[MaFLa] invitation to a talk on"The Unity of Action, Perception, and Knowledge" by Ernest Sosa - 11 March, 5.30 PM

[Krisztina Biber]

    The CEU Department of Philosophy cordially invites you to a talk 
 (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series)
 by
 Ernest Sosa (Rutgers University) 
 on
 "The Unity of Action, Perception, and Knowledge."
  
  
 Tuesday, 11 March, 2014, 5.30 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 412
  
 ABSTRACT
  
 “The Unity of Action, Perception, and Knowledge” places virtue
epistemology within a broader project of metaphysical, semantic, and
conceptual analysis that targets human attainments more generally,
whether they take the form of action, perception, or knowledge. We
consider the problem of causal deviance as it arises for Donald
Davidson’s account of intentional action, and for our own account of
human knowledge, and we consider a similar problem for Paul Grice’s
causal analysis of perception. These can be viewed as metaphysical
analyses of their respective targets. Thus viewed they are defensible
against common objections—of either vicious circularity or insufficient
content—that have been thought lethal. 
 Those accounts are also defensible, moreover, against critiques that
have been thought to favor disjunctivist alternatives. Prominent such
critiques apply only to a specific, and optional, form of analysis:
namely, analysis into logically independent factors merely conjoined in
the analysis. To the contrary, metaphysical analyses can be causal
analyses that do not take that form. Action, perception, and knowledge
are all forms of manifested competence, where a competence is a
disposition to succeed in a given field of aimings—these being
performances with an aim—whether the aim be intentional and conscious,
or teleological and functional.
 In conclusion, the chapter sketches a methodology appropriate for our
inquiry.

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