Ernest Sosa’s new monograph, Epistemic Explanations, develops an important new account of epistemic evaluation, epistemic normativity, and the explanatory role of these. The first two sections of the present paper develop an interpretation of Sosa’s metaphysics of the mental states of rational agents as a version of hylomorphism (a view according to which such states can be understood as composed of matter and form). The second half of the paper uses this hylomorphic view to argue that Sosa can account for differences among the various kinds of knowledge by appeal to nothing more than differences among the belief-like attitudes involved in those kinds of knowledge. My argument for this last claim will also challenge Sosa’s own argument for two of the book’s most heterodox epistemological claims, viz., that knowledge can be recognizably insecure, and that knowledge can be based on mere assumptions.

Analytic Philosophy | General Interest | Philosophy of Mind