Bi-level evaluative epistemology

Abstract During the last decade we have witnessed a stagnated debate on the epistemic nature of emotion with two clear factions: those who defend that emotions are epistemically akin to perception and those who deny it. In this paper I propose a way out of that impasse. Based on Sosa’s distinction, I propose that there are animal and reflective evaluative knowledge in both of which emotion’s play a non-superfluous epistemic role. On the one hand, we can devise an externalist version of perceptualism immune to traditional objections. On the other hand, we not only can but should complement that externalist position with an account of reflective evaluative knowledge, used by non-perceptualist to attack traditional, internalist versions of perceptualism. Thus, perceptualism and non-perceptualism do not disagree with each other, they are just offering an analysis of different epistemic achievements, which have different epistemic statuses and different epistemic requirements.