and Pritchard, D. Varieties of Externalism. Philosophical Issues 41(1) (2014): 63-109. The Psychology of Scientific Explanation. Philosophy Compass 2(3) (2007): 564-591. Builds an account of understanding according to which understanding a subject matter involves possessing a representation that could be manipulated in a useful way. London: Routledge, 2009. 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). The Oxford Handbook of Social Justice in Music Education In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Kepler improved on Copernicus by contending that the Earths orbit is not circular, but elliptical. Epistemology is the study of sources of knowledge. epistemological shift pros and cons - erikapowers.com This paper proposes a revisionist view of epistemic value and an outline of different types of understanding. 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. If Kelps thought experiment works, manipulation of representations cannot be a necessary condition of understanding after all. ), The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding. Discusses the connection between curiosity and true belief. iwi galil ace rs regulate; pedestrian killed in london today; holly woodlawn biography; how to change icon size in samsung s21; houston marriott westchase Grimm, S. Is Understanding a Species of Knowledge? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2006): 515-535. For But it is not strictly true. With a wide range of subtly different accounts of understanding (both objectual and understanding-why) on the table, it will be helpful to consider how understanding interfaces with certain key debates in epistemology. Toon (2015) has recently suggested, with reference to the hypothesis of extended cognition, that understanding can be located partly outside the head. Therefore, the need to adopt a weak factivity constraint on objectual understandingat least on the basis of cases that feature idealizationslooks at least initially to be unmotivated in the absence of a more sophisticated view about the relationship between factivity, belief and acceptance (however, see Elgin 2004). For a less concessionary critique of Kvanvigs Comanche case, however, see Grimm (2006). Pros and Cons of Epistemological Shift. Social Sciences - EssayZoo In other words, S knows that p only if p is true. Gordon, E. C. Is There Propositional Understanding? Logos & Episteme 3 (2012): 181-192. 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.. Moral Understanding and Knowledge. Philosophical Studies 172(2) (2015): 113-128. Working hypotheses and idealizations need not, on this line, be viewed as representative of realityidealizations can be taken as useful fictions, and working hypotheses are recognized as the most parsimonious theories on the table without thereby being dubbed as wholly accurate. Understanding in Epistemology | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy 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). 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. Kelp points out that this type of view is not so restrictive as to deny understanding to, for example, novice students and young children. However, Strevens nonetheless offers a rough outline of a parallel, non-factive account of grasping, what he calls grasping*. Grimm, S. Understanding as Knowledge of Causes in A. Fairweather (ed. And furthermore, weakly factive accounts welcome the possibility that internally coherent delusions (for example, those that are drug-induced) that are cognitively disconnected from real events might nonetheless yield understanding of those events. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. Alston, W. Beyond Justification: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation. al 2014), have for understanding? But when the object of understanding why is essentially evaluativefor example, understanding why the statue is beautifulit seems that the quality of ones understanding could vary dramatically even when we hold fixed that one possesses a correct and complete explanation of how the statue came to be (that is, both a physical and social description of these causes). He concedes, though, that sometimes curiosity on a smaller scale can be sated by epistemic justification, and that what seems like understanding, but is actually just intelligibility, can sate the appetite when one is deceived. 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. Philosophy of Science, 79(1) (2012): 15-37. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. For example, Kvanvig (2003) holds that understanding is particularly valuable in part because it requires a special grasp of explanatory and other coherence-making relationships. Riggs (2003: 20) agrees, stating that understanding of a subject matter requires a deep appreciation, grasp or awareness of how its parts fit together, what role each one plays in the context of the whole, and of the role it plays in the larger scheme of things (italics added). Thirdly, Kelp (2015) has an objection that he thinks all who favor a manipulationist line should find worrying. 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. PHIL 201 AIU Philosophy Pros & Cons of The Epistemological Shift Essay Early defence of explanations key role in understanding. The cons of the epistemology shift that is a major - Course Hero Likewise, just as all understanding will presumably involve achieving intelligibility even though intelligibility does not entail understanding, so too will all grasping involve grasping* even though grasping* does not entail grasping. 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. Often-cited discussion of the fake barn counterexample to traditional accounts of knowledge that focus on justified true belief. 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. So, understanding is compatible with a kind of epistemic luck that knowledge excludes. Consider a student saying, I thought I understood this subject, but my recent grade suggests I dont understand it after all. Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological shift in an essay There is a common and plausible intuition that understanding might be at least as epistemically valuable as knowledgeif not more soand relatedly that it demands more intellectual sophistication than other closely related epistemic states. The Pros And Cons Of Epistemology - Internet Public Library What is Justified Belief? In G. S. Pappas (ed. Argues that understanding (unlike knowledge) is a type of cognitive achievement and therefore of distinctive value. 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. Kvanvig, J. The context-sensitive element of Wilkenfelds account of understanding allows him to attribute adequate understanding to, for example, a student in an introductory history class and yet deny understanding to that student when the context shifts to place him in a room with a panel of experts. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. 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. epistemological shift pros and cons - oshawanewhome.ca 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 . 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. Examples of the sort considered suggest thateven if understanding has some important internalist component to ittransparency of the sort Zagzebski is suggesting when putting forward the KU claim, is an accidental property of only some cases of understanding and not essential to understanding. Although a large number of epistemologists hold that understanding is not a species of knowledge (e.g. Riggs, W. Understanding Virtue and the Virtue of Understanding In M. DePaul and L. Zagzebski (eds. 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. 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. 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). Riggs, W. Why Epistemologists Are So Down on Their Luck. Synthese 158 (3) (2007): 329-344. He considers that grasping might be a modal sense or ability that allows the understander to, over and above registering how things are. Defends a lack of control account of luck. However, Pritchard (2014) responds to Grimms latest proposal with a number of criticisms. Includes Alstons view of curiosity, according to which the epistemic value of true belief and knowledge partially comes from a link to curiosity. 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. This holds regardless of whether we are Platonists or nominalists about such entities. With each step in the sequence, we understand the motion of the planets better than we did before. He argues that we can gain some traction on the nature of grasping significant to understanding if we view it along such manipulationist lines. I side with positivism; which states knowledge can be found via empirical observations (obtained through the senses). Kvanvig identifies the main opponent to his view, that the scope of curiosity is enough to support the unrestricted value of understanding, to be one on which knowledge is what is fundamental to curiosity. Hazlett, A. On such an interpretation, explanationism can be construed as offering a simple answer to the object question discussed above: the object of understanding-relevant grasping would, on this view, be explanations. Pritchard (2008: 8) points out thatfor exampleif one believes that ones house burned down because of the actions of an arsonist when it really burnt down because of faulty wiring, it just seems plain that one lacks understanding of why ones house burned down. Despite the fact that Copernicuss central claim was strictly false, the theory it belongs to constitutes a major advance in understanding over the Ptolemaic theory it replaced. Why We Dont Deserve Credit for Everything We Know. Synthese 156 (2007). 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. Grimm (2011) also advocates for a fairly straightforward manipulationist approach in earlier work. 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. ), Justification and Knowledge. On the weakest view, one can understand a subject matter even if none of ones beliefs about that subject matter are true. In so doing, he notes that the reader may be inclined to add further internalist requirements to his reliability requirement, of the sort put forward by Kvanvig (2003). Morris (2012), like Rohwer, also defends lucky understandingin particular, understanding-why, or what he calls explanatory understanding). Utilize at least 2 credible sources to support the arguments presented in the paper. Whitcomb, D. Epistemic Value In A. Cullison (ed. This aside, can we consider extending Grimms conception of understanding as non-propositional knowledge of causes to the domain of objectual understanding? The epistemological shift in the present in the study - Course Hero Bradford, G. Achievement. Finally, on the other side of the spectrum from Zagzebski and Kvanvig, and also in opposition with Pritchard, is the view that understandings immunity to epistemic luck is isomorphic to knowledges immunity to epistemic luck. In this Gettier-style case, she has good reason to believe her true beliefs, but the source of these beliefs (for example, the rumor mill) is highly unreliable and this makes her beliefs only luckily true, in the sense of intervening epistemic luck. Longworth, G. Linguistic Understanding and Knowledge. Nous 42 (2008): 50-79. 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. Open Document. Specifically, a very weak view of understandings factivity does not fit with the plausible and often expressed intuition that understanding is something especially epistemically valuable. [] Abstract. Knowledge is almost universally taken to be to be factive (compare, Hazlett 2010). In looking at moral understanding-why, outlines some key abilities that may be necessary to the grasping component of understanding. 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. For example, Hills (2009: 4) says you cannot understand why p if p is false (compare: S knows that p only if p). The root of the recent resurgence of interest in understanding in epistemology. 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. 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. 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. This consequence does not intuitively align with our practices of attributing understanding. In short: understanding is causal propositional knowledge. Though the demandingness of this ability need not be held fixed across practical circumstances. ), Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology. Pritchard, D. The Value of Knowledge: Understanding. In A. Haddock, A. Millar and D. Pritchard (eds. Epistemology is a way of framing knowledge, it defines how it can be produced and augmented. Consequently, engaging with the project of clarifying and exploring the epistemic states or states attributed when we attribute understanding is a complex matter. Pritchard maintains that it is intuitive that in the case just described understanding is attainedyou have consulted a genuine fire officer and have received all the true beliefs required for understanding why your house burned down, and acquire this understanding in the right way. Incudes arguments for the position that understanding need not be factive. An epistemological shift: from evidence-based medicine to Stanley, J. 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.
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