Disposiciones, competencias cognitivas y suerte epistémica

Abstract

As a subset of dispositions, cognitive competences require no modal or neighbourhood robustness. This means that, insofar as a belief might be apt without being knowledge, we have a counterexample to the simple aptness view. The requirement of safety must be so included in a virtue epistemology, but in such a way that the insight that knowledge is an achievement of the agent is preserved. In his latest version of a virtue epistemology, Ernest Sosa has argued that, in order to know, the agent’s proper access to the aptness of his beliefs is required, or, in other words, that human knowledge requires that the apt performance on the first order must be guided by knowledge on the second order that the first order performance would be apt. We aim at developing and vindicating this view, arguing that it tallies both with ordinary cognitive practices and with the Cartesian project.