"When we acquire knowledge, we conserve it as a memory until we need it. With the Internet, our memory has expanded and everyone has immediate access to it. It's an amazing breakthrough." Or so claimed Ernest Sosa at the University of Navarra; Sosa is a professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University (USA), which is one of the most important universities for philosophy in the world. Sosa imparted the II ICS Lecture on Humanities and Social Sciences of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS).

The Rutgers University philosopher noted that while memory is now available online, "self confidence in one's ability to conserve acquired knowledge is also necessary."

For Prof. Sosa, human knowledge must be guided by "humility." "Sometimes, humans become too proud and do not take into account that, although we are rational, we are also fallible. Human beings should not be arrogant or precipitated, especially when an important decision is at stake, since mistakes can be costly."

Asked about the abundance of messages that insist that the brain deceives us, Ernest Sosa referred to man's confidence in his ability to know. "I think it is exaggerated. The fact that there are factors that have a certain influence does not mean they determine action."

Reflexive knowledge

According to Professor Sosa, thanks to reflexive knowledge, which is proper to human beings, "we transcend our animal nature and take on a perspective of our being and our way of living and relating. Because of this, we are capable of things as sophisticated as contemporary science."

"Just as Aristotle noted," he added, "human beings are rational beings. This involves taking into account reasons for guiding us toward appropriate behavior. Reasons are acquired through knowledge and deliberation permits us to discern which factors are relevant and their place in decision-making." He also insisted that knowledge is not a mere belief: "The quality of reasons depends on the quality of the basis on which they are sustained."

Ernest Sosa, Ph.D. was a professor and research at Brown University from 1964-2007, when he joined Rutgers University. He has also taught at the following universities: Western Ontario, Harvard, Mexico, Miami, Michigan, Salamanca and Texas. He has been a visiting researcher at Oxford and the Australian National University.

He has been president of the American Philosophical Association and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is also editor of philosophical journals Nous and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. In 2005, he delivered the prestigious ‘John Locke Lectures' at the University of Oxford (England).

The ICS Lectures are a series of annual conferences organized by the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS). Given by internationally renowned researchers, the Lectures aim to present ICS research topics to a University-wide audience.