Getting it right

What counts as knowledge? Everyone used to think knowledge is justified true belief. Knowledge is a belief that is both true and justified (i.e. you have good reasons for the belief). But as Ernest Sosa points out in “Getting It Right,” that definition has the problem that we can have good reasons to believe something is true but be right only by accident. So what will count as knowledge? Sosa shows how “virtue epistemology” might work. In living our lives virtue is getting it just right. Similarly, in knowing the world, virtue would again be getting it just right. “[T]o know … is to make an affirmation that is accurate (true) and adroit (which requires taking proper account of the evidence). But in addition, the affirmation must be apt; that is, its accuracy must be attributable to competence rather than luck.”

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