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. 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. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0863-z. New York: Routledge, 2011. Given that the result is the same (that is, the patients heart muscle blood supply is improved) regardless of whether he successfully completes the operation by luck or by skill, the instrumental value of the action is the same. What is Justified Belief? In G. S. Pappas (ed. 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. Carter, J. 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. To the extent that this is correct, there is some cause for reservation about measuring degrees of understanding according to how well they approximate the benefits provided by knowing a good and correct explanation. A proponent of Khalifas position might, however, view the preceding response as question-begging. 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. Her line is that understanding-why involves (i) knowing what something is, and (ii) making reasonable sense of it. To the extent that such a move is available, one has reason to resist Morriss rationale for resisting Pritchards diagnosis of Kvanvigs case. An earlier paper defending the intellectualist view of know-how. See, however, Carter & Gordon (2014) for a recent criticism on the point of identifying understanding with strong cognitive achievement. De Regt, H. and Dieks, D. A Contextual Approach to Scientific Understanding. Synthese 144 (2005): 137-170. bella vista catholic charities housing; wills point tx funeral homes; ptvi triathlon distance; is frankie beverly in the hospital; birria tacos long branch; For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. Moral Testimony and Moral Epistemology. Ethics 120 (2009): 94-127. Pragmatism as an epistemological approach accentuates the reasoning of theories and concepts by studying their consequences and goals, values and interests they support. 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. While his view fits well with understanding-why, it is less obvious that objectual understanding involves grasping how things came to be. For example, in Whitcomb (2011) we find the suggestion that theoretical wisdom is a form of particularly deep understanding. If Kelps thought experiment works, manipulation of representations cannot be a necessary condition of understanding after all. 121-132. 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. On the other hand, there are explanationists, who argue that it is knowledge or evaluation of explanations that is doing the relevant work. Argues against a factive conception of scientific understanding. 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). 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. Philosophy of Science, 79(1) (2012): 15-37. ), Fictions in Science: Essays on Idealization and Modeling. In his article "A Seismic Shift in Epistemology" (2008), Chris Dede draws a distinction between classical perceptions of knowledge and the approach to knowledge underpinning Web 2.0 activity. Should we say that the use of the term understanding that applies to such cases should be of no interest to epistemology? Achievements, unlike mere successes, are regarded as valuable for their own sake, mainly because of the way in which these special sorts of successes come to be. 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). This is not so obvious, and at least, not as obvious as it is in the case of knowledge. 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. In . Pritchard, D. Knowledge and Understanding in A. Fairweather (ed. Grimm (2011) calls this subjective understanding. He describes subjective understanding as being merely a grasp of how specific propositions interlinkone that does not depend on their truth but rather on their forming a coherent picture. 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. In addition, it is important to make explicit differences in terminology that can sometimes confuse discussions of some types of understanding. 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. As will see, a good number of epistemologists would agree that false beliefs are compatible with understanding. For one thing, she admits that these abilities can be possessed by degrees. An overview of the background, development and recent issues in epistemology, including a chapter on understanding as an epistemic good. (For example, is it a kind of knowledge, another kind of propositional attitude, an ability, and so on? Lucky Understanding Without Knowledge. Synthese 191 (2014): 945-959. Men It will accordingly be helpful to narrow our focus to the varieties of understanding that feature most prominently in the epistemological literature. Riaz, A. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Make sure you cite them appropriately within your paper, and list them in APA format on your Reference page. 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.. 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. Stanley, J and Williamson, T. Knowing How. Journal of Philosophy 98(8) (2001): 411-444. But it is not strictly true. 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. 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. 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. There are three potential worries with this general style of approach. Alston, W. Beyond Justification: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation. What is the grasping relation? Van Camp, W. Explaining Understanding (or Understanding Explanation. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 4(1) (2014): 95-114. Carter, J. However, advocates of moderate approaches to the factivity of understanding are left with some difficult questions to answer. One reason a manipulationist will be inclined to escape the result in this fashion (by denying that all-knowing entails all-understanding) is precisely because one already (qua manipulationist) is not convinced that understanding can be attained simply through knowledge of propositions. The Case of Richard Rorty A Newer Argument Pro: Hales's Defense o. Explores the epistemological role of exemplification and aims to illuminate the relationship between understanding and scientific idealizations construed as fictions. 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. 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. ), Epistemic Value. Criticizes the claim that understanding-why should be identified with strong cognitive achievement. Trout, J.D. The possession of such judgment plausibly lines up more closely with ability possession (that is, (i)-(vi)) than with propositional attitude possession. In a given context, then, one understands some subject matter P only if one approximates fully comprehensive and maximally well-connected knowledge of P closely enough that one is sufficiently likely to successfully perform any task relating to P that is determined by the context, assuming that one has the skills needed to do so and to exercise them in suitably favorable conditions. An overview of issues relating to epistemic value, including discussion of understanding as a higher epistemic state. ), The Stanford Enclopedia of Philosophy. Your paper should be 3-4 pages in length, not counting the Title page and Reference page. That said, Hills adds some qualifications. This is a change from the past. He also suggests that what epistemic agents want is not just to feel like they are making sense of things but to actually make sense of them. Proposes a framework for reducing objectual understanding to what he calls explanatory understanding. London: Continuum, 2003. This is a change from the past. Whether wisdom might be a type of understanding or understanding might be a component of wisdom is a fascinating question that can draw on both work in virtue ethics and epistemology. What kind of historical enterprise is historical epistemology? By contrast, the paradigmatic case of environmental epistemic luck is the famous barn faade case (for example, Ginet 1975; Goldman 1979), a case where what an agent looks at is a genuine barn which unbeknownst to the individual is surrounded by faades which are indistinguishable to the agent from the genuine barn. Argues that requiring knowledge of an explanation is too strong a condition on understanding-why. Rationalism is an epistemological theory, so rationalism can be interpreted the distinct aspects or parts of the mind that are separate senses. Explores the pros and cons with at least 2 credible sources. 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. Displacements of power in the realm of concepts accompany these new orientations. and Pritchard, D. Varieties of Externalism. Philosophical Issues 41(1) (2014): 63-109. Discusses and defines ability in the sense often appealed to in work on cognitive ability and the value of knowledge. The advances are clearly cognitive advances. Claims that understanding is entirely compatible with both intervening and environmental forms of veritic luck. Curiosity and a Response-Dependent Account of the Value of Understanding. In T. Henning and D. Schweikard (eds. Strevens, M. No Understanding Without Explanation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013): 510-515. 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. Grimm has put his finger on an important commonality at issue in his argument from parity. 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? Kelp, C. Understanding Phenomena. Synthese (2015). 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. 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, 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. Is it a kind of knowledge, another kind of propositional attitude, an ability, and so forth? On the basis of considerations Pritchard argues for in various places (2010; 2012; 2013; 2014), relating to cognitive achievements presence in the absence of knowledge (for example. Argues that understanding (unlike knowledge) is a type of cognitive achievement and therefore of distinctive value. So, on Grimms (2011) view, grasping the relationships between the relevant parts of the subject matter amounts to possessing the ability to work out how changing parts of that system would or would not impact on the overall system. 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. 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. Rohwer argues that counterexamples like Pritchards intervening luck cases only appear plausible because the beliefs that make up the agents understanding come exclusively from a bad source. For one thing, if understanding is both a factive and strongly internalist notion then a radical skeptical argument that threatens to show that we have no understanding is a very intimidating prospect (as Pritchard 2010:86 points out). Defends views that hold explanation as indispensable for account of understanding and discusses what a non-factive account of grasping would look like. As such, Khalifa is not attempting to provide an analysis of grasping. Taking curiosity to be of epistemic significance is not a new idea. 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. ), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2nd Edition). If this is right, then at least one prominent case used to illustrate a luck-based difference between knowledge and understanding does not hold up to scrutiny. 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. ), Epistemology (Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures). Much of the philosophical tradition has viewed the central epistemological problems concerning perception largely and sometimes exclusively in terms of the metaphysical responses to skepticism. As Lackey thinks students can come to know evolutionary theory from this teacher despite the teacher not knowing the propositions she asserts (given that the Stella fails the belief condition for knowledge), we might likewise think, and contra Morris, that Stella might fail to understand evolution. 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. The Value of Understanding In D. Pritchard, A. Haddock and A. Millar (eds. Offers an account of understanding that requires having a theory of the relevant phenomenon. While Pritchards point here is revealed in his diagnosis of Kvanvigs reading of the Comanche case, he in several places prefers to illustrate the idea with reference to the case in which an agent asks a real (that is, genuine, authoritative) fire officer about the cause of a house fire and receives a correct explanation. . 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. Elgin, C. Understanding and the Facts. Philosophical Studies 132 (2007): 33-42. 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). A second variety of understanding that has generated interest amongst epistemologists is, understanding-why. The Psychology of Scientific Explanation. Philosophy Compass 2(3) (2007): 564-591. 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. Nonetheless, Zagzebski thinks that believing this actually allows us more understanding for most purposes than the vastly more complicated truth owing to our cognitive limitations. 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). Argues against the view that moral understanding can be immune to luck while moral knowledge is not. Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological shift in an essay. 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). The epistemological shift in the present In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Abstract. Carter (2014) argues that shifting to more demanding practical environments motivates attributing lower degrees of understanding rather than (as Wilkenfeld is suggests) withholding understanding. Grimm, S. Understanding In S. Bernecker and D. Pritchard (eds. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979. It is helpful to consider an example. Hills, A. In addition, Zagzebski supports the provocative line that understanding can perhaps sometimes be more desirable when the epistemic agent does not have the relevant true beliefs. Contains Kims classic discussion of species of dependence (for example, mereological dependence). So, understanding is compatible with a kind of epistemic luck that knowledge excludes. 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. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Zagzebskis weak approach to a factivity constraint aligns with her broadly internalist thinking about what understanding actually does involvenamely, on her view, internal consistency and what she calls transparency. A theoretical advantage to a weak factivity constraint is that it neatly separates propositional knowledge and objectual understanding as interestingly different. 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? Pritchard, D. The Value of Knowledge: Understanding. In A. Haddock, A. Millar and D. Pritchard (eds. 13. For example, when the issue is understanding mathematics, as opposed to understanding why 22=4, it is perhaps less obvious that dependence has a central role to play. 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. It is worth considering how and in what way a plausible grasping condition on understanding should be held to something like a factivity or accuracy constraint. Specifically, he takes his opponents view to be that knowledge through direct experience is what sates curiosity, a view that traces to Aristotle. Pritchards verdict is that we should deny understanding in the intervening case and attribute it in the environmental case. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003. According to Elgin, a factive conception of understanding neither reflects our practices in ascribing understanding nor does justice to contemporary science. Kelp points out that this type of view is not so restrictive as to deny understanding to, for example, novice students and young children. In other words, each denies all of the others respective beliefs about the subject, and yet the weak view in principle permits that they might nonetheless understand the subject equally well. He argues that what is grasped or seen when one attains a priori knowledge is not a proposition but a certain modal relationship between properties, objects or identities. Endorses the idea that when we consider how things would be if something was true, we increase our access to further truths.
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