索萨的德性知识论

基于对内在论与外在论、基础论与融贯论等当代知识论主流理论的批判,索萨(Erenst Sosa)建构了新的知识理论:德性知识论.德性知识论的提出对当代知识论研究具有导向性的意义,也可以说,引领了当代知识论的合理重建.但该理论仍然受到主流学者的围剿,并没能有效完成知识论的重建任务.     

Ernest Sosa, Knowledge, and Understanding

This paper offers and analysis of Ernest Sosa's Virtue Perspectivism.Although Sosa has been credited with fathering the influentialcontemporary movement known as Virtue Epistemology, I argue that Sosaimprudently abandons the reliabilist-based insights of VirtueEpistemology in favor of a reflection-based, ``perspectival' view.Sosa's mixed allegiance to reliabilist-based and reflection-based viewsof knowledge, in fact, leads to an unwelcome tension in his thoughtwhich can be relieved by recognizing that his reflection-based view isin fact an account of the cognitive state of understanding,rather than an account of knowledge. Sosa makes mattersdifficult for himself because he expects too much, as it were, from theconcept of knowledge, and in the process burdens his view with elementsof reflection it does not require. To solve the problem, I suggest thatSosa needs to develop a two-tiered epistemology whichrecognizes that knowledge, on the one hand, and understanding, on theother, both have necessary and sufficient conditions unique tothemselves.