A Virtue Epistemology

3. Animal knowledge is essentially apt belief, to be distinguished from the more demanding reflective knowledge. This is not to say that the word ‘knows’ is ambiguous. Maybe it is, but distinguishing a kind of knowledge as “animal” knowledge requires no commitment to that linguistic thesis. Indeed it requires no definition of the word ‘knows’ at all. One might take this to be primitive and still proceed in three stages as follows:(a) affirm that knowledge entails belief; (b) understand “animal” knowledge as requiring apt belief without requiring defensibly apt belief, i.e., apt belief that the subject aptly believes to be apt, and whose aptness the subject can therefore defend against relevant skeptical doubts; and (c) understand “reflective” knowledge as requiring not only apt belief but also defensibly apt belief.