4th Workshop

4th Nagoya Meta-Philosophy Workshop

Date: 17:00 to 18:30pm, Jun 19, 2019

Venue: Liberal Arts and Sciences Main Building C41, 4th Floor

"Sosa’s reflective knowledge and Xunzi’s knowledge of the dao"

Leo K. C. Cheung (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Abstract: Ernest Sosa has put forward the distinction between animal knowledge and reflective knowledge in different stages of the development of his virtue epistemology. The distinction in his mature virtue epistemology is as follows: Animal knowledge is essentially apt belief, and reflective knowledge is apt belief that the subject aptly believes to be apt or, simply, defensibly apt belief.

In this paper, I argue that Xunzi, as the author of the Xunzi, holds that the (general) dao 道is in itself constant and governs all changes (or all instances of change), and that li 禮 is the marker of the dao. There are specific daos such as the dao of the Heaven (that is, that which is in itself constant and governs all changes of the Nature) and the dao of human affairs (that is, that which is in itself constant and governs all changes of human affairs). The li of Heaven is the general (descriptive) law of nature (or the most general scientific law), while the li of human affairs the general (normative) law of human affairs. Furthermore, the dao of Heaven and the dao of human affairs are unified via the (general) dao. Thus, the li of Nature and the li of human affairs are unified via the (general) li of the dao. I call this “Xunzi’s nomic transcendentalism.”

The conclusion of this paper is twofold. First, knowledge of changes is either animal knowledge or reflective knowledge. Second, knowledge of the dao is purely reflective knowledge, provided this generalization of Sosa’s notion of reflective knowledge is adopted: Reflective knowledge is true belief that the subject aptly believes to be true, and vice versa.