Keynote Speakers: Fri Nov 15: Prof. Alex Byrne (MIT); Sat Nov 16: Prof. Kristin Andrews (York University)

In several places, the epistemologist Ernie Sosa has distinguished two varieties of knowledge: animal knowledge and reflective knowledge, where “animal knowledge that p does not require that the knower have an epistemic perspective … from which [one] endorses the source of that belief” whereas reflective knowledge “by contrast require such a perspective”. Sosa’s characterization makes it clear that he is concerned to distinguish two varieties of human propositional knowledge (what psychologists label ‘descriptive’ or ‘declarative’ knowledge), as opposed to nonpropositional (‘procedural’) knowledge, sometimes described as ‘knowledge how’. But Sosa’s discussion gives rise to questions that take us beyond human knowledge.

• ‘animal’ vs. ‘reflective’ human knowledge
• theoretical knowledge that vs. practical knowledge how
• knowledge who, what, where …
• knowledge of other minds (incl. ‘theory’-theory vs. simulation theory vs. …)
• self-knowledge
• ‘minimal’ knowledge (as merely true belief)
• the acquisition and development of epistemic notions and competence
• observational vs. inferential; perceptual knowledge
• ethical, mathematical, religious, … knowledge – knowledge by description vs. knowledge by acquaintance
• knowing vs. ‘cognizing’* (*Chomsky’s term for speakers’ cognitive relation to the rules of their language)
• empirical vs. conceptual knowledge, a posteriori vs. a priori knowledge
• animal knowledge of ‘affordances’
• ‘immediate’ vs. inferential vs. testimonial knowledge
• metacognition

Submission guidelines:

We invite abstracts – 500-1,000 words, excluding references – of short papers, suitable for a 30-35-min presentation, by graduate students and postdocs. The papers should be relatively accessible to an interdisciplinary audience and avoid overly technical discussion of ‘in-house’ issues in epistemology.

Abstracts should be ready for blind review and include the title of the paper; they should make clear both the topic and the main arguments of the paper. Please send a separate cover sheet with the title of the paper, author’s name, affiliation (if any), and contact information.1

Abstracts+cover sheets should be sent to Aliyar Ozercan aliyar.ozercan@uconn.edu by October 5 (midnight). Notifications of acceptance will be sent no later than October 10. Authors of accepted papers will be asked to send a draft of their full paper by November 5th.

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1 Note: We will be trying to obtain funds to provide modest support for those who need it. Please indicate on the cover sheet whether you have no available funding source to support your travel. Meals while at the conference will be provided. In addition, UConn graduate students will attempt to help contributors find suitable accommodations.