Looks at understandings role in recent debates about epistemic value and contains key arguments against Elgins non-factive view of understanding. View Shift in Epistemology.edited.docx from SOCIOLOGY 1010 at Columbia Southern University. Although many chapters take as their starting point an analysis of how dominant political, educational, and musical ideologies serve to construct and sustain inequities and undemocratic practices, authors also identify practices that seek to promote socially just pedagogy and approaches to music education. As such, Khalifa is not attempting to provide an analysis of grasping. In practice, individuals' epistemological beliefs determine how they think knowledge or truth can be comprehended, what problems - if any - are associated with various views of pursuing and presenting knowledge and what role researchers play in its discovery (Robson, 2002). Many seem to blend manipulationism with explanations, suggesting for example that what is required for understanding is an ability associated with mentally manipulating explanations. 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. The Pros And Cons Of Epistemology And Theory Of Knowledge Goldman, A. Riaz, A. 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. She claims, it may be possible to know without knowing one knows, but it is impossible to understand without understanding one understands (2001: 246) and suggests that this property of understanding might insulate it from skepticism. He leaves grasping at the level of metaphor or uses it them literally but never develops it. 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. Epistemological Problems of Perception - Stanford Encyclopedia of Endorses the idea that when we consider how things would be if something was true, we increase our access to further truths. Though her work on understanding is not limited to scientific understanding (for example, Elgin 2004), one notable argument she has made is framed to show that a factive conception cannot do justice to the cognitive contributions of science and that a more flexible conception can (2007: 32). A., Kallestrup, J. Palermos, S.O. Pritchard, D. The Value of Knowledge: Understanding. In A. Haddock, A. Millar and D. Pritchard (eds. 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. Pritchard, D. Recent Work on Epistemic Value. American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2007): 85-110. On the weakest view, one can understand a subject matter even if none of ones beliefs about that subject matter are true. 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. Carter, J. Argues against compatibility between understanding and epistemic luck. Make sure you cite them appropriately within your paper and list them in APA format on your Reference page. epistemological shift pros and cons. 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 . Establishes a pro position, supporting that the shift in how people take in knowledge is good. It also allows attributions of understanding in the presence of peripheral false beliefs, without going so far as to grant that understanding is present in cases of internally consistent delusionsas such delusions will feature at least some false central beliefs. ), Justification and Knowledge. epistemological shift pros and cons - erikapowers.com A second variety of understanding that has generated interest amongst epistemologists is, understanding-why. In terms of parallels with the understanding debate, it is important to note that the knowledge of causes formula is not limited to the traditional propositional reading. This holds regardless of whether we are Platonists or nominalists about such entities. Lipton, P. Understanding Without Explanation in H. de Regt, S. Leonelli, and K. Eigner (eds. Finally, there is fruitful work to do concerning the relationship between understanding and wisdom. Zagzebski, L. On Epistemology. Secondly, one might wonder if Wilkenfelds account of understanding as representation manipulation is too inclusivethat it rules in, as cases of bona fide understanding, representations that are based on inaccurate but internally consistent beliefs. Goldman, A. 1. However, Strevens nonetheless offers a rough outline of a parallel, non-factive account of grasping, what he calls grasping*. In looking at moral understanding-why, outlines some key abilities that may be necessary to the grasping component of understanding. The possession of such judgment plausibly lines up more closely with ability possession (that is, (i)-(vi)) than with propositional attitude possession. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 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). bella vista catholic charities housing; wills point tx funeral homes; ptvi triathlon distance; is frankie beverly in the hospital; birria tacos long branch; In this sense, the history of thought can be seen as the sometimes imperceptibly fluid, sometimes bizarre and abrupt, movements of our concepts. Epistemology is the study of sources of knowledge. To the extent that such a move is available, one has reason to resist Morriss rationale for resisting Pritchards diagnosis of Kvanvigs case. Includes Alstons view of curiosity, according to which the epistemic value of true belief and knowledge partially comes from a link to curiosity. An overview of coherentism that can be useful when considering how theories of coherence might be used to flesh out the grasping condition on understanding. Uses the hypothesis of extended cognition to argue that understanding can be located (at least partly) outside the head. Another significant paper endorsing the claim that knowledge of explanations should play a vital role in our theories of understanding. To defend the claim that possessing the kinds of abilities Hills draws attention to is not a matter of simply having extra items of knowledgeshe notes that one could have the extra items of knowledge and still lack the good judgment that allows you to form new, related true beliefs. Contains the paradigmatic case of environmental epistemic luck (that is, the fake barn case). So, understanding is compatible with a kind of epistemic luck that knowledge excludes. 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. An overview of the background, development and recent issues in epistemology, including a chapter on understanding as an epistemic good. 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). Riggs, W. Understanding Virtue and the Virtue of Understanding In M. DePaul and L. Zagzebski (eds. Wilkenfeld, D. Understanding as Representation Manipulability. Synthese 190 (2013): 997-1016. Objectual understanding is equivalent to what Pritchard has at some points termed holistic understanding (2009: 12). For, even if understanding why 22=4 does not require a grasp of any causal relation, it might nonetheless involve a grasp of some kind of more general dependence, for instance the kind of dependence picked out by the metaphysical grounding relation. ), Object question: What kinds of things are grasped? al 2014), have for understanding? by | Jun 9, 2022 | prayers of dedication presbyterian | advance australia national director | Jun 9, 2022 | prayers of dedication presbyterian | advance australia national director 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).. 1. A. and Pritchard, D. Knowledge-How and Epistemic Luck. Nos (2013). . 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. 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. ), Epistemic Value. 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. epistemological shift pros and cons. New York: Routledge, 2011. However, epistemologists have recently started to turn more attention to the epistemic state or states of understanding, asking questions about its nature, relationship to knowledge, connection with explanation, and potential status as a special type of cognitive achievement. Since, for instance, the ideal gas law (for example, Elgin 2007) is recognized as a helpful fiction and is named and taught as such, as is, nave Copernicanism or the simple view that humans evolved from apes. Grimm has put his finger on an important commonality at issue in his argument from parity. Gives an overview of recent arguments for revisionist theories of epistemic value that suggest understanding is more valuable than knowledge. Examines reasons to suppose that attributions of understanding are typically attributions of knowledge, understanding-why or objectual understanding. Strevens (2013) focuses on scientific understanding in his discussion of grasping. Bradford, G. The Value of Achievements. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 94(2) (2013): 204-224. This is because we might be tempted to say instead that we desire to make sense of things because it is good to do so rather than saying that it is good to make sense of things because we desire it. Pros and Cons of Epistemological Shift Epistemology refers to a dynamic concept that shows how humans understand knowledge, which entails how it is received, classified, justified, and transmitted in distinctive ways and at different periods in history. facebook android official. In . An in-depth exploration of different types of epistemic luck. 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. Grimm puts the template formulation as follows: A Comanche-style case is one in which we form true beliefs on the basis of trusting some source, and either (a) the source is unreliable, or (b) the source is reliable, but in the current environment one might easily have chosen an unreliable source. After analysing variations of the Comanche case so conceived, Grimm argues that in neither (a)- or (b)-style Comanche cases do knowledge and understanding come apart. Such cases she claims feature intervening luck that is compatible with understanding. Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological shift If Kelps thought experiment works, manipulation of representations cannot be a necessary condition of understanding after all. Positivism follows an identical approach as the study of natural sciences in the testing of a theory. 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. We regularly claim that people can understand everything from theories to pieces of technology, accounts of historical events and the psychology of other individuals. For example, Hills (2009: 4) says you cannot understand why p if p is false (compare: S knows that p only if p). body positive tiktok accounts; tough guise 2 summary sparknotes; tracking polls quizlet For example, I can understand the quadratic formula without knowing, or caring, about who introduced it. epistemological shift pros and cons - oshawanewhome.ca 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). Contains Lackeys counterexamples to the knowledge transmission principles. The Epistemological Shift from Descartes to Nietzsche: Intuition and What kind of historical enterprise is historical epistemology? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 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. He also suggests, like Khalifa, that grasping be linked with correct explanations. 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. (iv) an ability to draw from the information q the conclusion that p (or probably p), (v) an ability to give q (the right explanation) when given the information that p, and. 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. In rationalism way of thinking, knowledge is acquired using reasons or reasoning. This is a change from the past. It will accordingly be helpful to narrow our focus to the varieties of understanding that feature most prominently in the epistemological literature. Since it is central to her take on human evolution, factivists like Kvanvig must conclude that her take on human evolution does not qualify as understanding. Explanatory Knowledge and Metaphysical Dependence. In his Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. 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 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. Builds an account of understanding according to which understanding a subject matter involves possessing a representation that could be manipulated in a useful way. 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. 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. With these three types of understanding in mindpropositional understanding, understanding-why and objectual understandingthe next section considers some of the key questions that arise when one attempts to think about when, and under what conditions, understanding should be ascribed to epistemic agents. Hetherington, S. There Can be Lucky Knowledge in M. Steup, J. Turri and E. Sosa (eds. Relatedly, Van Camp (2014) calls understanding a higher level cognition that involves recognizing connections between different pieces of knowledge, and Kosso (2007: 1) submits that inter-theoretic coherence is the hallmark of understanding, stating knowledge of many facts does not amount to understanding unless one also has a sense of how the facts fit together. While such remarks are made with objectual understanding (that is, understanding of a subject matter) in mind, there are similar comments about understanding-why (for example, Hills 2009) that suggest an overlapping need to consider connections between items of information, albeit on a smaller scale. Kelp (2015) makes a helpful distinction between two broad camps here. Your paper should be 3-4 pages in length, not counting the Title page and Reference page. Where should an investigation of understanding in epistemology take us next? Epistemology is the study nature of human knowledge itself. It is also becoming an increasingly popular position to hold that understanding is more epistemically valuable than knowledge (see Kvanvig 2003; Pritchard 2010). Carter (2014) argues that shifting to more demanding practical environments motivates attributing lower degrees of understanding rather than (as Wilkenfeld is suggests) withholding understanding. Criticizes Grimms view of understanding as knowledge of causes. 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. 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). This objection is worth holding in mind when considering any further positions that incorporate representation manipulability as necessary. While Khalifa favors earlier accounts of scientific understanding to the more recent views that have been submitted by epistemologists, he is aware that some criticisms (for example, Lipton (2009) and Pritchard (2010)) to the effect that requiring knowledge of an explanation is too strong a necessary condition on understanding-why. 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. 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. 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. In all these cases, epistemology seeks to understand one or another kind of cognitive success (or, correspondingly, cognitive failure ). 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. 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. This is of course an unpalatable result, as we regularly attribute understanding in the presence of not just one, but often many, false beliefs. Putting this all together, a scientist who embraces the ideal gas law, as an idealization, would not necessarily have any relevant false beliefs. reptarium brian barczyk; new milford high school principal; salisbury university apparel store That said, Hills adds some qualifications. 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. 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. Includes further discussion of the role of acceptance and belief in her view of understanding. Elgin, C. Understanding and the Facts. Philosophical Studies 132 (2007): 33-42. sustainability scholarship 2021; lost vape centaurus replacement panels; For a less concessionary critique of Kvanvigs Comanche case, however, see Grimm (2006). Stanley, J and Williamson, T. Knowing How. Journal of Philosophy 98(8) (2001): 411-444. Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological - Course Hero 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. 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.. 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. Epistemological assumptions are those that focus on what can be known and how knowledge can be acquired (Bell, 8).