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Full Idea
Much of our propositional knowledge is not easily formulable, as when a witness looking at a police lineup may know what the culprit's face looks like.
Gist of Idea
Much propositional knowledge cannot be formulated, as in recognising a face
Source
Ernest Sosa (Beyond internal Foundations to external Virtues [2003], 6.1)
Book Ref
Bonjour,L/Sosa,E: 'Epistemic Justification' [Blackwells 2003], p.99
A Reaction
This is actually a very helpful defence of foundationalism, because it shows that we will accept perceptual experiences as knowledge when they are not expressed as explicit propositions. Davidson (Idea 8801), for example, must deal with this difficulty.
Related Idea
Idea 8801 Coherent justification says only beliefs can be reasons for holding other beliefs [Davidson]
8876 | Much propositional knowledge cannot be formulated, as in recognising a face [Sosa] |
8877 | We can't attain a coherent system by lopping off any beliefs that won't fit [Sosa] |
8879 | Fully comprehensive beliefs may not be knowledge [Sosa] |
8878 | It is acceptable to say a supermarket door 'knows' someone is approaching [Sosa] |
8880 | In reducing arithmetic to self-evident logic, logicism is in sympathy with rationalism [Sosa] |
8881 | Most of our knowledge has insufficient sensory support [Sosa] |
8882 | Perception may involve thin indexical concepts, or thicker perceptual concepts [Sosa] |
8883 | Do beliefs only become foundationally justified if we fully attend to features of our experience? [Sosa] |
8884 | The phenomenal concept of an eleven-dot pattern does not include the concept of eleven [Sosa] |
8885 | Some features of a thought are known directly, but others must be inferred [Sosa] |