Agency, Rationality, and Epistemic Defeat Conference

A venerable philosophical tradition tracing its steps at least to Aristotle holds that rationality is what distinguishes humans from other animals. Roughly, the core idea is that only humans can understand why they do things they do and why believe the things they believe because they possess reflective abilities that other animals lack. This in turn appears to support the thesis that humans have a different kind of mind. Despite its enduring appeal, the tradition is in tension with Darwin’s insight that the mental faculties of human and non-human animals differ in degree rather than kind. It also faces the challenge of accommodating empirical research on, e.g., inferential reasoning in non-human animals, reasons-evaluation in young children and philosophical studies highlighting the unreflective bases of rational belief and action. The involvement of different disciplines illustrates the width and complexity of the debate. Among the theoretical and empirical open issues are the nature of rationality itself, the risk that advocates of opposing views might talk past each other, uncertainty about what counts as good evidence in favour of non-human rationality and how such evidence may be gathered.