Sosa on Animal Knowledge and Emotions

Our goal in this paper is to discuss the notion of animal knowledge in Judgment and Agency. Our approach has two stages. First, we offer a positive contribution, attempting to show that there is room for the introduction of emotions into an animal knowledge approach and into Sosa's theory of competence. If we follow Sosa and conceive knowledge as a kind of action or successful performance, then emotions can contribute functionally for enhancing performance and are essential for the sharing of knowledge among social agents. Second, we offer criticism of Sosa's integrative project. It's not clear that reflective knowledge always improves animal knowledge; rather, in order to avoid regress, Sosa should recognize that we can have perfectly safe animal knowledge. Finally, we argue that reflective knowledge has a more marginal role than Sosa seems at first sight to suggest.mm


Introduction
Recent epistemology has shown an interest for approaches to knowledge focused on resources and processes that are prior to beliefs, such as the impact of environmental stimuli on the formation of beliefs and judgments, and the link between dispositions (epistemic virtues) and abilities in forming successful beliefs.The use of the notion of animal knowledge in recent works by Sosa (2011Sosa ( , 2015) ) places his epistemology within this trend.In the book that is the subject of this symposium, Sosa approaches knowledge from the perspective of an integrated and complex epistemic project -containing a reflexive level and a pre-reflexive animal levelstructured on a reliabilist virtue epistemology centered on the notion of competence.Although this broad approach poses difficulties for a synoptic and more systematic view of his theory of knowledge, those main orientations are articulated and vigorously defended for each of its fundamental components throughout the book, making Sosa's book a reference for all those interested in knowledge as a kind of action.Our goal in this paper is to discuss the notion of animal knowledge in Judgment and Agency.Our approach has two stages.First, we offer a positive contribution, attempting to show that there is room for the introduction of emotions into an animal knowledge approach and into Sosa's theory of competence.If we follow Sosa and conceive knowledge as a kind of action or successful performance, then emotions can contribute functionally for enhancing performance and are essential for the sharing of knowledge among social agents.Second, we offer criticism of Sosa's integrative project.It's not clear that reflective knowledge always improves animal knowledge; rather, in order to avoid regress, Sosa should recognize that we can have perfectly safe animal knowledge.Finally, we argue that reflective knowledge has a more marginal role than Sosa seems at first sight to suggest.

Competence, animalhood, and emotions
Sosa acknowledges two levels of knowledge -reflexive and animal -and his goal in Judgment and Agency is to develop the agent and reflexive aspect of virtue epistemology (p. 38).This does not lessen the significance of animal knowledge in his epistemology, because the animal level is articulated with agent, perceptual, and epistemic competencies.Sosa defines animal knowledge as "apt belief", that is, "as belief whose correctness manifests the believer's relevant competence" (p.16, note 8).Characterizing knowledge as apt belief, as successful exercise of a competence, allows to treating epistemic gains at the animal level as automatic or direct responses to environmental impingements on beliefs and judgments.Competences are not a kind of assessment or reflexive judgment, but a "disposition (ability) to succeed when one tries" (p.95).A disposition for action is part of a pre-reflexive human system or first-order performance: in perceptual competence, for example, the disposition of the eyes to see allows us to perceive adequately the objects around us; in epistemic competence, the relevant disposition acts adequately in the formation of beliefs that are true and not dependent on luck but on the successful performance of a competence.In this pre-reflexive level, Sosa's approach to knowledge as competence and performances indicates that knowledge can be articulated with emotions, especially if we assume that emotions are, in relevant cases, pre-reflexive structures that help us to improve performances and gain relevant information of the external world.The relevance of emotions on understanding knowledge has been sustained by Elgin (1996Elgin ( , 2008)), Goldie (2004Goldie ( , 2008)), Stocker (1996) and is also recognized by Sosa.In Judgment and Agency he analyzes emotions in connection with a conative dynamics associated to agency (p.139), and with reactive attitudes (resentment, gratitude and blame) in functional performance (p. 193).He also discusses in more detail anxiety, perturbation and tranquility in his analysis of Pyrrhonism.However, his discussion of emotions does not focus directly on the relation of emotions and animal knowledge in the sense we are proposing here.So, our first move in this paper is to show that emotions have two central roles in the pre-reflective or automatic level of our belief formation process: 1) Emotions contribute at the pre-reflexive level towards apt competences, and at the reflexive level towards maximizing our judgment or intellectual performance.2) Emotions make possible the sharing of knowledge among agents and its sharing in social exchanges.

Emotions, competences, and agency
According to Sosa, a competence can be defined by seat, shape, and situation: With regard to driving competence (or ability), for example, we can distinguish between (a) the innermost driving competence: that is, the structural seat in one's brain, nervous system, and body, which the driver retains even while asleep or drunk, (b) the fuller inner competence, which requires also that one be in proper shape, i.e., awake, sober, alert, etc., and (c) the complete competence or ability to drive well and safely, which requires also that one be situated with control of a vehicle, along with appropriate road conditions pertaining to the surface, the lighting, etc.The complete competence is thus an SSS (or a SeShSi) competence.(SOSA, 2015, p. 96) The example renders clear that a competence has several components.We claim that there is an empirical sense in which emotions are relevant because they create a positive emotional configuration for the competent performance of an act.This has to do with the proper shape dimension of a competence.Emotions can play a role here as enhancing resources for the agent.Driving competently, for example, requires not only a physical condition (being awake and alert), but also a positive emotional state or condition relative to our performance.We propose that those emotional states have at least three fundamental dimensions.Emotional responses at a basic level have to do with being attuned to the activity that is being performed (the relevant emotions here are tranquility, equilibrium, contentment, and lightness).A second emotional pattern of responses seems to involve commitment or engagement with the activity: acting without too much effort, that is, with excessive involvement and emotional immersion (the emotions here are involvement, joy, energy, and openness).A third aspect refers to the proper shape of the competence from an emotional point of view, that is, endorsement, in the sense that the activity is positively good and can be repeated (because we feel its pleasantness or feel an inner satisfaction).Competently driving thus involves an emotional pattern that supports the action of driving.In that sense, emotions can contribute to performance at a pre-reflexive level, without being directly involved in the apprehension of bits of information that make up beliefs and judgments, but acting as functional resources for improving driving abilities.Richer evidence in this regard comes from positive psychology.Isen (2010) and Fredrickson and Cohn (2010) have shown that people who are happy with their lives seem more flexible in their views on problem solving strategies.This is a kind of emotion that "enhances the current repertoire of people's thinking-action and leads to actions that build up long-lasting personal resources" (FREDRIEKSON; COHN, 2010, p. 782).Joy, for example, brings about playfulness, and broadens the limits and the creativity of social, intellectual, and artistic behavior.Thus, positive emotions tend to create favorable conditions for the exercise of competences because of the "broaden and build" strategies they imply.So, it is admissible that emotions reinforce the proper shape of competence, because liveliness, joy, contentment, and involvement are essential at the stage where competence works best.
There is a second sense in which emotions contribute to Sosa's approach to knowledge as a kind of action or performance.Performances are efforts towards an outcome.Epistemically competent performances require reliable information about the environment.Intentionality, one of the main features of emotions, can provide that kind of information.The intentionality of an emotion is the mind's capacity for being directed to things in the world.As Peter Goldie (2004, p. 93) says "A feeling of the hairs going up on the back of your neck can give you prima facie reason to believe not only that you are afraid, but also that there is something frightening nearby.And if it is in fact true that there is something frightening nearby, then your bodily feelings will have yielded extraspective knowledge" (2004, p. 93-95).This epistemic route provided by emotions such as fear and affective preoccupation directs our attention to saliencies in the environment.In these cases, emotions work as sources of saliencies because they focus on specific aspects of a situation.They work as 'spotlights' (PETERS apud BRUN & KUNSLER, 2006, p. 17).Walking in a dark street while in a state of great euphoria or depression makes one prone to miss threatening things nearby.This might not happen if one is frightened.So, adequate emotions seem essential to acknowledging saliencies with the adequate intensity and impact, and to responding to them adequately.Saliencies also reveal information fast and reliably."For example, we can immediately see that something is disgusting in a way that we would not be capable of if we were not capable of feeling disgust" (GOLDIE, 2004, p. 93).Emotions are, in that first sense, sources of beliefs that we acquire automatically or without too much thinking.We can explain this automatic aspect of emotional activity with the notion of "frame of mind" or "patterns of attention" introduced by Elgin.According to Elgin (2008), emotions can be conceived as "a frame of mind or pattern of By changing patterns of attention through saliencies, emotions act as functional tools feeding and reinforcing our way of acquiring apt beliefs about the world.To make that point one does not need to prove that emotional reactions are always reliable.One just needs to accept that emotional reactions can operate as sources of information like perception.Perceptions are not always reliable.But in adequate circumstances they are reliable.Treating emotions as frames of mind means that emotions are relevant for acquiring adequate beliefs in the pre-reflexive stage of cognition.Animal knowledge is thus essentially emotional, because it provides the backstage where other intellectual and conscious processes take place.
Sosa does not think that the formation of apt beliefs is an "input/output mechanism" (2015, p. 37) like we are suggesting here.He claims that a mechanism can be something akin to a "central-processing ability of the sort that enables a sensitive critic to 'decide' how to assess a work, based on complex and able pondering" (SOSA, 2015, p. 37).This means that the process of forming beliefs constitutive of knowledge involves a conscious ponderation of an intentional kind.We will discuss this point later on, but our main idea here is that Sosa can strengthen his model of animal knowledge by acknowledging that belief processes depend on how emotions filter and select relevant information at the pre-reflexive stage of believing.In this sense, emotions are not only tools for maximizing performances, but also necessary conditions for having 1 Parental love, as a salience generator, plays a crucial role in the parents' skillful dealings with the child; and through sustained emotional engagement with the child, the parents become more reliable at detecting saliences; their skills become more fine-tuned.In other contexts, a healthy sense of fear helps competent individuals to negotiate dangerous situations.An important part of learning to be a good yachtsperson is to learn of what to be truly afraid.(Tanesini,p. 74) eroS moreira de Carvalho e Flavio willigeS volume 19 número 1 2015 animal knowledge. 2In that sense, intellectual and reflexive competencies involve an ability to sort out information, which is something dependent on emotions both in the sense of mental openness to recognize some information do not gained by other sources and in the sense of avoiding other information.So, reflexive knowledge is possible only if we are emotionally well equipped with animal knowledge.
We have been speaking of emotions in the acquisition of animal knowledge.We'd like to explore now a third aspect in which emotions can contribute to knowledge as performance.It has to do with the agency dimension of knowledge -knowledge as a social resource or function involving cooperation and collaboration, which Sosa highlights: Epistemic competences are relevant not only to the attainment of a good picture of things for the believer, but also to informing others, enlarging thereby the pool of shared information.Risky informed guesses do not pass muster as objectively endorsable apt attainments of the truth, properly stored for later use, and transmissible to others through public assertion.(2015, p. 175) As agents we see ourselves in a shared world, where giving and receiving information plays a crucial role.Epistemic competence means being able to give useful and meaningful information.
We are accordingly required to assert only what manifests reliable enough competence.What is properly asserted is only what is underwritten thus reliably.The standing of this norm derives in turn from the requirements for appropriate sharing of information, conducive to human flourishing through mutual reliance.(2015, p. 177) Sosa highlights here how epistemic competences are particular ways of giving out information and contribute to human flourishing.There is a clear sense here in which epistemic 2 One of the cases examined by Damasio seems to confirm this view.A patient named 'Elliot' had his frontal lobe injured in areas that govern emotional responses.He lost his ability to do many things: "One might say that Elliot had become irrational concerning the larger frame of behavior, which pertained to his main priority […].His knowledge base seemed to survive, and he could perform many separate actions as well as before.But he could not be counted on to perform the appropriate action when it was expected".(Damasio, 1995, p. 36-37) SoSa on animal Knowledge and emotionS volume 19 número 1 2015 competences are like a clock or a thermometer.It makes no sense to blame them for malfunctioning.But in almost all circumstances it's plausible to expect an explanation for why someone shared a wrong piece of information.Agents are accountable for the truth of what they say, even when epistemic claims go astray.This accountability condition of our epistemic performances is normatively required because of the centrality of truth for our practical purposes and achievements.But it is arguable that both sharing information and human flourishing depend on how much we trust people's words.Even accepting the truth of what someone says requires trust.
If we don't believe that others are able to give us reliable information, the agent dimension of knowledge collapses.Trusting people involves interpersonal vulnerability and optimism regarding our partner's skills and competences (MCLEOD, 2015, p. 3).Such optimism, as Karen Jones writes, "restricts the inferences we will make about the likely actions of another.Trusting thus opens one up to harm, for it gives rise to selective interpretation, which means that one can be fooled, that the truth might lie, as it were, outside one's gaze" (JONES 1996, 12).Hence, it is arguable that this social dimension of knowledge presupposes additional emotional elements, such as trust, understood as "reliance on others' competence and willingness to look after, rather than harm, things one cares about" (BAIER, 1994, p. 128).So competence is essential for being trusted and trust is essential for the sharing of information.The agent dimension of knowledge requires the emotions connected to trust.

Is meta-performance necessary?
Another central idea of Judgment and Agency is that second-order reflection improves first-order thoughts and performances.Full aptness depends on reflection, it is a performance guided by a meta-performance.As Sosa says, "any performance suffers if it is not fully apt" (SOSA, 2015, p. 87).In the next three sections, we will raise some doubts about that.It seems to us that animal knowledge, that is, first-order performances, can be as safe as reflective knowledge without being guided by it.In fact, reflective knowledge depends on animal knowledge.
Is it always the case that performing with full aptness is epistemically better than just performing aptly?We are concerned with the safety dimension of these performances.So, the question can be rephrased: Is it always the case that performing with full aptness is safer than just performing aptly?Sosa seems to say "yes": eroS moreira de Carvalho e Flavio willigeS A shot suffers if it falls short of full aptness: that is, if the player fails to guide herself to aptness through knowledge that her shot would then be apt.What is needed for these further levels of success is what is still lacked by our player when she stands too near her threshold of reliable enough competence.She fails to know that she is above the threshold (even if she now is, barely so).(SOSA, 2015, p. 85-86) And two pages later, Sosa makes the general claim: "any performance suffers if it is not fully apt" (SOSA, 2015, p. 87).
At some point, Sosa distinguishes between first-order safety and second-order safety.While a person is performing within the threshold of reliable enough competence, we can say that her performances have first-order safety.But they lack second-order safety if the person doesn't know or even have any clue about how near she is to her threshold of reliable enough competence.So, performing with full aptness seems to be always epistemically better, because in that case the persons will have the "apt awareness that they are so conditioned (SSS well conditioned) that if they performed on the first-order they would (likely enough) do so correctly and aptly" (SOSA, 2015, p. 81).The second-order safety of her apt awareness aims at guaranteeing apt performance and, therefore, the first-order safety of the performance.The point of the apt awareness is to assess the risk of exercising first-order competence.
However, a person can be in an optimal and safe situation in order to exercise her first-order competence.Suppose that Diana is in a competition that traditionally occurs only on sunny and not windy days.She rested well the night before and hasn't taken any kind of drugs.Diana doesn't seem to need to assess the risk of exercising her competence to shoot.If she wants to and has the appropriate knowledge, she can assess her situation before shooting.But her performance will not be safer.Her apt awareness will not improve the safety of her shot, neither will it improve the aptness of her shooting.She is already in an optimal situation for exercising her competence to shoot and the risk of coming out of this situation is very low.Reflective assessment seems to be unnecessary.
Things change when we think of Diana as a good huntress.Now, the main competence is not the competence to shoot, but the competence to shot selection.Diana needs to assess her situation to decide whether she has a clear enough view of the rabbit, whether it is near enough given her shooting skills, etc.In that case, the apt awareness that she is in a good situation, in a good shape and that she is skillful enough to shoot will improve the safety of her shot, indeed, it will help to guarantee an apt shot.The main point here is that she could easily find herself in a not good enough situation for shooting.In order to be a good huntress she needs to develop the competence to coordinate her competence to shot.Shot selection is just this meta-competence.
So, it seems that the kind of activity matters for whether the meta-performance improves epistemically the first-order performance.Some activities, because they are usually performed in optimal conditions, do not need to be guided by apt awareness or any kind of reflective competence, and more than that, no improvement in safety is attained by this second-order guidance.
Sosa sustains that to affirm aptly is better that just affirm.It's no surprise that making statements or claims, as a special kind of activity, is best guided by an apt awareness that what is said is right.We say something in the endeavor to affirm aptly.There is a special reason for this.When someone affirms something in public, it is implied that what is affirmed is right and that the person has evidence for it.These are social norms governing the activity of making public statements.So, in order to state something properly, the person should affirm aptly, that is, her affirmation should be guided by an apt awareness that what she affirms is correct.Otherwise, she would not be guaranteeing that she has the evidence that backs her up.Note that the main point of apt awareness is that what one affirms does not make the affirmation safer, but merely guarantees that the subject knows how safe it is, since she is accountable for it.As some philosophers say, knowledge is the norm of assertion and we have to agree with Sosa that "the agent affirms fully aptly only if guided to a correct and apt affirmation by second-order awareness of their competence to so affirm" (SOSA, 2015, p. 80).But that is the case because of the social norms that govern the activity of affirmation, not because it is completely necessary to make an apt affirmation.
It's not clear that belief or every other kind of epistemic performance is governed by the same social norms, and we would like for Sosa to have said more about beliefs in this particular aspect.Any person has lots of beliefs that are not backed up by any kind of apt awareness, although they are as safe as could be.That is the case of the majority of perceptual beliefs that a person has in normal conditions of perception.It's not necessary for her to guarantee that she is in normal conditions of perception, unless she wants to say something about them.For the purpose of her actions, she can just take for granted that she is under normal conditions.Again, the risk of coming out of those normal conditions is too low.It's not necessary that she takes this possibility into account by reflection.Animal perceptual knowledge is in normal conditions as safe as any reflective knowledge can be, or even safer.

The Regress Problem
Sosa might respond that we are not allowed to take for granted that some activities are usually performed in optimal conditions and that we should try to guarantee that they are optimal by reflection.In the end, the second-order safety of an apt awareness is always necessary to guarantee that the conditions are optimal for the exercise of a first-order competence and therefore are necessary for the safety of an apt performance of this competence.However, that is not a good line of reasoning for Sosa, because if second-order safety is necessary for guaranteeing first-order safety, then, for the same reason, we would need third-order safety for guaranteeing second-order safety, and so on.Sosa would then have to face the traditional regress problem.In principle, we do not have any reason to think that our evaluation of the situations in which we are cannot themselves be too risky.Some conditions have to be met in order for reflective evaluation be apt.
In order to face the regress problem, Sosa could claim that our reflective competence does not need to be assessed with respect to its potential failures or the risk of one of its performances being defective.For some reason, our reflective competence should be taken as privileged in relation to others cognitive competences.At some point, Sosa says that we have "a faith in reason as our best guide" (SOSA, 2015, p. 87).If this means that the aptness of any awareness is out of question, this could not be falser.We are constantly reevaluating our own evaluations due to new information gained by perception or testimony.Or we can just check the vast psychological literature on our deductive and probabilistic competencies in order to see that they are not in general too reliable (KAHNEMAN & TVERSKY, 1979).If it means that the reflective competence should be taken as safer than any other cognitive competence, then this is arbitrary.It seems more reasonable to take our main cognitive competences as all equally safe, at least in principle.As Reid says, Reason, says the skeptic, is the only judge of truth, and you ought to throw off every opinion and every belief that is not grounded on reason.Why, sir, should I believe the faculty of reason more than that of perception?-they came both out of the same shop, and were made by the same artist; and if he puts one piece of false ware into my hands, what should hinder him from putting another?(BEANBLOSSON & LEHRER, 1983, p. 84-85) So, either Sosa faces a difficult regress problem, or he takes for granted the reliability of the reflective competence, but, for the same reason, he should accept that we might take for granted the of different cognitive competences or even some beliefs about the conditions upon which we exercise those competences.In that case, some animal knowledge can be epistemically as good as the safest reflective knowledge.
Indeed, in the Chapter on "Epistemic Agency", it seems that Sosa defends the latter.He says that some cognitions can have epistemic properties in virtue of subpersonal means and that as they are passive, they can function as regress-stopping: Although human belief is very often competent through rational basing, it might also be competent through subpersonal means.It is presumably through subpersonal means that the blindsighters know.(SOSA, 2015, p. 202) What could preclude direct, reliable knowledge of one's own mental dispositions?Even mental self-knowledge might be secured thus through direct competence, with no prior guiding awareness.(SOSA, 2015, p. 203) So, an apt awareness about how safe a certain competence is can be taken itself as secured "through direct competence, with no prior guiding awareness".In any case, we should conclude that not only animal knowledge can be as safe as the safest reflective knowledge, but more than that: that in the end reflective knowledge should rely on animal knowledge.It seems not to be the case that "any performance suffers if it is not fully apt" (SOSA, p. 87).
A second difficulty related to the regress problem is that a second-order assessment of our first-order competence can inappropriately affects its performances.Suppose that Diana, reflecting on her shooting competence, comes to the conclusion that she is not reliable when there is wind.Because of that, the confidence in her competence weakens, at least when the wind is blowing.The lost of confidence disturbs her performance.However, it turns out that she made a wrong evaluation of her own competence.In fact, she is much more reliable when there is wind than she thought.Suppose also that in general Diana is not so good at tracking her first-order competences.Her second-order inductive reasoning is not reliable.In cases like that, it seems that the person in question would be better off without that kind of meta awareness guidance.There are situations in which reflective knowledge inappropriately deprives us of having safe animal knowledge.The remedy for this is that we shouldn't have faith in reason as our best guide, at least we shouldn't have more faith in reason than in other cognitive capacities.Diana would be better off relying on her feelings and trustworthy testimonies that her shooting is safe even when there is wind.
The difficulty above was raised assuming that Diana's inductive reasoning is not reliable.Nevertheless, even if it were assumed to be reliable, another difficulty could be raised.In the Treatise, Hume argued that if we were to correct our first-order judgment by a second-order judgment "derived from the nature of understanding" (HUME, 1739, 1.4.1.5),that is, from the assessment of how reliable we are doing first-order judgments, then, given that our reason is not infallible, our confidence in our first-order judgment ought to be lessened.Then "we are obliged by our reason to add a new doubt derived from the possibility of error in the estimation we make of the truth and fidelity of our faculties" (HUME, 1739, 1.4.1.6).This third-order judgment, for the same reason, will lessen our confidence in the second-order judgment, which will in turn lessen again our confidence in the first-order judgment.Each new meta judgment will lessen more and more our first-order judgment until "remain nothing of the original probability" (HUME, 1739, 1.4.1.6).So, systematic meta reflection about our reliability, Hume argues, has the effect of annihilating all belief.The solution to this problem is given by nature.Above the second-order judgment, inductive reasoning loses its power of affecting our beliefs.Nature protects us from skepticism (HUME, 1739, 1.4.1.7).Here again we can see the role of emotions (the endorsing and engaging roles mentioned in section 3) in our cognitive structure and the contribution from animal knowledge to reflective knowledge.Our emotions restrain the disturbing effects of excessive meta reflection by putting the mind in a more uneasy state in which the inductive principles do not have the same effect as in a normal condition: Where the mind reaches not its objects with easiness and facility, the same principles have not the same effect as in a more natural conception of the ideas; nor does the imagination SoSa on animal Knowledge and emotionS volume 19 número 1 2015 feel a sensation, which holds any proportion with that which arises from its common judgments and opinions.The attention is on the stretch: The posture of the mind is uneasy; and the spirits being diverted from their natural course, are not govern'd in their movements by the same laws, at least not to the same degree, as when they flow in their usual channel (HUME, 1739, 1.4.1.10).

6.
Reflection is important when we are learning, but dispensable when the expertise is internalized Let's talk again about Diana, the good huntress.We agreed that in order to shoot aptly, Diana needs to guide her shooting by an apt awareness that her situation is safe enough for shooting, in other words, her decision about when to shoot should be guided by a "competent second-order awareness that the shot would be apt" (SOSA, 2015, p. 68).It seems then that a good huntress relies heavily on reflection in order to manifests her excellency in a hunting day.Every shot, if apt, should be backed up by reflection.However, is this a realistic image of hunting?Many psychologists make the distinction between System 1 and System 2 of reasoning (SCNHEIDER & SHIFFRIN, 1977).The first System is automatic, unconscious, unavailable to introspection and fast, while the second is controllable, conscious, more demanding of cognitive resources, and slower.Phenomenologically we all know how the reflective evaluation of our situation and the risks for exercising a competence is a demanding task.We cannot think of Diana as taking all this time and effort before each shot, unless she is a beginner huntress.Our suggestion here is that reflection loses importance in the exercise of a competence to the extent that the person acquires excellence at that competence.Diana learns to recognize automatically what is relevant for her situation and for the risk of shooting and she finds out some patterns in hunting some kinds of animals, etc.This doesn't mean that the evaluation of risk is no longer necessary, but that it is accomplished by System 1; the evaluation becomes automatic, almost unconscious.Diana's consciousness, while hunting, is directed to the animal hunted, not to assessing her situation.It seems that this is true of many kinds of performances.A good musician may think about the music she is playing, not about how she is playing it while playing it.The same goes for to the basketball player discussed by Sosa.The distinction between performance and meta-performance does not go by the board.The assessment of how skillful one is remains as a requirement for one to be a good huntress (but we would not say that it is necessary in all kinds of activity, as we argued), and in order to make that assessment, it's necessary to have some representation of one's competence, of the situations which are optimal for exercising it, and so on.But, at some point, while mastering a competence, this assessment is accomplished by System 1, without the aid of reflection, understood as conscious thought.Is this a problem for Sosa?At first sight, no.Sosa recognizes that this kind of assessment can be implicit and unconscious, he says that "the second-order stance required need not in general take the form of a conscious judgment.It might just be a presupposition, an implicit awareness that all's well enough for first-order judgment" (SOSA, 2015, p. 84).
We think that it would be better to dissociate reflection from second-order performance.Talking about implicit awareness is a little confusing, since there is no consciousness involved.The trouble with these considerations for Sosa is that there seems to be no reason to make a sharp distinction between animal knowledge and reflective knowledge.Indeed, it seems that reflective knowledge, when automatized, is just animal knowledge on top of animal knowledge.Reflection, as a conscious activity, has a more marginal importance, although it is completely necessary when we are learning a competence or when something goes unexpectedly wrong during a performance and we have to deal with it.
attention that synchronizes feelings, attitudes, actions, and circumstances"(ELGIN, 2008, p. 149).Parental affection, for example, allows parents to identify saliencies in a son's behavior.By focusing attention, emotions even effect refinements in sensory discrimination.To the uninitiated, babies' cries sound pretty much alike.But parents who are dismayed over their infants' distress and concern alleviate it learn to discriminate among cries.They acquire the ability to differentiate the sounds of hunger, pain, frustration, and fear.What we hear depends on what we listen to and what we listen for.(ELGIN,2008, p. 154) 1 ABSTRACT our goal in this paper is to discuss the notion of animal knowledge in Judgment and Agency.our approach has two stages.First, we offer a positive contribution, attempting to show that there is room for the introduction of emotions into an animal knowledge approach and into Sosa's theory of competence.if we follow Sosa and conceive knowledge as a kind of action or successful performance, then emotions can contribute functionally for enhancing performance and are essential for the sharing of knowledge among social agents.Second, we offer criticism of Sosa's integrative project.it's not clear that reflective knowledge always improves animal knowledge; rather, in order to avoid regress, Sosa should recognize that we can have perfectly safe animal knowledge.Finally, we argue that reflective knowledge has a more marginal role than Sosa seems at first sight to suggest.Judgment and Agency.a nossa abordagem tem dois estágios.Primeiro, oferecemos uma contribuição positiva, tentando mostrar que há espaço para a introdução de emoções na abordagem do conhecimento animal de Sosa e na sua teoria da competência.Se seguimos Sosa e concebemos o conhecimento como um tipo de ação ou desempenho bem sucedido, então as emoções podem contribuir funcionalmente para aperfeiçoar o desempenho, e são essenciais para o compartilhamento de informação entre agentes sociais.Segundo, oferecemos algumas críticas ao projeto integrativo de Sosa.não é claro que o conhecimento reflexivo sempre melhore o conhecimento animal; ao contrário, para evitar o problema do regresso, Sosa deveria reconhecer que podemos ter conhecimento animal perfeitamente seguro.Por fim, argumentamos que o conhecimento reflexivo tem um papel mais marginal do que Sosa parece a primeira vista sugerir.