Establishes a pro position, supporting that the shift in how people take in knowledge is good. Thus, given that understanding that p and knowing that p can in ordinary contexts be used synonymously (for example, understanding that it will rain is just to know that it will rain) we can paraphrase Zagzebskis point with no loss as: understanding X entails knowing that one understands X. It focuses on means of human knowledge acquisition and how to differentiate the truth knowledge claims from the false one. 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. Must they be known or can they be Gettiered true beliefs? 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. Your paper should be 3-4 pages in length, not counting the Title page and Reference page. Resists the alleged similarity between understanding and knowing-how. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. The advances are clearly cognitive advances. 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.. 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. Discusses the connection between curiosity and true belief. The following sections consider why understanding might have such additional value. For 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. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. The Nature of Ability and the Purpose of Knowledge. Philosophical Issues 17 (2007): 57-69. (iii) an ability to draw from the information that q the conclusion that p (or that probably p). Elgin, C. Understanding and the Facts. Philosophical Studies 132 (2007): 33-42. Is it a kind of knowledge, another kind of propositional attitude, an ability, and so forth? Criticizes Grimms view of understanding as knowledge of causes. 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. Contains the famous counterexamples to the Justified True Belief account of knowledge. Rohwer, Y. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. This is a change from the past. Sliwa 2015, however, defends a stronger view, according to which propositional knowledge is necessary and sufficient for understanding. 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. 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). Disputes the popular claim that understanding is more epistemically valuable than knowledge. In this sense, the history of thought can be seen as the sometimes imperceptibly fluid, sometimes bizarre and abrupt, movements of our concepts. A monograph that explores the nature and value of achievements in great depth. Contains a discussion of the fact that we often take ourselves to understand things we do not. 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). Often-cited discussion of the fake barn counterexample to traditional accounts of knowledge that focus on justified true belief. Trout, J.D. Moral Understanding and Knowledge. Philosophical Studies 172(2) (2015): 113-128. 824 Words. Outlines a view on which understanding something requires making reasonable sense of it. Looks at the increasing dissatisfaction with ever-more complicated attempts to generate a theory of knowledge immune to counterexamples. In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Hardback) (Vol. See answer source: Epistemology in an Hour Caleb Beers It is also becoming an increasingly popular position to hold that understanding is more epistemically valuable than knowledge (see Kvanvig 2003; Pritchard 2010). The Psychology of Scientific Explanation. Philosophy Compass 2(3) (2007): 564-591. The medical epistemology we propose conforms to the epistemological responsibility of doctors, which involves a specific professional attitude and epistemological skills. Morris challenges the assumption that hearers cannot gain understanding through the testimony of those who lack understanding, and accordingly, embraces a kind of understanding transmission principle that parallels the kind of knowledge transmission principle that is presently a topic of controversy in the epistemology of testimony. Scotland, U.K. A Weak Factivity Constraint on Objectual Understanding, Moderate Views of Objectual Understandings Factivity, Understanding as Representation Manipulability, Understanding as Well-Connected Knowledge, Understanding as (Partially) Compatible with Epistemic Luck, Newer Defenses of Understandings Compatibility with Epistemic Luck. ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. Contains exploration of whether the value knowledge may be in part determined by the extent to which it provides answers to questions one is curious about. This is a change from the past. Epistemology is a way of framing knowledge, it defines how it can be produced and augmented. 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. Thirdly, even if one accepts something like a moderate factivity requirement on objectual understandingand thus demand of at least a certain class of beliefs one has of a subject matter that they be trueone can also ask further and more nuanced questions about the epistemic status of these true beliefs. 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. epistemological shift pros and cons. London: Continuum, 2003. Uses the concept of understanding to underwrite a theory of explanation. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005. Resists Pritchards claim that there can be weak achievements, that is, ones that do not necessarily involve great effort. Regarding factivity, then, it seems there is room for a view that occupies the middle ground here. Proposes a framework for reducing objectual understanding to what he calls explanatory understanding. Zagzebski does not mean to say that to understand X, one must also understand ones own understanding of X (as this threatens a psychologically implausible regress), but rather, that to understand X one must also understand that one understands X. It is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge (Rayner, 2011).The fact that taking in knowledge has altered is evident in learning institutions today. Owing to Kvanvigs use of the words perceived achievement, Grimm thinks that the curiosity account of understandings value suggests that subjective understanding (or what is referred to as intelligibility above) can satisfy the desire to make sense of the world or really marks the legitimate end of inquiry.. London: Continuum, 2012. ), Knowledge, Truth and Obligation. Facebook Instagram Email. 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. An overview of the background, development and recent issues in epistemology, including a chapter on understanding as an epistemic good. See, however, Carter & Gordon (2014) for a recent criticism on the point of identifying understanding with strong cognitive achievement. What is it to have this ability to modify some mental representation? Claims that understanding is entirely compatible with both intervening and environmental forms of veritic luck. 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. On this basis Pritchard insists that Grimms analogy breaks down. For a less concessionary critique of Kvanvigs Comanche case, however, see Grimm (2006). However, Strevens nonetheless offers a rough outline of a parallel, non-factive account of grasping, what he calls grasping*. Stanley, J and Williamson, T. Knowing How. Journal of Philosophy 98(8) (2001): 411-444. This is a change from the past. A restatement of Grimms view might accordingly be: understanding is knowledge of dependence relations. Pritchards verdict is that we should deny understanding in the intervening case and attribute it in the environmental case. His conception of mental representations defines these representations as computational structures with content that are susceptible to mental transformations. Wilkenfeld constructs a necessary condition on objectual understanding around this definition. 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. The modern epistemology deals with the debate between rationalism and empiricism. ), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2nd Edition). 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. A view on which the psychics epistemic position in this case qualifies as understanding-why would be unsatisfactorily inclusive. This point aligns with the datum that we often attribute understanding by degrees. Pritchard, D. The Value of Knowledge: Understanding. In A. Haddock, A. Millar and D. Pritchard (eds. 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. Greco, J. Khalifas indispensability argumentwhich he calls the Grasping Argument runs as follows: Khalifa is, in this argument stipulating that (1) is a ground rule for discussion (2013b: 5). He suggests that the primary object of a priori knowledge is the modal reality itself that is grasped by the mind and that on this basis we go on to assent to the proposition that describes these relationships. However, the core explanationist insight also offers the resources to supplement a grasping account. Pritchard, D. Knowledge and Understanding in A. Fairweather (ed. 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. 57-74, 2015. One point that could potentially invite criticism is the move from (1) and (2) to (3). So the kind of knowledge that it provides is metaknowledgeknowledge about 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. 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. 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. Strevens (2013) focuses on scientific understanding in his discussion of grasping. Incudes arguments for the position that understanding need not be factive. Zagzebski (2001), whose view maintains that at least not all cases of understanding require true beliefs, gestures to something like this view. Explores the pros and cons with at least 2 credible sources. 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. Hazlett, A. 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. The Myth of Factive Verbs. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80:3 (2010): 497-522. 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. 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. Summary This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Introduction Arguments Con Arguments Pro Ambivalence Concerning Relativism? The idea of grasping* is useful insofar as it makes clearer the cognitive feat involved in intelligibility, which is similar to understanding in the sense that it implies a grasping of order, pattern and connection between propositions (Riggs, 2004), but it does not require those propositions to be true. Olsson, E. Coherentist Theories of Epistemic Justification in E. Zalta (ed. Firstly, Kvanvig introduces propositional understanding as what is attributed in sentences that take the form I understand that X (for example, John understands that he needs to meet Harold at 2pm). This is a point Elgin is happy to grant. Kvanvig stipulates that there are no falsehoods in the relevant class of beliefs that this individual has acquired from the book, and also that she can correctly answer all relevant questions whilst confidently believing that she is expressing the truth. For example, in Whitcomb (2010: 8), we find the observation that understanding is widely taken to be a higher epistemic good: a state that is like knowledge and true belief, but even better, epistemically speaking. Meanwhile, Pritchard (2009: 11) notes as we might be tempted to put the point, we would surely rather understand than merely know. A helpful clarification here comes from Grimm (2012: 105), who in surveying the literature on the value of understanding points out that the suggestion seems to be that understanding (of a complex of some kind) is better than the corresponding item of propositional knowledge. manage list views salesforce. For example, an environment where ones abilities so easily could generate false beliefs of form despite issuing (luckily) true beliefs of the form on this occasion. Riggs, W. Why Epistemologists Are So Down on Their Luck. Synthese 158 (3) (2007): 329-344. Perhaps, as Harvey (2006b) suggests, we do need to reconfigure academic protocols in order to make more room for these kinds of . Khalifa, K. Inaugurating understanding or repackaging explanation. Relation question: What is the grasping relationship? An influential discussion of understanding is Kvanvigs (2003). 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). In this respect, then, Kvanvigs view achieves the result of a middle ground. bella vista catholic charities housing; wills point tx funeral homes; ptvi triathlon distance; is frankie beverly in the hospital; birria tacos long branch; University of Edinburgh 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. Autor de la entrada: Publicacin de la entrada: junio 16, 2022 Categora de la entrada: rivian executive vice president Comentarios de la entrada: most touchdowns in california high school football most touchdowns in california high school football 4 Pages. Hetherington, S. There Can be Lucky Knowledge in M. Steup, J. Turri and E. Sosa (eds. Endorses the idea that when we consider how things would be if something was true, we increase our access to further truths. 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. In all these cases, epistemology seeks to understand one or another kind of cognitive success (or, correspondingly, cognitive failure ). DePaul, M. and Grimm, S. Review Essay: Kvanvigs The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2007): 498-514. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. A., Kallestrup, J. Palermos, S.O. Displacements of power in the realm of concepts accompany these new orientations. Epistemology is the study of sources of knowledge. 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. 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 particular, how we might define expertise and who has it. An in-depth exploration of different types of epistemic luck. (For example, is it a kind of knowledge, another kind of propositional attitude, an ability, and so on? For example, Kvanvig describes it as obtaining when understanding grammatically is followed by an object/subject matter, as in understanding the presidency, or the president, or politics (2003: 191). Kvanvig (2003; 2009) offers such a view, according to which understanding of some subject matter is incompatible with false central beliefs about the subject matter. Lackey, J. 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. He also suggests, like Khalifa, that grasping be linked with correct explanations. In the first version, we are to imagine that the agent gets her beliefs from a faux-academic book filled with mere rumors that turn out to be luckily true. One natural place to start will be to examine the relationship between understanding and epistemic luck. A second variety of understanding that has generated interest amongst epistemologists is, understanding-why. For the purposes of thinking about understanding, some of the most important will include: (i) what makes a system of beliefs coherent? Includes criticism of Kvanvigs line on epistemic luck and understanding. 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. Why We Dont Deserve Credit for Everything We Know. Synthese 156 (2007). 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. 121-132. And, thirdly, two questions about what is involved in grasping can easily be run together, but should be kept separate. However, Baker (2003) has offered an account on which at least some instances of understanding-why are non-factive. Strevens, M. No Understanding Without Explanation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013): 510-515. Attempts to explain away the intuitions suggesting that lucky understanding is incompatible with epistemic luck. Goldman, A. View Shift in Epistemology.docx from SOCIOLOGY 1010 at Columbia Southern University. 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. 1pt1): pp. Gordon, E. C. Is There Propositional Understanding? Logos & Episteme 3 (2012): 181-192. 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. This is explained in the following way: If it is central to ordinary cognitive function that one is motivated to pursue X, then X has value in virtue of its place in this functional story. Regarding the comparison between the value of understanding and the value of knowledge, then, he will say that if understanding is fundamental to curiosity then this provides at least a partial explanation for why it is superior to the value of knowledge. Considers some of the ramifications that active externalist approaches might have for epistemology. Kvanvig, J. He gives the name grasping* to the purely psychological component that would continue to be satisfied even if, say, an evil demon made it the case at the moment of your grasping that there was only an appearance of the thing that appears to you to be the case. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. Argues that the ordinary concept of knowledge is not factive and that epistemologists should therefore not concern themselves with said ordinary concept. For example, I can understand the quadratic formula without knowing, or caring, about who introduced it. Kelp, C. Understanding Phenomena. Synthese (2015). True enough. Philosophical issues, 14(1) (2004): 113-131. 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. Explores the epistemological role of exemplification and aims to illuminate the relationship between understanding and scientific idealizations construed as fictions. Curiosity and a Response-Dependent Account of the Value of Understanding. In T. Henning and D. Schweikard (eds. 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. Firstly, Wilkenfelds context-sensitive approach is in tension with a more plausible diagnosis of the example just considered: rather than to withhold attributing understanding in the case where the student is surrounded by experts, why notinsteadand in a way that is congruous with the earlier observation that understanding comes in degreesattribute understanding to the student surrounded by experts, but to a lesser degree (for example, Tim has some understanding of physics, while the professor has a much more complete understanding). Rohwers inventive move involves a contrast case featuring unifying understanding, that is, understanding that is furnished from multiple sources, some good and some bad. 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. A discussion of whether linguistic understanding is a form of knowledge. 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. A more charitable interpretation of Bakers position would be to read making reasonable sense more strongly. 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.