Hills, A. Hills herself does not believe that understanding-why is some kind of propositional knowledge, but she points out that even if it is there is nonetheless good cause to think that understanding-why is very unlike ordinary propositional knowledge. Though in light of this fact, it is not obvious that understanding is the appropriate term for this state. Discusses the connection between curiosity and true belief. It should be noted that Hills 2009: 7 is also sympathetic to a similar thought, suggesting that the threshold for understanding might be contextually determined. Carter, J. Zagzebski, L. Recovering Understanding In M. Steup (ed. London: Routledge, 2009. This aside, can we consider extending Grimms conception of understanding as non-propositional knowledge of causes to the domain of objectual understanding? Such cases she claims feature intervening luck that is compatible with understanding. Utilize at least 2 credible sources to support the arguments presented in the paper. Kelp points out that this type of view is not so restrictive as to deny understanding to, for example, novice students and young children. Contrary to premise (3), such abilities (of the sort referenced by Khalifa in premise 2 and 3) arguably need not involve discriminating between explanations, so long as one supposes that discriminating between explanations is something one has the reliable ability to do only if one could not very easily form a belief of the form when this is false. What is it to have this ability to modify some mental representation? 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. Grimm has put his finger on an important commonality at issue in his argument from parity. 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. The Pros And Cons Of Epistemology. Putting this all together, a scientist who embraces the ideal gas law, as an idealization, would not necessarily have any relevant false beliefs. 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. ), Epistemic Value. 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. ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. Would this impede ones understanding? 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). 1. It is also becoming an increasingly popular position to hold that understanding is more epistemically valuable than knowledge (see Kvanvig 2003; Pritchard 2010). . 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). He takes his account to be roughly in line with the laymans concept of curiosity. Stephen P. Stitch: The Fragmentation of Reason. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51(1) (1991): 189-193. Includes Alstons view of curiosity, according to which the epistemic value of true belief and knowledge partially comes from a link to curiosity. As Kvanvig sees it, knowing requires non-accidental links between (internal) mental states and external events in just the right way. 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. To the extent that these worries with transparency are apt, a potential obstacle emerges for the prospects of accounting for the value of understanding in terms of its transparency. But, the chief requirement of understanding, for him, is instead that there be the right coherence-making relations in some agents collection of information (that is, that the agent has a grasp of how all this related information fits together. 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. Although the analysis of the value of epistemic states has roots in Plato and Aristotle, this renewed and more intense interest was initially inspired by two coinciding trends in epistemology. Some of Pritchards (for example, 2009) earlier work on understanding uses the terminology atomistic understanding as synonymous with understanding-why and indeed his more recent work shifts to using the latter term. 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.. What is Justified Belief? In G. S. Pappas (ed. 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. Consider here an analogy: a false belief can be subjectively indistinguishable from knowledge. In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Hardback) (Vol. Trout, J.D. This holds regardless of whether we are Platonists or nominalists about such entities. Displacements of power in the realm of concepts accompany these new orientations. Epistemology is the study nature of human knowledge itself. True enough. Philosophical issues, 14(1) (2004): 113-131. The Psychology of Scientific Explanation. Philosophy Compass 2(3) (2007): 564-591. 57-74, 2015. As Elgin (2007) notes, it is normal practice to attribute scientific understanding to individuals even when parts of the bodies of information that they endorse diverge somewhat from the truth. Carter, J. Incudes arguments for the position that understanding need not be factive. This section considers the connection between understanding-why and truth, and then engages with the more complex issue of whether objectual understanding is factive. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Kvanvig, J. Van Camp, W. Explaining Understanding (or Understanding Explanation. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 4(1) (2014): 95-114. 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. That is, there is something defective about a scientists would-be understanding of gas behavior were that scientist, unlike all other competent scientists, to reject that the ideal gas law is an idealization and instead embraced it as a fact. Morris, K. A Defense of Lucky Understanding. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (2012): 357-371. The proponent of moderate factivity owes an explanation. Contains the paradigmatic case of environmental epistemic luck (that is, the fake barn case). 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. An epistemological shift: from evidence-based medicine to epistemological responsibility J Eval Clin Pract. In short, then, Kvanvig wants to insist that the true beliefs that one attains in acquiring ones understanding can all be Gettiered, even though the Gettier-style luck which prevents these beliefs from qualifying as knowledge does not undermine the understanding this individual acquires. Thirdly, Kelp (2015) has an objection that he thinks all who favor a manipulationist line should find worrying. Gordon, E. C. Is There Propositional Understanding? Logos & Episteme 3 (2012): 181-192. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. ), Knowledge, Virtue and Action. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. There is little work focusing exclusively on the prospects of a non-factive construal of understanding-why; most authors, with a few exceptions, take it that understanding-why is obviously factive in a way that is broadly analogous to propositional knowledge. Considers some of the ramifications that active externalist approaches might have for epistemology. Should we say that the use of the term understanding that applies to such cases should be of no interest to epistemology? ), Epistemic Value. ), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Argues that understanding (unlike knowledge) is a type of cognitive achievement and therefore of distinctive value. If so, then the internally consistent delusion objection typically leveled against weakly nonfactive views raises its head. Grimm (2011) suggests that what we should regard as being understood in cases of objectual understandingnamely, the object of the objectual attitude relationcan be helpfully thought of as akin to a system or structure [that has] parts or elements that depend upon one another in various ways.. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. 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. Carter (2014) argues that shifting to more demanding practical environments motivates attributing lower degrees of understanding rather than (as Wilkenfeld is suggests) withholding understanding. Disputes the popular claim that understanding is more epistemically valuable than knowledge. 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. (2007: 37), COPERNICUS: A central tenet of Copernicuss theory is the contention that the Earth travels around the sun in a circular orbit. 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. Of course, many interrelated questions then emerge regarding coherence. philos201 Assignment Details Recall that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. The next section considers some of the most prominent examples of attempts to expand on or replace a grasping condition on understanding. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. 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). 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. Lackey, J. For example, if I competently grasp the relevant coherence-making and explanatory relations between propositions about chemistry which I believe and which are true but which I believed on an improper basis. Abstract. 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. His alternative suggestion is to propose explanation as the ideal of understanding, a suggestion that has as a consequence that one should measure degrees of understanding according to how well one approximate[s] the benefits provided by knowing a good and correct explanation. Khalifa submits that this line is supported by the existence of a correct and reasonably good explanation in the background of all cases of understanding-why that does not involve knowledge of an explanationa background explanation that would, if known, provide a greater degree of understanding-why. An earlier paper defending the intellectualist view of know-how. Curiosity and a Response-Dependent Account of the Value of Understanding. In T. Henning and D. Schweikard (eds. The root of the recent resurgence of interest in understanding in epistemology. A view on which the psychics epistemic position in this case qualifies as understanding-why would be unsatisfactorily inclusive. 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. Kelp (2015) makes a helpful distinction between two broad camps here. In rationalism way of thinking, knowledge is acquired using reasons or reasoning. Pritchards verdict is that we should deny understanding in the intervening case and attribute it in the environmental case. 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. However, Strevens nonetheless offers a rough outline of a parallel, non-factive account of grasping, what he calls grasping*. As will see, a good number of epistemologists would agree that false beliefs are compatible with understanding. This in part for three principal reasons. For example, Carter and Gordon (2011) consider that there might be cases in which understanding, and not just knowledge, is the required epistemic credential to warrant assertion. The Varieties of Cognitive Success 1.1 What Kinds of Things Enjoy Cognitive Success? 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). 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). 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. Rohwer, Y. One point that could potentially invite criticism is the move from (1) and (2) to (3). 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). 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. Kvanvig, J. Strevens, M. No Understanding Without Explanation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013): 510-515. Relatedly, if framed in terms of credence, what credence threshold must be met, with respect to propositions in some set, for the agent to understand that subject matter? Assuming that we need an account of degrees of understanding if we are going to give an account of outright understanding (as opposed to working the other way around, as he thinks many others are inclined to do), Kelp (2015) suggests we adopt a knowledge based account of objectual understanding according to which maximal understanding of a given phenomenon is to be cashed out in terms of fully comprehensive and maximally well-connected knowledge of that phenomenon.
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