Grades of Knowledge

Sub-credal animal knowledge requires apt alethic affirmation, but judgment aims not just at success of such affirmation but at apt success. To succeed with this aim, as one affirms, it is required that one be able to tell that one would then get it right aptly (or at least that one would likely enough get it right aptly). The judgmental knower must have a second-order grasp—an affirmative thought or presupposition—that her first-order affirmation would then be apt (or would very likely be apt, or some such thought that would enable enhanced guidance).

Animal behavior and emotions - on-farm considerations.

This chapter describes the role of behaviour in animal welfare assessment; the behavioural need of an animal; knowledge on emotional brain circuitry; the positive and negative emotions experienced by animals; the different types of tests for measuring animal preference, aversion and motivation and the consequences of behavioural deprivation.

Theriotopik: Vormoderne Mensch-Tier-Relationen und die Epistemologie der Tiererzählung

This article investigates the use and function of animals in ancient and medieval beast fables. Their basic function lies in reflecting human behavior, but their topical qualities also provide dynamic reservoirs of animal knowledge that facilitate various ways of narrating and reflecting human-animal relationships in specific spatiotemporal configurations. In order to apply paradigms and methods derived from Human Animal Studies to medieval matters in an historically adequate manner, the article introduces the concept “Theriotopik” to describe the intertwining of different layers of meaning accumulated in animals in medieval didactic literature.

PSIII-21 Relationship between companion animal interaction and emotional safety within college students

Creating an emotionally safe learning environment for a student where they can learn without distress is the goal of educational programs. This emotionally safe environment has been promoted through equine interaction with at risk high school youth. In the collegiate setting canine therapy programs have been set up to reduce student stress, yet studies evaluating the program impact on the emotional safety of the student are lacking. Study objective is to evaluate the relationship between emotional safety in college students and various forms of companion animal interactions. A forced-choice survey instrument measuring companion animal knowledge (19 questions) and emotional safety (49 questions) was given at the beginning of the semester to students enrolled in a companion animal course (25 students). At the start of the survey, 4 questions focused on student companion animal activities. These questions divided students into 3 groups: no daily interaction with companion animals, daily interaction with dogs only, and daily interaction with dogs and other forms of companion animals. All students interacted with companion animals on a weekly basis, but 28% had no access to daily interaction with any form of companion animals, while 40% had daily interaction only with dogs. While the type and extent of companion animal interaction varied, the companion animal knowledge base of each group was similar. All groups answered 65% or more of the companion animal questions correctly (P > 0.05). Similar to the knowledge questions, the extent and type of companion animal interaction did not significantly influence student emotional safety (P > 0.05). All groups responded with no more than 25% of the questions in a negative manner. Thus, when developing a companion animal therapy program that promotes emotional safety in college students, the type and extent of the companion animal interaction does not have to be a limitation to the program.

Easy Knowledge, Circularity, and the Puzzle of Reliability Knowledge

According to externalist reliabilism and dogmatic foundationalism, it's possible to gain knowledge through a perceptual experience without being in a position to know that the experience is reliable. As a result, both of these views face the problem of making knowledge of perceptual reliability too easy, for they permit deducing perceptual reliability from particular perceptual experience without already knowing that these experiences are trustworthy. Ernest Sosa advocates a two-stage solution to the problem. At the first stage, a rich body of perceptual animal knowledge is acquired. At the second stage, perceptual knowledge becomes reflective after deducing perceptual reliability from the initial body of perceptual animal knowledge. I defend the alternative approach of rejecting both externalist reliabilism and dogmatic foundationalism. According to the alternative view, perceptual knowledge and knowledge of perceptual reliability require each other. Such a cognitive structure seems viciously circular. I propose that the appearance of vicious circularity dissipates when the relationship in question is viewed, not as one of temporal priority, but instead as synchronic mutual dependence. At a given time, one cannot have perceptual knowledge without knowledge of perceptual reliability, and vice versa. Such mutual dependence, I argue, is benign.

Knowing Full Well from Testimony?

Testimony poses a challenge to systematic epistemology. I cite two kinds of testimony situation where the recipient's belief is not safe, yet intuitively counts as knowledge. Can Sosa's more sophisticated virtue reliabilism, which theorises animal knowledge as apt belief, yield the intuitively correct verdict on these cases? Sosa shows that a belief can be apt, though it is not safe, and so it may seem a quick positive answer is forthcoming. However, I explore complications in applying his AAA framework, regarding what we take as the circumstances in which the subject's attempt is made: the AAA framework does not mandate a particular choice, yet this affects whether the attempt (in particular, a believing in the endeavour to attain truth) comes out as apt or not. I conclude that Sosa's theory is subject to a familiar charge: it does not give a reductive account of knowledge, since we must deploy independent intuitions about whether knowledge is gained in a case, in order to apply it.

Recognizing Levels of Justification: To Add or to Subtract

In this paper I explore the idea of developing something like Sosa's influential distinction between cognitio and scientia (animal knowledge and reflective knowledge) to epistemic justification. On the assumption that we should, I explore the question of whether we should do so by either (1) beginning with a really basic, intellectually undemanding kind of justification, recognizing more sophisticated intellectually rewarding justification by layering more demanding requirements on that basic sort, or (2) beginning with an ideal sort of justification and recognizing less demanding sorts of justification by stripping away conditions from that ideal justification.

Poems and Fancies

This chapter features a selection of excerpts from Cavendish’s poems and other short pieces. The passages treat a number of topics and issues: atomism; empty space; active regions of the world that we do not notice; the ideas that occur to us and why; animal knowledge; insect knowledge; peace and conflict; gender; imaginary worlds; poetry; animal cruelty; and the treatment of nature. The poems on atomism reflect a view that Cavendish entertained early on and then abandoned in favor of her animist view that bodies are not only divisible, but also active, perceptive, and knowledgeable. A common theme across other poems is the sophistication of nonhuman creatures, for example in “A Dialogue between an Oake, and a Man cutting him downe,” “A Morall Discourse betwixt Man, and Beast,” “Of the Ant,” and “Of Fishes.”

Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy

This chapter features a selection of excerpts from Cavendish’s book, Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy. The passages treat a number of topics and issues: the divisibility of body; empty space and the impossibility of vacuum; the reliability of scientific instrumentation; the reliability and sophistication of natural sense organs; artefacts vs. natural productions; the knowledge and know-how that are ubiquitous in nature; creation; annihilation; the interdependence of creatures; color; materialism; the nature of ideas; representation; God; belief in the existence of God; the limits of knowledge; death and regeneration; creation; gender; order vs. disorder; atomism; motion; freedom; the impossibility of incorporeal motion; panpsychism; action at a distance; action by contact; sensory perception and patterning; rational perception; embodied cognition; self-knowledge; self-motion; the different kinds of matter; animal knowledge; and the eternity of matter. Cavendish begins Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy by repeating the claim that there is no inherent difference between women and men with respect to intellectual capacities. The book treats a wide range of topics, but a central undercurrent is that matter is eternal and that bodies are sophisticated and have the wherewithal to bring about organization and order on their own.