In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Hardback) (Vol. What are the advantages and disadvantages of epistemology as - Quora Criticizes the claim that understanding-why should be identified with strong cognitive achievement. 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. 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. 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. To borrow a case from Riggs, stealing an Olympic medal or otherwise cheating to attain it lacks the kind of value one associates with earning the medal, through ones own skill. ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Epistemology is a branch in philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge. Put generally, according to the coherentist family of proposals of the structure of justified belief, a belief or set of beliefs is justified, or justifiably held, just in case the belief coheres with a set of beliefs, the set forms a coherent system, or some variation on these themes (Olsson 2012: 1). 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. For example, in Whitcomb (2010: 8), we find the observation 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. Meanwhile, Pritchard (2009: 11) notes as we might be tempted to put the point, we would surely rather understand than merely know. A helpful clarification here comes from Grimm (2012: 105), who in surveying the literature on the value of understanding points out that the suggestion seems to be that understanding (of a complex of some kind) is better than the corresponding item of propositional knowledge. Khalifa, K. Inaugurating understanding or repackaging explanation. As such, his commentary here is particularly relevant to the question of whether gasping is factive. It is helpful to consider an example. Discusses and defines ability in the sense often appealed to in work on cognitive ability and the value of knowledge. To the extent that this is right, Zagzebski is endorsing a kind of KU principle (compare: KK). Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975. For example, Pritchards case of the fake fire officerwhich recall is one in which he thinks understanding (as well as knowledge) is lackingis one in which Rower points out taht all of the true beliefs and grasped connections between those beliefs are from a bad source. Should we say that the use of the term understanding that applies to such cases should be of no interest to epistemology? London: Continuum, 2003. Must they be known or can they be Gettiered true beliefs? In this respect, it seems Kelps move against the manipulationist might get off the ground only if certain premises are in play which manipulationists as such would themselves be inclined to resist. Thirdly, even if one accepts something like a moderate factivity requirement on objectual understandingand thus demand of at least a certain class of beliefs one has of a subject matter that they be trueone can also ask further and more nuanced questions about the epistemic status of these true beliefs. Wilkenfeld, D. Understanding as Representation Manipulability. Synthese 190 (2013): 997-1016. 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). 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. Relation question: What is the grasping relationship? ), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2nd Edition). Rationalism is an epistemological theory, so rationalism can be interpreted the distinct aspects or parts of the mind that are separate senses. An epistemological shift: from evidence-based medicine to 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. 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. 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. Some (for example, Gordon 2012) suggest that attributions of propositional understanding typically involve attributes of propositional knowledge or a more comprehensive type of understandingunderstanding-why, or objectual understanding (these types are examined more closely below). The Varieties of Cognitive Success 1.1 What Kinds of Things Enjoy Cognitive Success? Argues that understanding (unlike knowledge) is a type of cognitive achievement and therefore of distinctive value. Taking curiosity to be of epistemic significance is not a new idea. Many epistemologists have sought to distinguish understanding from knowledge on the basis of alleged differences in the extent to which knowledge and understanding are susceptible to being undermined by certain kinds of epistemic luck. bella vista catholic charities housing; wills point tx funeral homes; ptvi triathlon distance; is frankie beverly in the hospital; birria tacos long branch; This holds regardless of whether we are Platonists or nominalists about such entities. Consider here an analogy: a false belief can be subjectively indistinguishable from knowledge. True enough. Philosophical issues, 14(1) (2004): 113-131. For example, and problematically for any account of objectual understanding that relaxes a factivity constraint, people frequently retract previous attributions of understanding. The modern epistemology deals with the debate between rationalism and empiricism. 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. Firstly, Wilkenfelds context-sensitive approach is in tension with a more plausible diagnosis of the example just considered: rather than to withhold attributing understanding in the case where the student is surrounded by experts, why notinsteadand in a way that is congruous with the earlier observation that understanding comes in degreesattribute understanding to the student surrounded by experts, but to a lesser degree (for example, Tim has some understanding of physics, while the professor has a much more complete understanding). Eds. One can split views on this question into roughly three positions that advocate varying strengths of a factivity constraint on objectual understanding. Unsurprisingly, the comparison between the nature of understanding as opposed to knowledge has coincided with comparisons of their respective epistemic value, particularly since Kvanvig (2003) first defended the epistemic value of the latter to the former. If the former, then this is unfortunate given the theoretical work the term is supposed to be doing in characterizing understanding. While the matter of how to think about the incompatibility of knowledge with epistemic luck remains a contentious pointfor instance, here modal accounts (for example, Pritchard 2005) are at odds with lack-of-control accounts (for example, Riggs 2007), few contemporary epistemologists dissent from the comparatively less controversial claim that knowledge excludes luck in a way that true beliefs and sometimes even justified true beliefs do not (see Hetherington (2013) for a dissenting position). 1. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. 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. Contrast thiscall it the intervening reading of the casewith Pritchards corresponding environmental reading of the case, where we are to imagine that the agent is reading a reliable academic book which is the source of many true beliefs she acquires about the Comanche. . Pritchard, D. Knowledge, Understanding and Epistemic Value In A. OHear (ed. 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. What is the grasping relation? In order to make this point clear, Pritchard suggests that we first consider two versions of a case analogous with Kvanvigs. In such a parallel case, we simply modify Lackeys original case and suppose that Stella, a creationist teacher, who does not believe in evolution, nonetheless teaches it reliably and in accordance with the highest professional standards. Consider, on this point, that a conspiracy theorist might very well grasp* the connection between (false) propositions so as to achieve a coherent, intelligible, though wildly off-base, picture. For if the view is correct, then an explanation for why ones understanding why the painting is beautiful is richer, when it is, will simply be in terms of ones possession of a correct answer to the question of why it is beautiful. A Brief Reflection On Epistemological Shifts (Essay Sample) Khalifa, K. Is Understanding Explanatory or Objectual? Synthese 190(6) (2013a): 1153-1171. 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. Firstly, achievement is often defined as success that is because of ability (see, for example, Greco 2007), where the most sensible interpretation of this claim is to see the because as signifying a casual-explanatory relationshipthis is, at least, the dominant view. His central claim in his recent work is that understanding can be viewed as knowledge of causes, though appreciating how he is thinking of this takes some situating, given that the knowledge central to understanding is non-propositional. 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. 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. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Another seemingly promising lineone that engages with the relation question discussed aboveviews grasping as intimately connected with a certain set of abilities. Kvanvig, J. Since Kvanvig claims that the coherence-making relationships that are traditionally construed as necessary for justification on a coherentist picture are the very relations that one grasps (for example, the objects of grasping) when one understands, the justification literature may be a promising place to begin. Outlines a view on which understanding something requires making reasonable sense of it. Grimm, S. Is Understanding a Species of Knowledge? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2006): 515-535. 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. Moderate factivity implies that we should withhold attributions of understanding when an agent has a single false central belief, even in cases where the would-be understanding is of a large subject matter where all peripheral beliefs in this large subject matter are true. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. 4 Pages. According to Zagzebski (2001), the epistemic value of understanding is tied not to elements of its factivity, but rather to its transparency. Where should an investigation of understanding in epistemology take us next? There is debate about both (i) whether understanding-why might fairly be called explanatory understanding and (ii) how understanding-why might differ from propositional knowledge. Argues that we should replace the main developed accounts of understanding with earlier accounts of scientific explanation. In the first version, we are to imagine that the agent gets her beliefs from a faux-academic book filled with mere rumors that turn out to be luckily true. Defends the strong claim that propositional knowledge is necessary and sufficient for understanding. On such a view, grasping talk could simply be jettisoned altogether. According to Grimm, cases like Kvanvig admit of a more general characterisation, depending on how the details are filled in. endangered species in the boreal forest; etown high school basketball roster. Philosophy of Science, 79(1) (2012): 15-37. Contains Kims classic discussion of species of dependence (for example, mereological dependence). Introduces intelligibility as an epistemic state similar to understanding but less valuable. 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). (2007: 37-8). This view, while insisting that central beliefs must all be true, is flexible enough to accommodate that there are degrees of understandingthat is, that understanding varies not just according to numbers of true beliefs but also numbers of false, peripheral beliefs. But more deeply, atemporal phenomena such as mathematical truths have, in one clear sense, never come to be at all, but have always been, to the extent that they are the case at all. Of course, many interrelated questions then emerge regarding coherence. And, relatedly in social epistemology, we might wonder what if any testimonial transmission principles hold for understanding, and whether there are any special hearer conditions demanded by testimonial understanding acquisition that are not shared in cases of testimonial knowledge acquisition. Carter, J. On the view he recommends, the ability to grasp explanatory or evidential connections is an ability that is central to understanding only if the relevant grasping ability is understood as involving reliable explanatory evaluation. 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. In other words, they claim that one cannot always tell that one understands. It will accordingly be helpful to narrow our focus to the varieties of understanding that feature most prominently in the epistemological literature. 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. In looking at moral understanding-why, outlines some key abilities that may be necessary to the grasping component of understanding. epistemological shift pros and cons - roci.biz A. and Gordon, E. C. On Pritchard, Objectual Understanding and the Value Problem. American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2014): 1-14. In other words, one mistakenly take knowledge to be distinctively valuable only because knowledge often does have somethingcognitive achievementwhich is essential to understanding and which is finally valuable. This is a change from the past. Such a constraint would preserve the intuition that understanding is a particularly desirable epistemic good and would accordingly be untroubled by the issues highlighted for the weakest view outlined at the start of the section. There is arguably a further principled reason that an overly weak view of the factivity of understanding will not easily be squared with pretheoretical intuitions about understanding. 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. The childs opinion displays some grasp of evolution. Riggs, W. Why Epistemologists Are So Down on Their Luck. Synthese 158 (3) (2007): 329-344. If Pritchard is right to claim that understanding is always a strong cognitive achievement, then understanding is always finally valuable if cognitive achievement is also always finally valuable, and moreover, valuable in a way that knowledge is not. This is a point Elgin is happy to grant. As it turns out, not all philosophers who give explanation a central role in an account of understanding want to dispense with talk of grasping altogether, and this is especially so in the case of objectual understanding. ), Fictions in Science: Essays on Idealization and Modeling. epistemological shift pros and cons. 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. The Pros And Cons Of Epistemology - Internet Public Library An epistemological shift: from evidence-based medicine to epistemological responsibility J Eval Clin Pract. Early defence of explanations key role in understanding. On the one hand, there is the increasing support for virtue epistemology that began in the 1980s, and on the other there is growing dissatisfaction with the ever-complicated attempt to generate an account of knowledge that is appropriately immune to Gettier-style counterexamples (see, for example, DePaul 2009). However, it is not entirely clear that extant views on understanding fall so squarely into these two camps. 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. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 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. Proposes a framework for reducing objectual understanding to what he calls explanatory understanding. The epistemological shift in the present In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. A Seismic Shift in Epistemology | EDUCAUSE The Myth of Factive Verbs. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80:3 (2010): 497-522. Digital Culture and Shifting Epistemology - hybridpedagogy.org sustainability scholarship 2021; lost vape centaurus replacement panels; A second reason that adverting to grasping-talk in the service of characterizing understanding raises further question is that it is often not clarified just what relationships or connections are being grasped, when they are grasped in a way that is distinctive of understanding. Furthermore, Section 3 considers whether characterizations of understanding that focus on explanation provide a better alternative to views that capitalize on the idea of manipulating representations, also giving due consideration to views that appear to stand outside this divide. 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. (For example, is it a kind of knowledge, another kind of propositional attitude, an ability, and so on? 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. Carter (2014) argues that shifting to more demanding practical environments motivates attributing lower degrees of understanding rather than (as Wilkenfeld is suggests) withholding understanding. Uses the concept of understanding to underwrite a theory of explanation. A restatement of Grimms view might accordingly be: understanding is knowledge of dependence relations. Though the demandingness of this ability need not be held fixed across practical circumstances. 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). For one thing, she admits that these abilities can be possessed by degrees. epistemological shift pros and cons - erikapowers.com epistemological shift pros and cons. reptarium brian barczyk; new milford high school principal; salisbury university apparel store epistemological shift pros and cons. 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. 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. Grimm anticipates this point and expresses a willingness to embrace a looser conception of dependence than causal dependence, one that includes (following Kim 1994) species of dependence such as mereological dependences (that is, dependence of a whole on its parts), evaluative dependences (that is, dependence of evaluative on non-evaluative), and so on. As it were, from the inside, these can be indistinguishable much as, from the first-person perspective, mere true belief and knowledge can be indistinguishable. One natural place to start will be to examine the relationship between understanding and epistemic luck. In short, then, Kvanvig wants to insist that the true beliefs that one attains in acquiring ones understanding can all be Gettiered, even though the Gettier-style luck which prevents these beliefs from qualifying as knowledge does not undermine the understanding this individual acquires.