Rationality And Reflection In Human And Non-Human Animals

Citation

Melis G (2026) Rationality And Reflection In Human And Non-Human Animals. In: Stovall P & Koren L (eds.) Why and How We Give and Ask for Reasons: Perspectives from Philosophy and the Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197745083.003.0014

Abstract
This chapter challenges the view that reflection and language are essential to responsiveness to reasons from the standpoint of current analytic epistemology. Sections 13.2–13.4 illustrate how examining belief-formation in very young children presents advocates of the view with a dilemma: either an implausible inflation of the cognitive abilities of very young children, or the admission that room must be made for a thoroughly unreflective notion of responsiveness to reasons. Some considerations in favor of the second horn, including the threat of infinite regress, are presented. Having defended the existence of a thoroughly unreflective responsiveness to reasons, sections 13.5–13.6 go on to raise the question of the relation between unreflective and reflective responsiveness to reasons. A proposal in which both linguistic and nonlinguistic subjects have access to the same broad rational abilities, if not to the same extent, is sketched.

Keywords
rationality; reasons; children; nonhuman animals; belief-revision; defeaters; epistemology; developmental psychology; comparative cognition

Notes
As per UKRI Open Access requirements, this article should be made discoverable 12 months after publication. I am using a CC BY license. Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. This work was supported by UKRI [grant number MR/T042249/1].