Outline for essay
An essential skill of this course is analytical reading. To this end, you will be required to write a 1-page outline summarizing the argument of Turing’s “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” The outline should be single-spaced, use 12-point font, Times New Roman, and one-inch margins. Your outline should incorporate answers to the following questions: What is the main question? What is the main thesis? What are the premises? What is the structure of the argument? You may choose to present your outline in whatever format you determine to adequately capture the key components of Turing’s argument. Just be sure that your organizational choices make it clear that you understand the overall structure of the argument. Specifically, it will be most hopeful to organize your outline by first identifying the main question and main thesis of Turing’s argument. Then, you should identify and explain each section of Turing’s argument (there are seven total sections in the piece), rather than merely pasting the two underlined questions and answering them directly. That is, if you identify and summarize the key points of each of the seven sections, you will necessarily provide answers to “What are the premises?” and “What is the structure of the argument?” We will practice these skills in class.
*Do not turn in an essay with full paragraphs. That is not an outline- it is mere prose. An outline is also not a long list of bullet points without any organizing structure. Someone looking at your outline should be able to tell immediately that you have a clear and apparent structure.*
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Ernest Sosa’s “A Virtue Epistemology” (Lecture 2) February 16, 2021
Handout- Schiff
Summary of overall claims: We ought to understand knowledge not as a single theory but as
coming in two varieties, namely, animal knowledge (apt belief, which hits truth through exercise
of competence) and reflective knowledge (apt belief and subject aptly believes apt belief to be
apt). Sosa provides a virtue epistemology that distinguishes between aptness and safety of
performances generally, and of belief in particular. Such an account allows for a further solution
(beyond that offered in Lecture 1) to problems of skepticism such as the dream problem.
1. Explains AAA structure
An archer’s shot, like any performance (with an aim), can be assessed in terms of an AAA
structure // so too can a belief, which counts as a performance, albeit a long-sustained one:
• Accuracy- (p) its reaching the aim // (b) its being true
• Adroitness- (p) its manifesting the skill or competence // (b) its manifesting epistemic
virtue or competence
• Aptness- (p) its reaching the aim through the adroitness manifest // (b) its being true
because competent
2. Details core ideas of his virtue epistemology (animal vs. reflective knowledge)
a) affirm knowledge entails belief;
b) understand animal knowledge (K) as requiring apt belief without requiring defensibly apt
belief; and
c) understand reflective knowledge (K+) as requiring not only apt belief but also defensibly
apt belief (i.e. the subject aptly believes the apt belief to be apt).
3. Analyzes safety and sensitivity of a belief (and of performances generally)
• A performance is safe iff “not easily would it then have failed, not easily would it have
fallen short of its aim” (25).
o That not easily would a belief fail by being false or untrue is required for it to be
safe.
o A belief p is safe “provided it would have been held only if (most likely) p” (25).
• Someone’s belief p is sensitive iff “were it not so that p, he would not (likely) believe that
p” (25).
• Since such conditionals do not contrapose: a belief can be safe without being sensitive
o e.g. the belief that “one is not a brain in a vat fooled by misleading sensory
evidence into so believing” (25)
• Using the pain vs. discomfort example, he qualifies his claim to state that knowledge
requires not outright safety but at most basis-relative safety (see 26).
o A belief that p is basis-relative safe iff “it has a basis that it would (likely) have only
if true” (26).
o A belief that p is basis-relative sensitive iff “it is based on a basis such that if it were
false that p, then not easily would the believer believe that p on that same basis” (26).
4. Returns to the skeptic to outline a different line of defense
• The skeptic restricts us to bases for belief that are purely internal and psychological,
rather than external; Sosa seeks a virtue epistemology that is compatible with but not
committed to content or basis externalism (see 27, a-d, for sketch of the argument steps).
o The conclusion of the argument is that the skeptic does not refute common sense or
even locate a paradox within common sense.
5. Confronts dream skepticism directly
• Two ways for the archer’s shot to fail to be safe:
Ernest Sosa’s “A Virtue Epistemology” (Lecture 2) February 16, 2021
Handout- Schiff
a) due to archer’s level of competence (e.g. affected by drug)
b) due to appropriateness of conditions (e.g. weather)
• But such scenarios (where the shot is not safe) do not render the shot inapt. So, a
performance can be unsafe and apt.
• A performance can also be safe and inapt:
o e.g. angel machine provides gust that compensates for natural gust that initially
diverts the arrow (that shot is not
• Thus, neither aptness nor safety entails the other. Aptness requires manifesting a
competence (a disposition with a basis resident in the competent agent) that would, in
appropriately normal conditions ensure, or make very likely, the success of the relevant
performance.
• Applies reasoning to dream problem: dreams make agent vulnerable with respect to a),
i.e. perceptual competence, and b), i.e. appropriate normalcy of conditions
• Knower’s belief can remain apt even if unsafe through the proximity of the dream
possibility.
6. Investigates whether jokester kaleidoscope red surface example presents a problem (apt belief,
but is it knowledge?)
• Apt belief simpliciter vs. apt belief aptly noted
o Use of animal vs. reflective knowledge to sort this out: individual has apt belief and
animal knowledge that the seen surface is red but lacks reflective knowledge (i.e.
apt belief that he aptly believes the surface to be red)
§ Belief that he has apt belief- is this apt? No, because it is not attributable to
the relevant competence
• So, the perceiver does not have animal knowledge that he has animal
knowledge that the surface is red, and therefore lacks reflective
knowledge of the color of the surface.
7. Explores whether the dream problem is analogous to the kaleidoscope example
• If so, we would have to accept perceptual beliefs as cases of animal knowledge but not
reflective knowledge.
• However, Sosa investigates further and concludes that the threats in question to the safety
of our perceptual beliefs are not threats to their aptness.
• He notes that, in response to the dream problem, he goes beyond that of requiring that a
belief be safe in order to count as knowledge: it must be apt.
8. Offers final remarks:
• Knowledge is apt performance in the way of belief.
• Knowledge does not require safety of the contained belief since the belief can be unsafe on
account of the fragility of the believer’s competence or situation.
• When we sleep and dream, assuming we have perceptual beliefs, these beliefs are not apt
beliefs. However, such does not affect the aptness of our perceptual beliefs in waking life.
• Bonus- solution to Gettier problem: beliefs can be true and justified without being apt (and
hence would not be knowledge on his account)
Questions:
1) Is a belief analogous to a performance (e.g. as an archer’s shot) in the relevant ways?
2) What are the criteria for a performer to be granted “credit” for the performance? (see 29)
Similarly, what are the criteria for an agent to be granted “credit” for knowledge?