brought back to the fact that it is only what I clearly and distinctly perceive that completely convinces me.”43 Some of the things that I clearly and distinctly perceive are immediately obvious; others, including the fact that God exists, require more careful investigation. But now that I perceive that God does exist, he says, I am “just as certain of it as I am of everything else which appears most certain.”44 He then explains the way in which nothing else can be “perfectly known” without my being certain that God exists:

Admittedly my nature is such that so long as I perceive something very clearly and distinctly I cannot but believe it to be true. But my nature is also such that I cannot fix my mental vision continually on the same thing, so as to keep perceiving it clearly; and often the memory of a previously made judgment may come back, when I am no longer attending to the arguments which led me to make it. And so other arguments can now occur to me which might easily undermine my opinion, if I were unaware of God: and I should thus never have true and certain knowledge about anything, but only shifting and changeable opinions.45

Now, Descartes is surely overstating things here a bit. The atheist mathematician is not really going to have “shifting and changeable opinions” about the truths of mathematics. He will, however, be subject to the general sort of doubt I mentioned earlier. This is the sort of thing that may arise when the atheist mathematician lays in bed at night, reflecting on his career. Have his proofs succeeded in revealing the truth about mathematical reality, or have they instead been merely the result of unreliable but deeply engrained ways of thinking? At bottom, this just is the final doubt Descartes has raised in the First Meditation. He is ignorant of his origin (at that time), and so he does not know whether

43 Descartes (1984), p. 47 [AT VII 68]. 44 Descartes (1984), p. 48 [AT VII 69]. 45 ibid.

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his mind is such that its operation allows him to know the truth. He might, instead, be like a poorly constructed calculator that always returns the wrong answer and, because of that consistency, is unable ever to detect the error. To the extent that the atheist mathematician may have shifting and changeable opinions, these will not be with respect to particular claims in mathematics but rather with respect to what it all amounts to. In some ways, it’s a shame that Descartes came to express this general sort of doubt with the vivid and memorable image of the evil demon. Although it is easy to remember the evil demon, it is hard to take it seriously (or, at least, it is hard to tell others that this is what one worries so much about). By contrast, the general doubt (in its general form) is not trivial or bizarre at all. Rather, it is very much the sort of thing that will occur to any thoughtful person. And even when it does not cause such a person to abandon or change her beliefs, it very well might lead her to wonder what they are worth. This is not to have “shifting and changeable opinions,” but to be vulnerable to the unsettling nature of doubt. Many skeptics—e.g., the Pyrrhonists and David Hume—have conceived of their skepticism as a way of ameliorating and coping with this sort of doubt.

Descartes, of course, takes the opposite strategy; he tries to abolish it. If clear and distinct perceptions allow for certainty, the atheist mathematician might try this, too. Repeatedly falling into doubt, he might repeatedly reflect on how his mathematical beliefs have been grounded and then derive the general rule from them. Although possible, it is a Sisyphean task. Descartes can avoid it altogether. If anyone were to raise the general doubt with him by pointing out that he is ignorant of his own origin, this will call to mind God. At this point in the Meditations, Descartes has given his version of the ontological argument. So, his idea of God now will be a clear and distinct perception of his nature, where this includes existence and every other perfection (such as being a non-deceiver). In the very raising of the skeptical doubt, then, Descartes will have his answer to it: he is no longer ignorant of his own origin, and it is no longer possible that he could have been made in such a way that he gets wrong the things that seem clearest to him.46 The certainty he possesses while he is entertaining his

46 Thus, the ontological argument serves as a response to skepticism in

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clear and distinct perceptions remains even when he is no longer entertaining them but merely remembering that they were clearly and distinctly perceived.

As we have seen, Descartes calls the end result of the process embodied in the Meditations “perfect knowledge” or scientia. It is not any more reliable than the atheist mathematician’s knowledge (cognitio). In fact, it may not even exhibit any more comprehensive coherence than the atheist’s set of beliefs, for nothing prevents him, too, from having a perspective on the operation of his own faculties. But the meditator’s beliefs will be more stable than those of the atheist mathematician. It is this stability, I think, that makes the difference between his own perfect knowledge and the imperfect knowledge of the atheist.47

the same way that the cogito does: the very consideration of a skeptical scenario allows us to set it aside. 47 Descartes’s concern with stability is evident from the very beginning of the Meditations. Indeed, he says in the second sentence of the First Meditation, “I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last” (Descartes 1984, p. 12 [AT VII 17], emphasis added). Interestingly, Louis Loeb takes stability to be a chief concern of not only Descartes but of Hume as well; see his (1992) and (2002), respectively. It is also worth noting that the ancient Stoics draw a similar distinction (and one that may well be the source for Descartes’s distinction between cognitio and scientia). According to Cicero, the Stoics “deny that anyone knows anything, except the wise person. Zeno used to demonstrate this with gestures. When he had put his hand out flat in front of him with his fingers straight, he would say: ‘An impression is like this.’ Next, after contracting his fingers a bit: ‘Assent is like this.’ Then, when he had bunched his hand up to make a fist, he would say that that was an ‘apprehension’ or grasp’. (This image also suggested the name he gave to it katalêpsis [‘grasp’], which hadn’t been used before.) Finally, when he had put his left hand on top, squeezing his fist tight with some force, he would say that scientific knowledge was like that: a state none but the wise enjoyed—though as for who is or ever was wise, even they aren’t in a rush to say” (Cicero 2006, p. 84 [Ac. 2.145]). For the Stoics, apprehensive (or “cataleptic”) impressions

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It is worth noting that the meditator’s beliefs will be more stable than those of the atheist mathematician in both a temporal and a modal sense.48 Temporally, the certainty the meditator enjoys while entertaining a clear and distinct perception will remain in place even when he is no longer attending to it.49 Certainty will no longer be a fleeting experience for the meditator, as it is for the atheist mathematician. Moreover, the meditator will be in a position to answer any reasonable skeptical challenge that might arise; in that sense, his certainty will be modally robust. The doubts Descartes has raised in the First Meditation are “based on powerful and well thought-out reasons.”50 Having found an answer to them, there can be no further skeptical problems to worry about. Unreasonable skeptical challenges might be advanced—e.g., that “such truths [as we have clearly and distinctly perceived] might appear false to God or to an angel”—but, Descartes says, “the evident clarity of our perceptions does not allow us to listen to anyone who makes up this kind of story.”51

genuinely are cognitive, but they do not have the stability of scientific knowledge. What is distinctive of the latter is that it not only is certain in itself but also cannot be combined with anything that is not certain, for the Stoic sage is someone who “never makes a false supposition” and “does not assent at all to anything incognitive, owing to his not opining and his being ignorant of nothing” (Stobaeus, translated in Long and Sedley 1987, p. 256). 48 I am grateful to Ernest Sosa for pressing the distinction between these types of stability. 49 Descartes (1984), pp. 104-5 [AT VII 146]. 50 Descartes (1984), p. 15 [AT VII 21-2]. 51 Descartes (1984), p. 104 [AT VII 146]. This passage is sometimes taken as evidence that Descartes is interested only in subjective certainty rather than in knowledge—see, e.g., Loeb (1992)—but I think it is more naturally read as expressing the requirement that skeptical challenges have some degree of plausibility. (Is it really plausible that the meditator is being deceived by an evil demon? Not everyone will think so. But it is important to keep in mind that the evil demon is only an “hypothesis” Descartes makes use of to express in a vivid way the possibility that one’s mind might be constructed so as to go wrong even in what seems clearest. This latter possibility, I take it, will seem

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We are now ready to draw three lessons from this lengthy bit of Descartes exegesis. The first is that his response to skepticism depends, not just on the structure of his epistemology, but also on its rationalist content. What allows him to resist the final skeptical argument of the First Meditation—the one grounded in ignorance of one’s own origin—is the fact that, by the Fifth Meditation, he is certain that God exists and is a non-deceiver. And what explains his certainty of this is that he clearly and distinctly perceives it to be so (by means of the ontological argument). The certainty does not derive from the comprehensive coherence of his beliefs provided by a theological perspective. Rather, his certainty that God exists just allows the certainty provided by each of his clear and distinct perceptions to go without skeptical challenge. (One way of seeing the difference is to note that the ontological argument allows Descartes to see that his clear and distinct perceptions must, in general, be true, but it does not allow him to understand how this is so. That is, Descartes is not in a position to explain how they work.)

The second lesson is that Descartes’s project is not actually circular at all.52 Because clear and distinct perceptions are so rationally convincing, they cannot be called into question at the time one is having them. Hence, the meditator never needs to defend their use. This is not supposed to be a merely psychological fact; each clear and distinct perception provides epistemic certainty on its own. So, there is no need

plausible, even to people whose basic worldview doesn’t leave room for demons, evil or otherwise.) It is important to keep in mind that Descartes is here discussing only skeptical challenges to clear and distinct perceptions; reasonable skeptical challenges to other intellectual faculties may well be possible. In particular, the epistemological status of memory (as opposed to clear and distinct perceptions insofar as they are remembered) is not addressed in the Meditations. This is not a minor omission. 52 Hatfield (2006, pp. 130-2) draws a distinction between begging the question (taking something to be known when that very thing is in question), formal circularity (using the conclusion as a premise in one’s reasoning), and methodological circularity (using a method to establish the reliability of that very method). On my interpretation of Descartes, he is guilty of none of these.

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to think of clear and distinct perception as a faculty that must then vindicate itself.53 If Descartes is right about clear and distinct perceptions, then, his epistemology cannot be taken as a vindication of circularity.

Of course, Descartes may very well not be right about clear and distinct perception. That is to say, they may not provide certainty in the way that he suggests; even if they do, they may not provide certainty for a wide enough range of issues to stave off skepticism; Descartes has not provided an account of when a clear and distinct perception is clear and distinct enough, etc. There are surely other problems with his project, too (e.g., its reliance on controversial proofs for the existence of God). But it is important to be clear about the nature of these problems.

Sosa says that “[t]he desire for a fully general, legitimating, philosophical understanding of all our knowledge is unfulfillable. It is unfulfillable for simple, demonstrable logical reasons. In this respect it is like the desire to find the patron saint of modesty: he who blesses all and only those who do not bless themselves.”54 And then he asks, “Would it not be a requirement of good sense or even of sanity to put that obviously incoherent project behind us, to just forget about it and to put our time to better use?”55 The implication is that the next best thing—reflective knowledge acquired in a circular way—is the best thing possible, and it would be absurd to complain about it not being better than it is.

Sosa characterizes “fully general, legitimating” accounts of knowledge as ones that (1) try to explain the justification for all of a subject’s beliefs at once and (2) take justification to be provided entirely

53 As Kenny says, “The truth of particular intuitions is never called in question, only the universal trustworthiness of intuition, and in vindicating this universal trustworthiness only individual intuitions are utilized. There is no single faculty, or single exercise of a faculty, that is vindicated by its own use” (1968, pp. 194-5). In other words, the certainty of clear and distinct perceptions is not borrowed from the reliability of clear and distinct perception in general but rather is intrinsic to them individually (and, in turn, serves as the ground of the general reliability of the faculty of clear and distinct perception). 54 Sosa (2009), p. 173. 55 ibid.

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by inference or argument and without circularity or regress.56 Understood in that way, there does seem to be something paradoxical about the project. But Descartes’s epistemology is surely another way of providing a legitimating account of one’s knowledge: one shows how everything one knows can be traced to beliefs that are absolutely certain in themselves. As I’ve said above, there may be insuperable problems facing anyone who tries to carry out such a project. But those problems take a lot of sophisticated epistemology to uncover; they are not “simple, demonstrable reasons” to think that reliance on clear and distinct perceptions is futile.

So, this is the third lesson from Descartes: the failure of the Cartesian project does not mean that the desires underlying it are incoherent or irrational in any way. And here is the corollary: the unsettling doubts left in its wake are not so easily dismissed. 5 . VIRTUE EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE PERSISTENCE OF DOUBT I shall turn now to a consideration of how well Sosa’s perspectivism provides an answer to skepticism. In particular, does it allow for the sort of stability that Descartes was aiming at? Let us begin answering this question by noting that there is a certain sort of disagreement possible given Sosa’s epistemology but not given Descartes’s.57 The sort of disagreement I have in mind involves two people who use different basic faculties, where those faculties can be used to provide a self-vindicating perspective. To take Sosa’s example, ordinary perceivers can use perception to form a comprehensively coherent perspective on perception, and users of a crystal ball can ask the ball questions that lead them to a comprehensively coherent perspective on the use of the crystal ball. Sometimes the deliverances of perception conflict with the deliverances of the crystal ball. When that happens, ordinary perceivers trust perception, and the crystal ball users trust the crystal ball. How could this disagreement be resolved, when both sides can point to the results delivered by their own preferred ways of forming beliefs? Sosa says that “the crystal-gazers differ from the perceivers in that gazing is

56 Sosa (2009), p. 159. 57 It is not possible on Descartes’s epistemology because clear and distinct perceptions are rationally convincing in a way that other faculties are not and perhaps cannot be.

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not reliable while perceiving is. So the theory of knowledge of the perceivers is right, that of the gazers wrong.”58 Various philosophers have thought this answer, though licensed by Sosa’s theory, to be unsatisfactory. Barry Stroud puts the objection this way: “Sosa’s ‘externalist’ could say at most: ‘If the theory I hold is true, I do know or have good reason to believe that I know or have good reason to believe it, and I do understand how I know the things I do.’”59 If the most that one could say, on Sosa’s view, is conditional in nature, then we do not in fact have a response to skepticism (nor do we have reflective knowledge, nor do we have a way of adjudicating the dispute with the crystal ball user). Sosa’s reply to Stroud shows perfect internal consistency:

…it is not easy to understand [Stroud’s] position. If our perceivers believe (a) that their perception, if reliable, yields them knowledge, and (b) that their perception is reliable, then why are they restricted to affirming only the conditional, a, and not its antecedent, b? Why must they wonder whether they understand their relevant knowledge? Indeed, to the extent that they are really convinced of both a and b, it would seem that, far from being logically constrained to wondering whether they know, they are, on the contrary, logically constrained from so wondering. After all, first, if you are really certain that p, then you cannot well consider whether you know it without thinking that you do. Moreover, second, isn’t it incoherent to be convinced that p and yet wonder whether p?60

If one knows the conditional and the antecedent, then surely modus ponens allows one to derive the consequent, too. On this point, Stroud is wrong about what Sosa’s externalist would be limited to saying. There is no reason why he couldn’t categorically say that he does understand his knowledge or that his faculties are reliable. He could also say that he knows his faculties are reliable. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which Sosa’s response is stronger

58 Sosa (2009), p. 200. 59 Stroud (1994), p. 303. See also Alston (1993), p. 17. 60 Sosa (2009), pp. 201-2.

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than is really warranted, especially when he says that it would be incoherent to still wonder whether his faculties are reliable. Virtue perspectivism is a fallibilist theory of knowledge, which is to say that a subject can know that p on the basis of some justification j even though the subject could have that same justification and yet fail to know that p—it could be either false or accidentally true.61 Here is a simple example: I ask a passerby what time it is, and she tells me that it is noon. Most epistemologists would grant that I have knowledge, given that I have no defeaters for accepting her testimony and have generally found that testifiers tell the truth in this sort of situation. But it is still open to me to wonder whether I do know that it is noon on this basis (even as I believe that it is noon). After all, she could have been lying to me. I don’t think she was, but I recognize that she could have been. A thoughtful subject will be in a position to say, “If what she told me is true, I know it. But, if it isn’t true, I don’t know it. I wonder which it is.”62 On a fallibilist theory, knowledge does not put to rest all of our doubts. (Remember that, even on Descartes’s infallibilist view, clear and distinct perceptions give us certainty and yet also allow some room for skeptical doubts, prior to the knowledge that God exists and is a non-deceiver.) We might know something in a fallible way and yet still find that its denial is epistemically possible.63 This is just the position the

61 For this account of fallibilism, see my (2002).I argue there that fallibilists ultimately must conceive of the relation between a belief and its justification as probabilistic in nature. Justification, as I am using it here, is meant only as a placeholder. It might be fleshed out in various ways, from evidentialism to reliabilism or Sosa’s preferred performance normativity account. See also Hetherington (1999). 62 Notice, too, that the thoughtful subject could reach the conclusion that she does in fact know what time it is. If this conclusion is true and reliably formed (and not subject to defeat), there is no reason why it could not itself count as knowledge. Even so, the thoughtful subject might still wonder whether she knows what time it is (and might also still wonder whether she knows that she knows what time it is). 63 If this is correct, it conflicts with the standard way of understanding epistemic possibility, which accepts the following biconditional: it is epistemically possible that p for S just in case S does not know that not-

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perceiver finds herself in, in her disagreement with the crystal ball gazer. She can say that perception is reliable; she can say that she knows that perception is reliable; and yet she still can wonder whether it really is reliable. If the perceiver found herself only in this one disagreement, with the crystal ball gazer, she perhaps wouldn’t be too badly off. Crystal ball use doesn’t really have much to recommend it. But the reality of her epistemic situation, and ours, is unfortunately much more complex. There is genuine dispute among philosophers—even good ones!—about what our basic intellectual faculties are. Sosa considers a list from Wilfrid Sellars that includes introspection, perception, and memory.64 But surely that list is incomplete. Sosa would presumably add testimony and reason. Others—e.g., John Locke and Alvin Plantinga—would add a faculty of divine revelation.65 Yet others—the Logical Positivists, say—

p. But a view of this sort is very hard to reconcile with fallibilism. Given the sheer implausibility of the claim that I couldn’t possibly be dreaming, I take it that it is reasonable to prefer fallibilism to the above account of epistemic possibility. A more promising strategy, then, might be to link epistemic possibility to certainty, rather than to less secure forms of knowledge. Another option would be to take the space of epistemic possibility to be ordered in different ways in accordance with different degrees of knowledge (assuming that knowledge does come in degrees, ranging from certainty down to knowledge that is just well grounded enough to surpass the minimal threshold of epistemic excellence consistent with knowledge in general). For more on these ways of understanding epistemic possibility, see Reed (2010) and (forthcoming). 64 Sosa (2009), p. 101. See Sellars (1979). 65 According to Plantinga (2000), “we are to follow reason, in the formation of religious opinion, but so doing does not preclude accepting certain propositions as specially revealed by God, and accepting them on that basis” (p. 81). Other philosophers, of course, have been willing to accord an even greater weight to revelation, taking it to trump reason when they conflict. For example, Pierre Bayle, the great early modern skeptic, says in his entry on Pierre Bunel, “Reason is a veritable Penelope, unraveling during the night what she had been weaving during the day. Thus, the best use that can be made of the study of

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might want to subtract both revelation and reason. And Thomas Reid thought we have a faculty of “common sense,” which gives us knowledge of his preferred philosophical principles. Which of these conflicting views is correct?

Each party to the dispute can give her favorite answer, and, if we’re all careful about it, our answers will be internally consistent. If my own answer happens to be correct, then Sosa’s view will permit me to say that I know it is correct. Two questions might be asked here: (i) is this really knowledge? and (ii) if it is knowledge, does it satisfy all of our intellectual needs? Discussion of skepticism—e.g., in the debate between Stroud and Sosa mentioned above—has tended to revolve around the first of these questions, but, to my mind, this is a mistake in focus. Even if it is conceded to Sosa that I really do know that my faculties are reliable in the above dispute, it does not look like this knowledge will provide a resting place for my intellectual pursuits.

It may well be that I am not at all tempted by the views of my rivals in the dispute over which faculties are reliable. I may also regard their points of view as dogmatic, in the sense that they are either unable or unwilling to take seriously the possibility that they are mistaken. But there are limitations in the answer that I can give to them, as well: my answer will be convincing only to someone who already thinks that it is correct, and of course there is a chance that it may not be correct. If I do not recognize these limitations of my own intellectual point of view, I will be guilty of dogmatism myself.

Fallibilistic knowledge, even reflective knowledge as Sosa characterizes it, turns out to be compatible with both dogmatism and doubt—the only difference in outcome being a function of the extent to which I am willing to own up to the weakness in my epistemic position. In neither case does knowledge of this sort provide the healthy sort of stability that Descartes was seeking. Just as the atheist mathematician will always be in a position to wonder whether his clear and distinct perceptions are all true, so, too, will we always be in a position to

philosophy is to realize that it is a misleading way, and that we ought to look for another guide, which is the light of revelation” (1965, p. 42). Although we can never be confident that Bayle is sincere when he says things like this, it is clear that many of his contemporaries—and some of ours—would agree (sincerely) with the claim.

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wonder whether our preferred intellectual faculties are reliable. Fallibilism does give us an answer, but it is to a question that we will continue to feel the need to ask.

In the long-running contest between the skeptic and the anti-skeptical epistemologist, which side proves to be victorious? It depends on how we think of skepticism. It has often been taken to be the thesis that we do not have knowledge (of the external world, of other minds, etc.). Understood in this way, fallibilism does allow for an answer of sorts to be given. But if we understand skepticism as the thesis that we ought to doubt whether things really are the way we take them to be (or, perhaps better, as the practice of doubting this), then it does not look like there is a successful answer of any sort to it.

In the end, the pursuit of reflective knowledge proves to be a double-edged sword. At the same time that it allows us to embed our (putative) knowledge within a broader epistemic perspective, it also allows us to further refine and enlarge our doubts about what we (putatively) know. The stability and freedom from doubt promised by Descartes’s epistemology remain out of reach. In this sense, then, Sosa’s virtue perspectivism is as much of an invitation to skepticism as it is an answer for it.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For comments on an earlier version of this paper, I am grateful to Claudio de Almeida, Stephen Hetherington, Jennifer Lackey, and (of course) Ernie Sosa. For some of the material here, I rely on my paper, “Knowledge, Doubt, and Circularity,” forthcoming in Synthese. REFERENCES Alston, William. 1993. The Reliability of Sense Perception. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ayer, A.J. 1940. Foundations of Empirical Knowledge. London: Macmillan. Bayle, Pierre. 1965. Historical and Critical Dictionary, tr. by R. Popkin. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

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