Toon, A. Having abandoned the commitment to absolute space, current astronomers can no longer say that the Earth travels around the sun simpliciter, but must talk about how the Earth and the sun move relative to each other. See further Bradford (2013; 2015) for resistance to the very suggestion that there can be weak achievements on Pritchards sensenamely, achievements that do not necessarily involve great effort, regardless of whether they are primarily due to ability. Carter, J. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. What kind of historical enterprise is historical epistemology? For one thing, it is prudent to note up front that there are uses of understanding that, while important more generally in philosophy, fall outside the purview of mainstream epistemology. His modal model of understanding fits with the intuition that we understand not propositions but relations between parts to wholes or systems of various thoughts.. Her key thought here is that grasping the truth can actually impede the chances of ones attaining understanding because such a grasp might come at too high a cognitive cost. 115, No. CA: Wadsworth, 2009. It is clearly cognitively better than the belief that humans did not evolve. Whitcomb (2010) notes that Goldman (1999) has considered that the significance or value of some item of knowledge might be at least in part determined by whether, and to what extent, it provides the knower with answers to questions that they are curious about. [] 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. Assuming that we need an account of degrees of understanding if we are going to give an account of outright understanding (as opposed to working the other way around, as he thinks many others are inclined to do), Kelp (2015) suggests we adopt a knowledge based account of objectual understanding according to which maximal understanding of a given phenomenon is to be cashed out in terms of fully comprehensive and maximally well-connected knowledge of that phenomenon. Boston: Routledge, 2013. Grimm (2006) and Pritchard (2010) counter that many of the most desirable instances of potential understanding, such as when we understand another persons psychology or understand how the world works, are not transparent. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975. It is helpful to consider an example. facebook android official. Another significant paper endorsing the claim that knowledge of explanations should play a vital role in our theories of understanding. Objectual understanding is equivalent to what Pritchard has at some points termed holistic understanding (2009: 12). in barn faade cases, where environmental luck is incompatible with knowledge but compatible with cognitive achievement) and the absence of cognitive achievement in the presence of knowledge (e.g. 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. However, Kelp admits that he wonders how his account will make sense of the link between understanding and explanation, and one might also wonder whether it is too strict to say that understanding requires knowledge as opposed to justified belief or justified true belief. 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. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Bradford, G. The Value of Achievements. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 94(2) (2013): 204-224. What is it to have this ability to modify some mental representation? Epistemology is a way of framing knowledge, it defines how it can be produced and augmented. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014. 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? Kelp points out that this type of view is not so restrictive as to deny understanding to, for example, novice students and young children. Displacements of power in the realm of concepts accompany these new orientations. In particular, how we might define expertise and who has it. Call these, for short, the relation question and the object question. In addition, it is important to make explicit differences in terminology that can sometimes confuse discussions of some types of understanding. Morris (2012), like Rohwer, also defends lucky understandingin particular, understanding-why, or what he calls explanatory understanding). 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. 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. ), Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology. 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. 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. However, it is less clear at least initially that retreating from causal dependence to more general dependence will be of use in the kinds of objectual understanding cases noted above. 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. Section 2 explores the connection between understanding and truth, with an eye to assessing in virtue of what understanding might be defended as factive. He claims further that this description of the case undermines the intuition that the writers lack of understanding entails the readers lack of understanding. On the one hand, we have manipulationists, who think understanding involves an ability (or abilities) to manipulate certain representations or concepts. Grimm, S. Understanding In S. Bernecker and D. Pritchard (eds. For example, we might suppose that a system of beliefs contains only beliefs about a particular subject matter, and that these beliefs will ordinarily be sufficient for a rational believer who possesses them to answer questions about that subject matter reliably. One natural place to start will be to examine the relationship between understanding and epistemic luck. 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. Most notably here is what we can call linguistic understandingnamely, the kind of understanding that is of particular interest to philosophers of language in connection with our competence with words and their meanings (see, for example, Longworth 2008). Wilkenfeld (2013) offers the account that most clearly falls under Kelps characterization of manipulationist approaches to understanding. 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. Considers some of the ramifications that active externalist approaches might have for epistemology. Includes further discussion of the role of acceptance and belief in her view of understanding. London: Continuum, 2012. 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. 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. This is because we dont learn about causes a priori. (2007: 37), COPERNICUS: A central tenet of Copernicuss theory is the contention that the Earth travels around the sun in a circular orbit. 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. University of Edinburgh Riggs, W. Why Epistemologists Are So Down on Their Luck. Synthese 158 (3) (2007): 329-344. This objection is worth holding in mind when considering any further positions that incorporate representation manipulability as necessary. ), Object question: What kinds of things are grasped? 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. The possession of such judgment plausibly lines up more closely with ability possession (that is, (i)-(vi)) than with propositional attitude possession. 57-74, 2015. It is not only unnecessary, but moreover, contentious, that a credible scientist would consider the ideal gas law true. Kelp, C. Understanding Phenomena. Synthese (2015). Zagzebski, L. Recovering Understanding In M. Steup (ed. Batterman, R. W. Idealization and modelling. Synthese, 169(3) (2009): 427-446. Salmon, W. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation. In Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. But, the chief requirement of understanding, for him, is instead that there be the right coherence-making relations in some agents collection of information (that is, that the agent has a grasp of how all this related information fits together. Argues that the ordinary concept of knowledge is not factive and that epistemologists should therefore not concern themselves with said ordinary concept. 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. 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. We regularly claim that people can understand everything from theories to pieces of technology, accounts of historical events and the psychology of other individuals. This holds regardless of whether we are Platonists or nominalists about such entities. Khalifa, K. Is Understanding Explanatory or Objectual? Synthese 190(6) (2013a): 1153-1171. 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. 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. 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. Philosophy of Science, 79(1) (2012): 15-37. As will see, a good number of epistemologists would agree that false beliefs are compatible with understanding. 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. 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. The group designated explanationists by Kelp (2015) share a general commitment to the idea that knowledge of explanations should play a key role in a theory of understanding (for example, Hempel 1965; Salmon 1989; Khalifa 2012; 2013). Abstract. This view, he notes, can make sense of the example (see 3(b))which he utilizes against manipulationists accountsof the omniscient, omni-understanding agent who is passive (that is, an omni-understanding agent who is not actively drawing explanatory inferences) as one would likely attribute to this agent maximally well-connected knowledge in spite of that passivity. It is plausible that a factivity constraint would also be an important necessary condition on objectual understanding, but there is more nuanced debate about the precise sense in which this might be the case. (vi) an ability to give q (the right explanation) when given the information p. However, if understanding-why actually is a type of knowing how then this means that intellectualist arguments to the effect that knowing how is a kind of propositional knowledge might apply, mutatis mutandis, to understanding-why as well (see Carter and Pritchard 2013). 2015 Jun;21(3):433-9. doi: 10.1111/jep.12282. Pritchard, D. Recent Work on Epistemic Value. American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2007): 85-110. An earlier paper defending the intellectualist view of know-how. Longworth, G. Linguistic Understanding and Knowledge. Nous 42 (2008): 50-79. Lucky Understanding Without Knowledge. Synthese 191 (2014): 945-959. Should we say that the use of the term understanding that applies to such cases should be of no interest to epistemology? New York: Free Press, 1965. Argues that we should replace the main developed accounts of understanding with earlier accounts of scientific explanation. Running head: SHIFT IN EPISTEMOLOGY 1 Shift in Epistemology Student's Name Professor's Name Institution For example, we might require that the agent make sense of X in a way that is reasonablefew would think that the psychic above is reasonable, though it is beyond the scope of the current discussion to stray into exploring accounts of reasonableness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Defends the strong claim that propositional knowledge is necessary and sufficient for understanding. Goldman, A. Even so, and especially over the past decade, there has been agreement amongst most epistemologists working on epistemic value that that understanding is particularly valuable (though see Janvid 2012 for a rare dissenting voice). How should an account of objectual understanding incorporate these types of observationsnamely, where the falsity of a central belief or central beliefs appears compatible with the retention of some degree of understanding? Strevens, M. No Understanding Without Explanation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013): 510-515. NY: Cambridge University Press, 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. But is understanding factive? 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. 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. 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). Criticizes the claim that understanding-why should be identified with strong cognitive achievement. Section 4 examines the relationship between understanding and types of epistemic luck that are typically thought to undermine knowledge. Facebook Instagram Email. Incudes arguments for the position that understanding need not be factive. 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. Explores understanding as the proper goal of inquiry, in addition to discussing understandings distinctive value. Zagzebski, L. On Epistemology. ), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. London: Routledge, 2009. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Argues that understanding (unlike knowledge) is a type of cognitive achievement and therefore of distinctive value. In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Hardback) (Vol. This is a change from the past. 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. There is little work focusing exclusively on the prospects of a non-factive construal of understanding-why; most authors, with a few exceptions, take it that understanding-why is obviously factive in a way that is broadly analogous to propositional knowledge. 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. Grimm, S. The Value of Understanding. Philosophy Compass 7(2) (2012): 103-177. Goldman, A. 4 Pages. Argues that a type of understanding might be the norm that warrants assertion in a restricted class of cases. For example, I can understand the quadratic formula without knowing, or caring, about who introduced it. 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). In . Riaz (2015), Rohwer (2014) and Morris (2012) have continued to uphold this line on understandings compatibility with epistemic luck and defend this line against some of the objections that are examined below. That said, Hills adds some qualifications. endangered species in the boreal forest; etown high school basketball roster. Trout, J.D. This would be the non-factive parallel to the standard view of grasping. ), Knowledge, Truth and Obligation. 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). Stanley, J and Williamson, T. Knowing How. Journal of Philosophy 98(8) (2001): 411-444. In addition, the weak view leaves it open that two agents might count as understanding some subject matter equally well in spite of the fact that for every relevant belief that one has, the other agent maintains its denial. Solicitar ms informacin: 310-2409701 | administracion@consultoresayc.co. Section 3 examines the notion of grasping which often appears in discussions of understanding in epistemology. 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? Resists Pritchards claim that there can be weak achievements, that is, ones that do not necessarily involve great effort. Pritchard, D. The Value of Knowledge: Understanding. In A. Haddock, A. Millar and D. Pritchard (eds. This point aligns with the datum that we often attribute understanding by degrees. In this respect, then, Kvanvigs view achieves the result of a middle ground. 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. 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). Morris suggests that the writer of the Comanche book might lack understanding due to failing to endorse the relevant propositions, while the reader might have understanding because she does endorse the relevant proposition. Uses the concept of understanding to underwrite a theory of explanation. On such a view, grasping talk could simply be jettisoned altogether. To the extent that this is right, Zagzebski is endorsing a kind of KU principle (compare: KK). However, Pritchards work on epistemic luck (for example, 2005) and how it is incompatible with knowledge leads him to reason that understanding is immune to some but not all forms of malignant luck (that is, luck which is incompatible with knowledge). This paper proposes a revisionist view of epistemic value and an outline of different types 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. 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). The topic of epistemic value has only relatively recently received sustained attention in mainstream epistemology. 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). This is perhaps partially because there is a tendency to hold a persons potential understanding to standards of objective appropriateness as well as subjective appropriateness. 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.. 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. Making such an epistemological shift can then open up the possibility of communication with other-than-human persons in ways that few educational researchers seem able (or willing) to acknowledge (see Harvey, 2003). Carter, J. In fact, he claims, the two come apart in both directions: yielding knowledge without strong cognitive achievement andas in the case of understanding that lacks corresponding knowledgestrong cognitive achievement without knowledge. 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). That is, we often describe an individual as having a better understanding of a subject matter than some other person, perhaps when choosing whom to approach for advice or when looking for someone to teach us about a subject. Looks at the increasing dissatisfaction with ever-more complicated attempts to generate a theory of knowledge immune to counterexamples. 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. Description Recall that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Defends a lack of control account of luck. Proponents of weak factivity must address both of these potentially problematic results. Though in light of this fact, it is not obvious that understanding is the appropriate term for this state. Khalifas (2013) view of understanding is a form of explanatory idealism. According to Grimm, cases like Kvanvig admit of a more general characterisation, depending on how the details are filled in. Firstly, grasping is often used in such a way such that it is not clear whether it should be understood metaphorically or literally. 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. Looks at understandings role in recent debates about epistemic value and contains key arguments against Elgins non-factive view of understanding. The Problem of the External World 2. Since what Grimm is calling subjective understanding (that is, Riggss intelligibility) is by stipulation essentially not factive, the question of the factivity of subjective understanding simply does not arise. Goldman, A. 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. A. and Pritchard, D. Knowledge-How and Epistemic Luck. Nos (2013). ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. epistemological shift pros and cons. That is, there is something defective about a scientists would-be understanding of gas behavior were that scientist, unlike all other competent scientists, to reject that the ideal gas law is an idealization and instead embraced it as a fact. 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).
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