WIPS - Transformative Theories of Rationality: A Critique

Abstract: According to a number of philosophers, the capacity for rational reflection fundamentally “transforms” the perceptual capacities of rational animals, with the result that those capacities must differ essentially in kind from the perceptual capacities of non-rational animals. My aim in this essay is to show that these philosophers are wrong. To that end, I argue, first, that such “transformative” theories of rationality fail to distinguish the epistemic from the reflective dimension of the rational employment of perceptual capacities. Wielding this distinction, I then argue that, if non-rational animals do not perceive in precisely the sense in which rational animals do, then they do not perceive at all. Since (at least) some of them do, the transformative theory must be rejected.