New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. ), Epistemic Value. For example, Hills (2009: 4) says you cannot understand why p if p is false (compare: S knows that p only if p). Hazlett, A. Incudes arguments for the position that understanding need not be factive. Zagzebski does not mean to say that to understand X, one must also understand ones own understanding of X (as this threatens a psychologically implausible regress), but rather, that to understand X one must also understand that one understands X. Grimm (2011) also advocates for a fairly straightforward manipulationist approach in earlier work. So, understanding is compatible with a kind of epistemic luck that knowledge excludes. The Psychology of Scientific Explanation. Philosophy Compass 2(3) (2007): 564-591. See Elgin (2004) for some further discussion of the role of acceptance and belief in her account. For example, by trusting someone I should not have trusted, or even worse, by reading tea leaves which happened to afford me true beliefs about chemistry. One natural place to start will be to examine the relationship between understanding and epistemic luck. True enough. Philosophical issues, 14(1) (2004): 113-131. The ambiguity between assenting to a necessary proposition and the grasping or seeing of certain properties and their necessary relatedness mirrors the ambiguity between assenting to a casual proposition and grasping or seeing of the terms of the causal relata: their modal relatedness. But when the object of understanding why is essentially evaluativefor example, understanding why the statue is beautifulit seems that the quality of ones understanding could vary dramatically even when we hold fixed that one possesses a correct and complete explanation of how the statue came to be (that is, both a physical and social description of these causes). It is helpful to consider an example. Kvanvig (2013) claims that both of these views are mistaken, and in the course of doing so, locates curiosity at the center of his account of understandings value. He suggests that the primary object of a priori knowledge is the modal reality itself that is grasped by the mind and that on this basis we go on to assent to the proposition that describes these relationships. If we consider some goalsuch as the successful completion of a coronary bypassit is obvious that our attitude towards the successful coronary bypass is different when the completion is a matter of ability as opposed to luck. The notion of curiosity that plays a role in Kvanvigs line is a broadly inclusive one that is meant to include not just obvious problem-solving examples but also what he calls more spontaneous examples, such as turning around to see what caused a noise you just heard. Running head: SHIFT IN EPISTEMOLOGY 1 Shift in Epistemology Student's Name Professor's Name Institution 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. Strevens, however, holds that than an explanation is only correct if its constitutive propositions are true, and therefore the reformulation of grasping that he provides is not intended by Strevens to be used in an actual account of understanding. Grimm (2011) suggests that what we should regard as being understood in cases of objectual understandingnamely, the object of the objectual attitude relationcan be helpfully thought of as akin to a system or structure [that has] parts or elements that depend upon one another in various ways.. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. De Regt, H. and Dieks, D. A Contextual Approach to Scientific Understanding. Synthese 144 (2005): 137-170. A potential worry then is that the achievement one attains when one understands chemistry need not involve the subject working the subject matterin this case, chemistryscause. ), Object question: What kinds of things are grasped? What is curiosity? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Builds an account of understanding according to which understanding a subject matter involves possessing a representation that could be manipulated in a useful way. If we sometimes attribute understanding to two people even when they differ only in terms of who has more false beliefs about a subject, this difference in degrees indicates that one can have understanding that includes some false beliefs. Specifically, a very weak view of understandings factivity does not fit with the plausible and often expressed intuition that understanding is something especially epistemically valuable. Disputes the popular claim that understanding is more epistemically valuable than knowledge. This aside, can we consider extending Grimms conception of understanding as non-propositional knowledge of causes to the domain of objectual understanding? iwi galil ace rs regulate; pedestrian killed in london today; holly woodlawn biography; how to change icon size in samsung s21; houston marriott westchase Outlines a view on which understanding something requires making reasonable sense of it. On the most straightforward characterization of her proposal, one fails to possess understanding why, with respect to p, if one lacks any of the abilities outlined in (i-vi), with respect to p. Note that this is compatible with one failing to possess understanding why even if one possesses knowledge that involves, as virtue epistemologists will insist, some kinds of abilities or virtues. Firstly, Kvanvig introduces propositional understanding as what is attributed in sentences that take the form I understand that X (for example, John understands that he needs to meet Harold at 2pm). Meanwhile, when discussing outright (as opposed to ideal) understanding, Kelp suggests that we adopt a contextualist perspective. In particular, how we might define expertise and who has it. How should we distinguish between peripheral beliefs about a subject matter and beliefs that are not properly, Understanding entails true beliefs of the form. Call these, for short, the relation question and the object question. Specifically, he points out that an omniscient agent who knows everything and intuitively therefore understands every phenomenon might do so while being entirely passivenot drawing interferences, making predictions or manipulating representations (in spite of knowing, for example, which propositions can be inferred from others). Therefore, the need to adopt a weak factivity constraint on objectual understandingat least on the basis of cases that feature idealizationslooks at least initially to be unmotivated in the absence of a more sophisticated view about the relationship between factivity, belief and acceptance (however, see Elgin 2004). While his view fits well with understanding-why, it is less obvious that objectual understanding involves grasping how things came to be. Facebook Instagram Email. Specifically, he takes his opponents view to be that knowledge through direct experience is what sates curiosity, a view that traces to Aristotle. But it is not strictly true. Are the prospects of extending understanding via active externalism on a par with the prospects for extending knowledge, or is understanding essentially internal in a way that knowledge need not be? Keplers theory is a further advance in understanding, and the current theory is yet a further advance. This consequence does not intuitively align with our practices of attributing understanding. If a grasping condition is necessary for understanding, does one satisfy this condition only when one exercises a grasping ability to reflect how things are in the world? Secondly, even subject matters that traffic in empirical rather than abstract atemporal phenomena (for example, pure mathematics), are not clearly such that understanding them should involve any appreciation for their coming to be, or their being caused to exist. He leaves grasping at the level of metaphor or uses it them literally but never develops it. In addition, it is important to make explicit differences in terminology that can sometimes confuse discussions of some types of understanding. An epistemological shift: from evidence-based medicine to epistemological responsibility J Eval Clin Pract. Pritchard, D. Knowing the Answer, Understanding and Epistemic Value. Grazer Philosophische Studien 77 (2008): 325-39. Nevertheless, considering weakly factive construals of objective understanding draws attention to an important pointthat there are also interesting epistemic states in the neighborhood of understanding. See answer source: Epistemology in an Hour Caleb Beers Dordecht: Springer, 2014. This is not so obvious, and at least, not as obvious as it is in the case of knowledge. These retractions do not t seem to make sense on the weak view. Zagzebski notes that this easily leads to a vicious circle because neglect leads to fragmentation of meaning, which seems to justify further neglect and further fragmentation until eventually a concept can disappear entirely.. I side with positivism; which states knowledge can be found via empirical observations (obtained through the senses). It is moreover of interest to note that Khalifa (2013b) also sees a potential place for the notion of grasping in an account of understanding, though in a qualified sense. Epistemology is the study of sources of knowledge. Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. Make sure you cite them appropriately within your paper and list them in APA format on your Reference page. For example, we might suppose an agent has a maximally complete explanation of how Michelangelos David came into existence between 1501 and 1504, what methods were used to craft it, what Michelangelos motivating reasons were at the time, how much clay was used, and so on. Moral Testimony and Moral Epistemology. Ethics 120 (2009): 94-127. Abstract. A good example here is what Riggs (2003) calls intelligibility, a close cousin of understanding that also implies a grasp of order, pattern and connection, but does not seem to require a substantial connection to truth. Kvanvig identifies the main opponent to his view, that the scope of curiosity is enough to support the unrestricted value of understanding, to be one on which knowledge is what is fundamental to curiosity. Contains the paradigmatic case of environmental epistemic luck (that is, the fake barn case). By contrast, Pritchard believes that understanding always involves strong cognitive achievement, that is, an achievement that necessarily involves either a significant exercise of skill or the overcoming of a significant obstacle. Due to the possibility of overly simple or passive successes qualifying as cognitive achievements (for example, coming to truly believe that it is dark just by looking out of the window in normal conditions after 10pm), Pritchard cautions that we should distinguish between two classes of cognitive achievementstrong and weak: Weak cognitive achievement: Cognitive success that is because of ones cognitive ability. See, however, Carter & Gordon (2014) for a recent criticism on the point of identifying understanding with strong cognitive achievement. The childs opinion displays some grasp of evolution. On such a view, grasping talk could simply be jettisoned altogether. One helpful way to think about this is as follows: if one takes a paradigmatic case of an individual who understands a subject matter thoroughly, and manipulates the credence the agent has toward the propositions constituting the subject matter, how low can one go before the agent no longer understands the subject matter in question? DePaul, M. Ugly Analysis and Value in A. Haddock, A. Millar and D. Pritchard (eds. Whitcomb, D. Wisdom. In S. Bernecker and D. Pritchard (eds. A longer discussion of the nature of understanding and its distinctive value (in relation to the value of knowledge) than in his related papers. Early defence of explanations key role in understanding. 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. butterfly pea flower vodka cocktail Anasayfa; aware super theatre parking. Morris, K. A Defense of Lucky Understanding. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (2012): 357-371. ), The Stanford Enclopedia of Philosophy. 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. Longworth, G. Linguistic Understanding and Knowledge. Nous 42 (2008): 50-79. philos201 Assignment Details Recall that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Thirdly, and perhaps most interestingly, objectual understanding is attributed in sentences that take the form I understand X where X is or can be treated as a body of information or subject matter. Emma C. Gordon 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. But is understanding factive? Of course, many interrelated questions then emerge regarding coherence. As such, his commentary here is particularly relevant to the question of whether gasping is factive. Contains the famous counterexamples to the Justified True Belief account of knowledge. Riggs, W. Understanding Virtue and the Virtue of Understanding In M. DePaul and L. Zagzebski (eds. A central component of Kvanvigs argument is negative; he regards knowledge as ill-suited to play the role of satisfying curiosity, and in particular, by rejecting three arguments from Whitcomb to this effect. Finally, Section 6 proposes various potential avenues for future research, with an eye towards anticipating how considerations relating to understanding might shed light on a range of live debates elsewhere in epistemology and in philosophy more generally. Though in light of this fact, it is not obvious that understanding is the appropriate term for this state. Her main supporting example is of understanding the rate at which objects in a vacuum fall toward the earth (that is, 32 feet per second), a belief that ignores the gravitational attraction of everything except the earth and so is therefore not true. 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. Pritchards verdict is that we should deny understanding in the intervening case and attribute it in the environmental case. These similar states share some of the features we typically think understanding requires, but which are not bona fide understanding specifically because a plausible factivity condition is not satisfied. The Nature of Ability and the Purpose of Knowledge. Philosophical Issues 17 (2007): 57-69. Usually philosophical problems are overcome not by their resolution but rather by redefinition. This broader interpretation seems well positioned to handle abstract object cases, for example, mathematical understanding, when the kind of understanding at issue is understanding-why. The thought is that, in cases of achievement, the relevant success must be primarily creditable to the exercise of the agents abilities, rather than to some other factor (for example, luck). In so doing, he notes that the reader may be inclined to add further internalist requirements to his reliability requirement, of the sort put forward by Kvanvig (2003). 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. Such cases she claims feature intervening luck that is compatible with understanding. Rohwer, Y. As Zagzebski (2009: 141) remarks, different uses of understanding seem to mean so many different things that it is hard to identify the state that has been ignored (italics added). 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 . Argues against the view that moral understanding can be immune to luck while moral knowledge is not. Introduces intelligibility as an epistemic state similar to understanding but less valuable. Epistemologically, a single-right-answer is believed to underlie each phenomenon, even though experts may not yet have developed a full understanding of the systemic causes that provide an accurate interpretation of some situations. For example, Kvanvig (2003: 206) observes that we have an ordinary conception that understanding is a milestone to be achieved by long and sustained efforts at knowledge acquisition and Whitcomb (2012: 8) reflects that understanding is widely taken to be a higher epistemic good: a state that is like knowledge and true belief, but even better, epistemically speaking. Yet, these observations do not fit with the weak views commitment to, for example, the claim that understanding is achievable in cases of delusional hallucinations that are disconnected from the facts about how the world is. Looks at the increasing dissatisfaction with ever-more complicated attempts to generate a theory of knowledge immune to counterexamples. At the other end of the spectrum, we might consider an extremely strong view of understandings factivity, according to which understanding a subject matter requires that all of ones beliefs about the subject matter in question are true. Bradford, G. Achievement. Includes further discussion of the role of acceptance and belief in her view of understanding. Bradford, G. The Value of Achievements. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 94(2) (2013): 204-224. Wilkenfeld suggests that this ability consists at least partly in being able to correct minor mistakes in ones mental representation and use it to make assessments in similar cases. However, this concern might be abated with the addition of a moderate factivity constraint (for example, the constraint discussed in section two above) that rules out cases of mere intelligibility or subjective understanding). In other words, they claim that one cannot always tell that one understands. A. and Pritchard, D. Knowledge-How and Epistemic Luck. Nos (2013). To what extent do the advantages and disadvantages of, for example, sensitive invariantist, contextualist, insensitive invariantist and relativist approaches to knowledge attributions find parallels in the case of understanding attributions. Goldman, A. Consider a student saying, I thought I understood this subject, but my recent grade suggests I dont understand it after all. So too does the fact that one would rather have a success involving an achievement than a mere success, even when this difference has no pragmatic consequences. A novel interpretation of the traditional view according to which understanding-why can be explained in terms of knowledge of causes. Looks at understandings role in recent debates about epistemic value and contains key arguments against Elgins non-factive view of understanding. epistemological shift pros and cons. Attempts to explain away the intuitions suggesting that lucky understanding is incompatible with epistemic luck. 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. This skeptical argument is worth engaging with, presumably with the goal of showing that understanding does not turn out to be internally indistinguishable from mere intelligibility. Explores the pros and cons with at least 2 credible sources. For example, if I competently grasp the relevant coherence-making and explanatory relations between propositions about chemistry which I believe and which are true but which I believed on an improper basis. While we would apply a description of better understanding to agent A even if the major difference between her and agent B was that A had additional true beliefs, we would also describe A as having better understanding than B if the key difference was that A had fewer false beliefs. 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. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979. 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. 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. When considering interesting features that might set understanding apart from propositional knowledge, the idea of grasping something is often mentioned. Janvid, M. Knowledge versus Understanding: The Cost of Avoiding Gettier. Acta Analytica 27 (2012): 183-197. Knowledge in a Social World. Contrary to premise (3), such abilities (of the sort referenced by Khalifa in premise 2 and 3) arguably need not involve discriminating between explanations, so long as one supposes that discriminating between explanations is something one has the reliable ability to do only if one could not very easily form a belief of the form when this is false. Elgin, C. Exemplification, Idealization, and Understanding in M. Surez (ed. To the extent that this is right, Zagzebski is endorsing a kind of KU principle (compare: KK). Understanding entails that such beliefs must be the result of exercising reliable cognitive abilities. Ginet, C. Knowledge, Perception and Memory. Where is the Understanding? Synthese, 2015. This is of course an unpalatable result, as we regularly attribute understanding in the presence of not just one, but often many, false beliefs. Argues that requiring knowledge of an explanation is too strong a condition on understanding-why. ), The Continuum Companion to Epistemology. As Kvanvig sees it, knowing requires non-accidental links between (internal) mental states and external events in just the right way. 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. In particular, one might be tempted to suggest that some of the objections raised to Grimms non-propositional knowledge-of-causes model could be recast as objections to Khalifas own explanation-based view. Assume that the surgeon is suffering from the onset of some degenerative mental disease and the first symptom is his forgetting which blood vessel he should be using to bypass the narrowed section of the coronary artery. However, Elgin takes this line further and insists thatwith some qualificationsfalse central beliefs, and not merely false peripheral beliefs, are compatible with understanding a subject matter to some degree. Establishes a pro position, supporting that the shift in how people take in knowledge is good. al 2014), have for understanding? Moral Understanding and Knowledge. Philosophical Studies 172(2) (2015): 113-128. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. epistemological shift pros and cons. 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. In all these cases, epistemology seeks to understand one or another kind of cognitive success (or, correspondingly, cognitive failure ). Secondly, there is plenty of scope for understanding to play a more significant role in social epistemology. Batterman, R. W. Idealization and modelling. Synthese, 169(3) (2009): 427-446. 115, No. To this end, the first section offers an overview of the different types of understanding discussed in the literature, though their features are gradually explored in more depth throughout later sections. Examines reasons to suppose that attributions of understanding are typically attributions of knowledge, understanding-why or objectual understanding. In this Gettier-style case, she has good reason to believe her true beliefs, but the source of these beliefs (for example, the rumor mill) is highly unreliable and this makes her beliefs only luckily true, in the sense of intervening epistemic luck. Open Document. Many seem to blend manipulationism with explanations, suggesting for example that what is required for understanding is an ability associated with mentally manipulating explanations. Wilkenfeld, D. Understanding as Representation Manipulability. Synthese 190 (2013): 997-1016. Rohwers inventive move involves a contrast case featuring unifying understanding, that is, understanding that is furnished from multiple sources, some good and some bad. The following sections consider why understanding might have such additional value. View Shift in Epistemology.edited.docx from SOCIOLOGY 1010 at Columbia Southern University. Pritchard, D. Epistemic Luck. For one thing, abstract objects, such as mathematical truths and other atemporal phenomena, can plausibly be understood even though our understanding of them does not seem to require an appreciation of their coming to existence. . He claims that while we would generally expect her to have knowledge of her relevant beliefs, this is not essential for her understanding and as a result it would not matter if these true beliefs had been Gettierised (and were therefore merely accidentally true). 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. Discusses and defines ability in the sense often appealed to in work on cognitive ability and the value of knowledge.

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