Agency, Rationality and Epistemic Defeat

What is the relation between the belief-revision of adults and young children? Are humans the only rational animals? ARED takes up these questions by bringing together, for the first time in a long-term project, analytic epistemology, developmental psychology and comparative cognition.

The work done in the original award suggests that the unreflective belief-revision of young children and adult humans differ in degree rather than kind. On the basis of empirical and philosophical research, we argued that the ascent to the reflective level in which subjects identify and evaluate their reasons for belief is driven by capacities that can be exercised unreflectively. If so, it is doubtful that humans–in particular, adults humans–are unique with respect to rationality. In the extension of the award, we aim to do three main things. First, we will articulate in further detail the stages that lead from unreflective belief-revision to the full-fledged reflective activity involving thoughts about other thoughts. Second, we will investigate the transition from the imagistic representation of perception to the conceptual representation of propositionally structured beliefs. Third, we will design and run a new round of experiment to seek evidence of basic forms of reflective thought in presumed unreflective subjects, such as young children, dogs and pigs.

Pursuing the aforementioned goals will lead to an account of human rationality as embedded in, and emerging naturally from, the animal world. This raises a prima facie challenge for the currently accepted framework where the rights of animals don't extend much beyond the right to be spared from unnecessary pain. Rather, if animals are responsive to reasons like humans, we ought to respect their dignity as rational agents.

ARED will continue to shape the new interdisciplinary area of research on knowledge, rationality and cognition. ARED's theory on the transition between unreflective and reflective belief-revision is shaped by interdisciplinary discussions and, in turn, guides the design and execution of experiments. ARED shows that so-called "armchair" philosophy can fruitfully cooperate with empirical science. ARED's research is carried out at the University of Stirling (philosophy and psychology), and at the Messerli Research Institute of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna (comparative cognition).