Everybody needs to know?
Abstract
I propose an amendment to Sosa’s virtue reliabilism. Sosa’s framework assigns a central role to sophisticated, conceptual, motivational states: ‘intentions to affirm aptly’. I argue that the suggestion that ordinary knowers in fact are motivated by such intentions in everyday belief-forming situations is at best problematic, and explore the possibility of an alternative virtue reliabilist framework. In this alternative framework, the role Sosa assigns to ‘intentions to affirm aptly’ is played instead by non-conceptual motivational states, which I call ‘needs’. The first part of the paper sketches Sosa’s framework. The second develops the need-based alternative. I close by comparing the two proposals, concluding that the onus is at least on Sosa to say why his intention-based framework should be preferred.
Citation
Dickie , I 2017 , ' Everybody needs to know? ' , Philosophical Studies , vol. 174 , no. 10 , pp. 2571–2583 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0731-2
Publication
Philosophical Studies
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0031-8116Type
Journal article
Rights
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0731-2
Description
Contribution to a symposium on Ernie Sosa *Judgment and Agency*Collections
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