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. (For example, is it a kind of knowledge, another kind of propositional attitude, an ability, and so on? Baker, L. R. Third Person Understanding in A. Sanford (ed. 4 Pages. Kepler improved on Copernicus by contending that the Earths orbit is not circular, but elliptical. Janvid, M. Knowledge versus Understanding: The Cost of Avoiding Gettier. Acta Analytica 27 (2012): 183-197. In contrast with Pritchards partial compatibility view of the relationship between understanding and epistemic luck, where understanding is compatible with environmental but not with intervening luck, Rohwer (2014) defends understandings full compatibility with veritic epistemic luck (that is, of both intervening and environmental varieties). That said, Hills adds some qualifications. Outlines and evaluates the anti-intellectualist and intellectualist views of know-how. Moral Testimony and Moral Epistemology. Ethics 120 (2009): 94-127. There are three potential worries with this general style of approach. 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. 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. The Pros And Cons Of Epistemology. Make sure you cite them appropriately within your paper, and list them in APA format on your Reference page. 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. 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. Pritchard, D. Knowledge, Understanding and Epistemic Value In A. OHear (ed. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. 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. Stephen P. Stitch: The Fragmentation of Reason. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51(1) (1991): 189-193. 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. [] This type of understanding is ascribed in sentences that take the form I understand why X (for example, I understand why the house burnt down). This is a view to which Grimm (2010) is also sympathetic, remarking that the object of objectual understanding can be profitably viewed along the lines of the object of know-how, where Grimm has in mind here an anti-intellectualist interpretation of know-how according to which knowing how to do something is a matter of possessing abilities rather than knowing facts (compare, Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011). 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. That said, the question of whether, and if so to what extent, understanding is compatible with epistemic luck, lacks any contemporary consensus, though this is an aspect of understanding that is receiving increased attention. 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. ), Scientific Understanding: Philosophical Perspectives. Secondly, there is plenty of scope for understanding to play a more significant role in social epistemology. 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). So, understanding is compatible with a kind of epistemic luck that knowledge excludes. Riaz, A. For those who wonder about whether the often-discussed grasping associated with understanding might just amount to the possession of further beliefs (rather than, say, the possession of manipulative abilities), this type of view may seem particularly attractive (and comparatively less mysterious). 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. Facebook Instagram Email. Eds. Longworth, G. Linguistic Understanding and Knowledge. Nous 42 (2008): 50-79. Such a theory raises questions of its own, such as precisely what answering reliably, in the relevant sense, demands. In addition, it is important to make explicit differences in terminology that can sometimes confuse discussions of some types of understanding. 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. 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. For Email: emma.gordon@ed.ac.uk 0. A. and Gordon, E. C. On Pritchard, Objectual Understanding and the Value Problem. American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2014): 1-14. A potential worry then is that the achievement one attains when one understands chemistry need not involve the subject working the subject matterin this case, chemistryscause. The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding. 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. 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. For one thing, abstract objects, such as mathematical truths and other atemporal phenomena, can plausibly be understood even though our understanding of them does not seem to require an appreciation of their coming to existence. 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. 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? Argues against a factive conception of scientific understanding. Here, and unlike in the case of intervening epistemic luck, nothing actually goes awry, and the fact that the belief could easily have been false is owed entirely to the agents being in a bad environment, one with faades nearby. Introduces intelligibility as an epistemic state similar to understanding but less valuable. Stanley, J. Zagzebski, L. Recovering Understanding In M. Steup (ed. Grimm, S. Is Understanding a Species of Knowledge? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2006): 515-535. More generally, though, it is important to note that Khalifa, via his grasping argument, is defending reliable explanatory evaluation as merely a necessarythough not sufficientcomponent of grasping. Rationalism is an epistemological theory, so rationalism can be interpreted the distinct aspects or parts of the mind that are separate senses. Toon (2015) has recently suggested, with reference to the hypothesis of extended cognition, that understanding can be located partly outside the head. Call these, for short, the relation question and the object question. Utilize at least 2 credible sources to support your position presented in the paper. Is it problematic to embrace, for example, a contextualist semantics for knowledge attributions while embracing, say, invariantism about understanding? Considers some of the ramifications that active externalist approaches might have for epistemology. Criticizes the claim that understanding-why should be identified with strong cognitive achievement. 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. 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. In short: understanding is causal propositional knowledge. A useful taxonomising question is the following: how strong a link does understanding demand between the beliefs we have about a given subject matter and the propositions that are true of that subject matter? The cons of the epistemology shift that is a major concern to philosophers are the loss of, reading and communications since the student do not interact physically, these skills be instilled EPISTEMOLOGY SHIFT 5 by the teachers and through the help of physical environments. Alston, W. Beyond Justification: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation. He takes his account to be roughly in line with the laymans concept of curiosity. CA: Wadsworth, 2009. Defends a lack of control account of luck. 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). Moral Understanding and Knowledge. Philosophical Studies 172(2) (2015): 113-128. Objectual understanding is equivalent to what Pritchard has at some points termed holistic understanding (2009: 12). Argues that understanding (unlike knowledge) is a type of cognitive achievement and therefore of distinctive value. It is clearly cognitively better than the belief that humans did not evolve. Resists the alleged similarity between understanding and knowing-how. A more sophisticated understanding has it that human beings and the other great apes descended from a common hominid ancestor (who was not, strictly speaking, an ape). Sullivan, E. Understanding: Not Know-How. Philosohpical Studies (2017). It is helpful to consider an example. Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological shift in an essay. If the latterthat is, if we are to understand grasping literally, then, also unfortunately, we are rarely given concrete details of its nature. Section 4 examines the relationship between understanding and types of epistemic luck that are typically thought to undermine knowledge. Specifically, he takes his opponents view to be that knowledge through direct experience is what sates curiosity, a view that traces to Aristotle. Fifthly, to what extent might active externalist approaches (for example, extended mind and extended cognition) in epistemology, the ramifications of which have recently been brought to bear on the theory of knowledge (see Carter, et. Your paper should be 3-4 pages in length, not counting the Title page and Reference . It focuses on means of human knowledge acquisition and how to differentiate the truth knowledge claims from the false one. 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. 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. Strevens (2013) focuses on scientific understanding in his discussion of grasping. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975. 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. Resists Pritchards claim that there can be weak achievements, that is, ones that do not necessarily involve great effort. Proposes a framework for reducing objectual understanding to what he calls explanatory understanding. One natural place to start will be to examine the relationship between understanding and epistemic luck. Rohwer, Y. 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. University of Edinburgh In particular, as Pritchard suggests, we might want to consider that agents working with the ideal gas law or other idealizations do not necessarily have false beliefs as a result, even if the content of the proposition expressed by the law is not strictly true. Grimm (2014) also notes that his modal view of understanding fits well with the idea that understanding involves a kind of ability or know-how, as one who sees or grasps how certain propositions are modally related has the ability to answer a wide variety of questions about how things could have been different. 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. For example, I can understand the quadratic formula without knowing, or caring, about who introduced it. Morris, K. A Defense of Lucky Understanding. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (2012): 357-371. If the former, then this is unfortunate given the theoretical work the term is supposed to be doing in characterizing understanding. What is it to have this ability to modify some mental representation? 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. 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). 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. The modern epistemology deals with the debate between rationalism and empiricism. Toon, A. Explanatory Knowledge and Metaphysical Dependence. In his Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. Incudes arguments for the position that understanding need not be factive. An important question is whether there are philosophical considerations beyond simply intuition to adjudicate in a principled way why we should think about unifying understanding cases in one way rather than the other. 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. However, Pritchard (2014) responds to Grimms latest proposal with a number of criticisms. Riggs (2003: 21-22) asks whether an explanation has to be true to provide understanding, and Strevens thinks that it is implied that grasping is factive. Trout, J.D. Explores the epistemological role of exemplification and aims to illuminate the relationship between understanding and scientific idealizations construed as fictions. 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. Pritchard, D. Recent Work on Epistemic Value. American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2007): 85-110. Claims that understanding is entirely compatible with both intervening and environmental forms of veritic luck. Carter, J. 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. To this end, the first section offers an overview of the different types of understanding discussed in the literature, though their features are gradually explored in more depth throughout later sections. Grimm, S. The Value of Understanding. Philosophy Compass 7(2) (2012): 103-177. Epistemology is a branch in philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge. According to Zagzebski (2001), the epistemic value of understanding is tied not to elements of its factivity, but rather to its transparency. Philosophy of Science, 79(1) (2012): 15-37. Fourthly, a relatively fertile area for further research concerns the semantics of understanding attribution. ), Knowledge, Truth and Obligation. Grimm (2012) has wondered whether this view might get things explanatorily backwards. as in testimony cases in friendly environments, where knowledge acquisition demands very little on the part of the agent), he argues that cognitive achievement is not essentially wedded to knowledge (as robust virtue epistemologists would hold). Hence, he argues that any propositional knowledge is derivative. 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). Establishes a pro position, supporting that the shift in how people take in knowledge is good. 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. How should we distinguish between peripheral beliefs about a subject matter and beliefs that are not properly, Understanding entails true beliefs of the form. If so, why, and if not why not? Kim, 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. Early defence of explanations key role in understanding. 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. This is a change from the past. Offers an account of understanding that requires having a theory of the relevant phenomenon. This type of a view is a revisionist theory of epistemic value (see, for example, Pritchard 2010), which suggests that one would be warranted in turning more attention to an epistemic state other than propositional knowledgespecifically, according to Pritchardunderstanding. He wants us to suppose that grasping has two componentsone that is a purely psychological (that is, narrow) component and one that is the actual obtaining of the state of affairs that is grasped. However, Strevens nonetheless offers a rough outline of a parallel, non-factive account of grasping, what he calls grasping*. Often-cited discussion of the fake barn counterexample to traditional accounts of knowledge that focus on justified true belief. Taking curiosity to be of epistemic significance is not a new idea. Endorses the idea that when we consider how things would be if something was true, we increase our access to further truths. ), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. This is not so obvious, and at least, not as obvious as it is in the case of knowledge. Grimm develops this original position via parity of reasoning, taking as a starting point that the debate about a priori knowledge, for example, knowledge of necessary truths, makes use of metaphors of grasping and seeing that are akin to the ones in the understanding debate. 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. Given the extent to which grasping is highly associated with understanding and left substantively unspecified, it is perhaps unsurprising that the matter of how to articulate grasping-related conditions on understanding has proven to be rather divisive. This is because we dont learn about causes a priori. Strong cognitive achievement: Cognitive success that is because of ones cognitive ability where the success in question either involves the overcoming of a significant obstacle or the exercise of a significant level of cognitive ability. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. For that reason, these will be addressed before moving on to the more explicitly epistemological concerns. In such a case, Kvanvig says, this individual acquires an historical understanding of the Comanche dominance of the Southern plains of North America from the late 17th until the late 19th century (2003: 197). In order to make this point clear, Pritchard suggests that we first consider two versions of a case analogous with Kvanvigs. Given that the instrumental value is the same, our reaction to the two contrasting bypass cases seems to count in favor of the final value of successes because of abilityachievements. Kelp, C. Understanding Phenomena. Synthese (2015). More generally, as this line of criticism goes, sometimes we simply mistake mere (non-factive) intelligibility for understanding. 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. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Pros and cons of epistemology shift Changes in epistemology even though they have received several criticisms they have significantly played a critical role in the advancement of technology. 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. 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). Section 3 examines the notion of grasping which often appears in discussions of understanding in epistemology.
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