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Although the analysis of the value of epistemic states has roots in Plato and Aristotle, this renewed and more intense interest was initially inspired by two coinciding trends in epistemology. Essentially, this view traditionally holds that understanding why X is the case is equivalent to knowing why X is the case (which is in turn supposed to be equivalent to knowing that X is the case because of Y). The cons of the epistemology shift that is a major concern to philosophers are the loss of, reading and communications since the student do not interact physically, these skills be instilled EPISTEMOLOGY SHIFT 5 by the teachers and through the help of physical environments. Such discussions, though they can be initially helpful, raise a nest of further questions. In other words, S knows that p only if p is true. See Elgin (2004) for some further discussion of the role of acceptance and belief in her account. Thus, given that understanding that p and knowing that p can in ordinary contexts be used synonymously (for example, understanding that it will rain is just to know that it will rain) we can paraphrase Zagzebskis point with no loss as: understanding X entails knowing that one understands X. Khalifa, K. Understanding, Grasping and Luck. Episteme 10 (1) (2013b): 1-17. University of Edinburgh But is understanding factive? View Shift in Epistemology.edited.docx from SOCIOLOGY 1010 at Columbia Southern University. Kelps account, then, explains our attributions of degrees of understanding in terms of approximations to such well-connected knowledge. An important question is whether there are philosophical considerations beyond simply intuition to adjudicate in a principled way why we should think about unifying understanding cases in one way rather than the other. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. To complicate matters further, some of the philosophers who appear to endorse one approach over the other can elsewhere be seen considering a more mixed view (for example, Khalifa 2013b). Kvanvig stipulates that there are no falsehoods in the relevant class of beliefs that this individual has acquired from the book, and also that she can correctly answer all relevant questions whilst confidently believing that she is expressing the truth. One natural place to start will be to examine the relationship between understanding and epistemic luck. Carter, J. As Elgin (2007) notes, it is normal practice to attribute scientific understanding to individuals even when parts of the bodies of information that they endorse diverge somewhat from the truth. Specifically, Hills outlines six different abilities that she takes to be involved in grasping the reasons why pabilities which effectively constitute, on her view, six necessary conditions for understanding why p. These six abilities allow one to be able to treat q as the reason why p, not merely believe or know that q is the reason why p. They are as follows: (i) an ability to follow another persons explanation of why p. (ii) an ability to explain p in ones own words. ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. A monograph that explores the nature and value of achievements in great depth. ), Epistemology (Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures). Considers some of the ramifications that active externalist approaches might have for epistemology. and claims that this goes along with a shift away from studying the cognitive subject's conceptual grasp of objects towards a "reflection on the . Relation question: What is the grasping relationship? Email: emma.gordon@ed.ac.uk He also suggests, like Khalifa, that grasping be linked with correct explanations. Meanwhile, when discussing outright (as opposed to ideal) understanding, Kelp suggests that we adopt a contextualist perspective. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. View Shift in Epistemology.docx from SOCIOLOGY 1010 at Columbia Southern University. Grimm (2011) also advocates for a fairly straightforward manipulationist approach in earlier work. Armed with this distinction, Pritchard criticizes Kvanvigs assessment of the Comanche case by suggesting that just how we should regard understanding as being compatible or incompatible with epistemic luck depends on how we fill out the details of Kvanvigs case, which is potentially ambiguous between two kinds of readings. However, advocates of moderate approaches to the factivity of understanding are left with some difficult questions to answer. 1. New York: Free Press, 1965. If so, why, and if not why not? Whether wisdom might be a type of understanding or understanding might be a component of wisdom is a fascinating question that can draw on both work in virtue ethics and epistemology. The advances are clearly cognitive advances. The Case of Richard Rorty A Newer Argument Pro: Hales's Defense o. Grimm (2011) calls this subjective understanding. He describes subjective understanding as being merely a grasp of how specific propositions interlinkone that does not depend on their truth but rather on their forming a coherent picture. It is also becoming an increasingly popular position to hold that understanding is more epistemically valuable than knowledge (see Kvanvig 2003; Pritchard 2010). Fourthly, a relatively fertile area for further research concerns the semantics of understanding attribution. Although a large number of epistemologists hold that understanding is not a species of knowledge (e.g. epistemological shift pros and cons. CA: Wadsworth, 2009. Gordon, E. C. Is There Propositional Understanding? Logos & Episteme 3 (2012): 181-192. Olsson, E. Coherentist Theories of Epistemic Justification in E. Zalta (ed. Pritchard, D. Knowledge and Understanding in A. Fairweather (ed. A view on which the psychics epistemic position in this case qualifies as understanding-why would be unsatisfactorily inclusive. As Wilkenfeld sees it, understanding should be construed as representational manipulability, which is to say that understanding is, essentially, the possessing of some representation that can be manipulated in useful ways. Meanwhile, he suggests that were you to ask a fake fire officer who appeared to you to be a real officer and just happened to give the correct answer, it is no longer plausible (by Pritchards lights) that you have understanding-why. Stephen P. Stitch: The Fragmentation of Reason. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51(1) (1991): 189-193. Kvanvig, J. and Pritchard, D. Varieties of Externalism. Philosophical Issues 41(1) (2014): 63-109. In particular, how we might define expertise and who has it. (2007: 37-8). Goldman, A. Epistemology is often defined as the theory of knowledge, and talk of propositional knowledge (that is, "S knows that p") has dominated the bulk of modern literature in epistemology. This in part for three principal reasons. According to Goldman (1991) curiosity is a desire for true belief; by contrast, Williamson views curiosity as a desire for knowledge. An in-depth exploration of different types of epistemic luck. For example, an environment where ones abilities so easily could generate false beliefs of form despite issuing (luckily) true beliefs of the form
on this occasion. Whitcomb also cites Alston (2005) as endorsing a stronger view, according to which true belief or knowledge gets at least some of its epistemic value from its connection to, and satisfaction of, curiosity. Curiosity and a Response-Dependent Account of the Value of Understanding. In T. Henning and D. Schweikard (eds. Pritchards assessment then of whether understanding is compatible with epistemic luck that is incompatible with knowledge depends on which kind of epistemic luck incompatible with knowledge one is discussing. Epistemological assumptions are those that focus on what can be known and how knowledge can be acquired (Bell, 8). Proponents of weak factivity must address both of these potentially problematic results. Thirdly, Kelp (2015) has an objection that he thinks all who favor a manipulationist line should find worrying. Batterman, R. W. Idealization and modelling. Synthese, 169(3) (2009): 427-446. Disputes the popular claim that understanding is more epistemically valuable than knowledge. The Pros And Cons Of Epistemology. Boston: Routledge, 2013. It seems as though understanding would possibly be undermined in a case where someone relying on the ideal gas law failed to appreciate it as an idealization. Janvid, M. Knowledge versus Understanding: The Cost of Avoiding Gettier. Acta Analytica 27 (2012): 183-197. How should we distinguish between peripheral beliefs about a subject matter and beliefs that are not properly, Understanding entails true beliefs of the form. In rationalism way of thinking, knowledge is acquired using reasons or reasoning. Hills thinks that moral understanding, if it were any kind of propositional knowledge at all, would be knowing a proposition under a practical mode and not necessarily under a theoretical mode.. The distinctive aspects can be identified as human abilities to engage in mathematics and intellectual reasoning. To the extent that these worries with transparency are apt, a potential obstacle emerges for the prospects of accounting for the value of understanding in terms of its transparency. In particular, he wants to propose a non-propositional view that has at its heart seeing or grasping, of the terms of the casual relata, their modal relatedness, which he suggests amounts to seeing or grasping how things might have been if certain conditions had been different. To be clear, the nuanced view Grimm suggests is that while understanding is a kind of knowledge of causes, it is not propositional knowledge of causes but rather non-propositional knowledge of causes, where the non-propositional knowledge is itself unpacked as a kind of ability or know-how. Riggs, W. Why Epistemologists Are So Down on Their Luck. Synthese 158 (3) (2007): 329-344. That said, this article nonetheless attempts to outline a selection of topics that have generated the most discussion and highlights what is at issue in each case and what some of the available positions are. Know How. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. In . In particular, as Pritchard suggests, we might want to consider that agents working with the ideal gas law or other idealizations do not necessarily have false beliefs as a result, even if the content of the proposition expressed by the law is not strictly true. His view is that understanding requires the agent to, in counterfactual situations salient to the context, be able to modify their mental representation of the subject matter. 121-132. It is clearly cognitively better than the belief that humans did not evolve. For example: Although a moderate view of understandings factivity may look promising in comparison with competitor accounts, many important details remain left to be spelled out. ), Justification and Knowledge. Pritchards (2010) account of the distinctive value of understanding is, in short, that understanding essentially involves a strong kind of finally valuable cognitive achievement, and secondly, that while knowledge comes apart from cognitive achievement in both directions, understanding does not. The agents belief is justified and true, thanks to the fact that there is a genuine sheep hiding behind the rock, but the belief is not knowledge, as it could easily have been false. This type of a view is a revisionist theory of epistemic value (see, for example, Pritchard 2010), which suggests that one would be warranted in turning more attention to an epistemic state other than propositional knowledgespecifically, according to Pritchardunderstanding. He concedes, though, that sometimes curiosity on a smaller scale can be sated by epistemic justification, and that what seems like understanding, but is actually just intelligibility, can sate the appetite when one is deceived. Of course, though, just as Lackey (2007) raises creationist teacher style cases against knowledge transmission principles, one might as well raise a parallel kind of creationist teacher case against the thesis that one cannot attain understanding from a source who herself lacks it. If Kelps thought experiment works, manipulation of representations cannot be a necessary condition of understanding after all. Divides recent views of understanding according to whether they are manipulationist or explanationst; argues for a different view according to which understanding is maximally well-connected knowledge. Rationalism is an epistemological theory, so rationalism can be interpreted the distinct aspects or parts of the mind that are separate senses. Your paper should be 3-4 pages in length, not counting the Title page and Reference page. The surgeons successful bypass is valued differently when one is made aware that it was by luck that he picked an appropriate blood vessel for the bypass. As Lackey thinks students can come to know evolutionary theory from this teacher despite the teacher not knowing the propositions she asserts (given that the Stella fails the belief condition for knowledge), we might likewise think, and contra Morris, that Stella might fail to understand evolution. Consider the view that the kinds of epistemic luck that suffice to undermine knowledge do not also undermine understanding. For example, he attempts to explain the intuitions in Pritchards intervening luck spin on Kvanvigs Comanche case by noting that some of the temptation to deny understanding here relates to the writer of the luckily-true book himself lacking the relevant understanding. and (ii) what qualifies a group of beliefs as a system in the sense that is at issue when it is claimed that understanding involves grasping relationships or connections within a system of beliefs? An important observation Grimm makes is that merely assenting to necessary truths is insufficient for knowing necessary truths a priorione must also grasp orsee the necessity of the necessary truth. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. Utilize at least 2 credible sources to support your position presented in the paper. While Pritchards point here is revealed in his diagnosis of Kvanvigs reading of the Comanche case, he in several places prefers to illustrate the idea with reference to the case in which an agent asks a real (that is, genuine, authoritative) fire officer about the cause of a house fire and receives a correct explanation. Secondly, she concedes that it is possible that in some cases additional abilities must be added before the set of abilities will be jointly sufficient. Grimm, S. The Value of Understanding. Philosophy Compass 7(2) (2012): 103-177. Kvanvig (2003; 2009) offers such a view, according to which understanding of some subject matter is incompatible with false central beliefs about the subject matter. Contains the paradigmatic case of environmental epistemic luck (that is, the fake barn case). For the purposes of thinking about understanding, some of the most important will include: (i) what makes a system of beliefs coherent? Kepler improved on Copernicus by contending that the Earths orbit is not circular, but elliptical. Carter, J. Strevens, M. No Understanding Without Explanation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013): 510-515. by | Jun 9, 2022 | prayers of dedication presbyterian | advance australia national director | Jun 9, 2022 | prayers of dedication presbyterian | advance australia national director New York: Routledge, 2011. There is a common and plausible intuition that understanding might be at least as epistemically valuable as knowledgeif not more soand relatedly that it demands more intellectual sophistication than other closely related epistemic states. Dordecht: Springer, 2014. 1pt1): pp. Here is one potential example to illustrate this point: consider that it is not clear that people who desire to understand chemistry generally care about the cause of chemistry. In other words, even though there is no such gas as that referred to in the law, accepting the law need not involve believing the law to be true and thus believing there to be some gas with properties that it lacks. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Lipton, P. Understanding Without Explanation in H. de Regt, S. Leonelli, and K. Eigner (eds. What is it to have this ability to modify some mental representation? For example, Hills (2009: 4) says you cannot understand why p if p is false (compare: S knows that p only if p). Hills thinks that mere propositional knowledge does not essentially involve any of these abilities even if (as per the point above) propositional knowledge requires other kinds of abilities. Your paper should be 3-4 pages in length, not counting the Title page and Reference . Further, suppose that the self-proclaimed psychic even has reason to believe he is right to think he is psychic, as his friends and family deem that it is safer or kinder to buy into his delusions outwardly. Bradford, G. Achievement. In order to illustrate this point, Kvanvig invites us to imagine a case where an individual reads a book on the Comanche tribe, and she thereby acquires a belief set about the Comanche. Although a range of epistemologists highlighting some of the important features of understanding-why and objectual understanding have been discussed, there are many interesting topics that warrant further research. Consider here two cases she offers to this effect: EVOLUTION: A second graders understanding of human evolution might include as a central strand the proposition that human beings descended from apes. To the extent that such a move is available, one has reason to resist Morriss rationale for resisting Pritchards diagnosis of Kvanvigs case. He claims further that this description of the case undermines the intuition that the writers lack of understanding entails the readers lack of understanding. Grimm does not make the further claim that understanding is a kind of know-howhe merely says that there is similarity regarding the object, which does not guarantee that the activity of understanding and know-how are so closely related. Bradford, G. The Value of Achievements. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 94(2) (2013): 204-224. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. The medical epistemology we propose conforms to the epistemological responsibility of doctors, which involves a specific professional attitude and epistemological skills. It is worth considering how and in what way a plausible grasping condition on understanding should be held to something like a factivity or accuracy constraint. Examines reasons to suppose that attributions of understanding are typically attributions of knowledge, understanding-why or objectual understanding. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. Often-cited discussion of the fake barn counterexample to traditional accounts of knowledge that focus on justified true belief. If making reasonable sense merely requires that some event or experience make sense to the epistemic agent herself, Bakers view appears open, as Grimm (2011) has suggested, to counterexamples according to which an agent knows that something happened and yet accounts for that occurrence by way of a poorly supported theory. Grimm develops this original position via parity of reasoning, taking as a starting point that the debate about a priori knowledge, for example, knowledge of necessary truths, makes use of metaphors of grasping and seeing that are akin to the ones in the understanding debate. The conspiracy theorist possesses something which one who grasps (rather than grasps*) a correct theory also possesses, and yet one who fails to grasp* even the conspiracy theory (for example, a would-be conspiracy theorist who has yet to form a coherent picture of how the false propositions fit together) lacks. (For example, propositions, systems, bodies of information, the relationships thereof, and so on?). In other words, each denies all of the others respective beliefs about the subject, and yet the weak view in principle permits that they might nonetheless understand the subject equally well. Argues that a type of understanding might be the norm that warrants assertion in a restricted class of cases. According to Grimm, cases like Kvanvig admit of a more general characterisation, depending on how the details are filled in. Looks at the increasing dissatisfaction with ever-more complicated attempts to generate a theory of knowledge immune to counterexamples. ), Fictions in Science: Essays on Idealization and Modeling. An overview of the object, psychology, and normativity of understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. This line merits discussion not least because the idea that understanding-why comes by degrees is often ignored in favor of discussing the more obvious point that understanding a subject matter clearly comes by degrees. In addition, it is important to make explicit differences in terminology that can sometimes confuse discussions of some types of understanding. Lucky Understanding Without Knowledge. Synthese 191 (2014): 945-959. Goldman, A. Hempel, C. Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. Or, should we adopt a more relaxed view of what would be required to satisfy this conditionnamely, a view that focuses on the way the agent connects information. Grasping also allows the understander to anticipate what would happen if things were relevantly differentnamely, to make correct inferences about the ways in which relevant differences to the truth-values of the involved propositions would influence the inferences that obtain in the actual world. What is curiosity? Pros and cons of epistemology shift Changes in epistemology even though they have received several criticisms they have significantly played a critical role in the advancement of technology. A discussion of whether linguistic understanding is a form of knowledge. 1. Contains a discussion of the fact that we often take ourselves to understand things we do not. According to Elgin, a factive conception of understanding neither reflects our practices in ascribing understanding nor does justice to contemporary science. However, such a strong view would also make understanding nearly unobtainable and surely very rarefor example, on the extremely strong proposal under consideration, recognized experts in a field would be denied understanding if they had a single false belief about some very minor aspect of the subject matter. Incudes arguments for the position that understanding need not be factive. He argues that what is grasped or seen when one attains a priori knowledge is not a proposition but a certain modal relationship between properties, objects or identities. For a less concessionary critique of Kvanvigs Comanche case, however, see Grimm (2006). In looking at moral understanding-why, outlines some key abilities that may be necessary to the grasping component of understanding. Contains Lackeys counterexamples to the knowledge transmission principles. The Nature of Ability and the Purpose of Knowledge. Philosophical Issues 17 (2007): 57-69. However, Grimm is quick to point out that defending one of these two similar views does not depend on the correctness of the other. Salmon, W. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation. In Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. Kelp points out that this type of view is not so restrictive as to deny understanding to, for example, novice students and young children. Hills herself does not believe that understanding-why is some kind of propositional knowledge, but she points out that even if it is there is nonetheless good cause to think that understanding-why is very unlike ordinary propositional knowledge. Though the demandingness of this ability need not be held fixed across practical circumstances. If Hills is right about this connection between grasping and possessing abilities, it might seem as though understanding-why is, at the end of the day, very similar to knowing-how (see, however, Sullivan 2017 for resistance to this suggestion).. Proposes a framework for reducing objectual understanding to what he calls explanatory understanding. Grimm thinks the metaphor involves something like apprehending how things stand in modal space (that is, that there are no possible worlds in which the necessary truth is false). It is controversial just which epistemological issues concerning understanding should be central or primarygiven that understanding is a relative newcomer in the mainstream epistemological literature. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. It should be noted that Hills 2009: 7 is also sympathetic to a similar thought, suggesting that the threshold for understanding might be contextually determined. For that reason, these will be addressed before moving on to the more explicitly epistemological concerns. ), Epistemic Value. Zagzebski (2001), whose view maintains that at least not all cases of understanding require true beliefs, gestures to something like this view. We could, for convenience, use the honorific term subjective knowledge for false belief, though in doing so, we are no longer talking about knowledge in the sense that epistemologists are interested in, any more than we are when, as Allan Hazlett (2010) has drawn attention to, we say things like Trapped in the forest, I knew I was going to die; Im so lucky I was saved. Perhaps the same should be said about alleged subjective understanding: to the extent that it is convenient to refer to non-factive states of intelligibility as states of understanding, we are no longer talking about the kind of valuable cognitive achievement of interest to epistemologists. In other words, they claim that one cannot always tell that one understands. A second variety of understanding that has generated interest amongst epistemologists is, understanding-why. Just as we draw a distinction between this epistemic state (that is, intelligibility, or what Grimm calls subjective understanding) and understanding (which has a much stricter factivity requirement), it makes sense to draw a line between grasping* and grasping where one is factive and the other is not. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. Riggs (2003: 21-22) asks whether an explanation has to be true to provide understanding, and Strevens thinks that it is implied that grasping is factive. This entry surveys the varieties of cognitive success, and some recent efforts to understand some of those varieties. Examples of the sort considered suggest thateven if understanding has some important internalist component to ittransparency of the sort Zagzebski is suggesting when putting forward the KU claim, is an accidental property of only some cases of understanding and not essential to understanding. Morris (2012), like Rohwer, also defends lucky understandingin particular, understanding-why, or what he calls explanatory understanding). And furthermore, weakly factive accounts welcome the possibility that internally coherent delusions (for example, those that are drug-induced) that are cognitively disconnected from real events might nonetheless yield understanding of those events. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. This is explained in the following way: If it is central to ordinary cognitive function that one is motivated to pursue X, then X has value in virtue of its place in this functional story. Regarding the comparison between the value of understanding and the value of knowledge, then, he will say that if understanding is fundamental to curiosity then this provides at least a partial explanation for why it is superior to the value of knowledge. Strong cognitive achievement: Cognitive success that is because of ones cognitive ability where the success in question either involves the overcoming of a significant obstacle or the exercise of a significant level of cognitive ability. Contains Kims classic discussion of species of dependence (for example, mereological dependence). A., Kallestrup, J. Palermos, S.O. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. On the basis of considerations Pritchard argues for in various places (2010; 2012; 2013; 2014), relating to cognitive achievements presence in the absence of knowledge (for example. He says that knowledge about a phenomenon (P) is maximally well-connected when the basing relations that obtain between the agents beliefs about P reflect the agents knowledge about the explanatory and support relations that obtain between the members of the full account of P (2015: 12). Nonetheless, Zagzebski thinks that believing this actually allows us more understanding for most purposes than the vastly more complicated truth owing to our cognitive limitations. as in testimony cases in friendly environments, where knowledge acquisition demands very little on the part of the agent), he argues that cognitive achievement is not essentially wedded to knowledge (as robust virtue epistemologists would hold). Uses the hypothesis of extended cognition to argue that understanding can be located (at least partly) outside the head. This is a point Elgin is happy to grant. Usually philosophical problems are overcome not by their resolution but rather by redefinition. Many of these questions have gone largely unexplored in the literature. There are three potential worries with this general style of approach. Although, many commentators suggest that understanding requires something further, that is something in additional to merely knowing a proposition or propositions, Grimm thinks we can update the knowledge of causes view so that this intuition is accommodated and explained. Must they be known or can they be Gettiered true beliefs? However, Strevens nonetheless offers a rough outline of a parallel, non-factive account of grasping, what he calls grasping*. Pritchard (2007) has put forward some ideas that may prevent the need to adopt a weak view of understandings factivity while nonetheless maintaining the key thrust of Elgins insight. One point that could potentially invite criticism is the move from (1) and (2) to (3).
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