epistemological shift pros and cons

Make sure you cite them appropriately within your paper, and list them in APA format on your Reference page. But no one claims that science has as yet arrived at the truth about the motion of the planets. However, if understanding-why actually is a type of knowing how then this means that intellectualist arguments to the effect that knowing how is a kind of propositional knowledge might apply, mutatis mutandis, to understanding-why as well (see Carter and Pritchard 2013). 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. ), Knowledge, Truth and Obligation. Her line is that understanding-why involves (i) knowing what something is, and (ii) making reasonable sense of it. He claims further that this description of the case undermines the intuition that the writers lack of understanding entails the readers lack of understanding. What is the grasping relation? 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). She claims, it may be possible to know without knowing one knows, but it is impossible to understand without understanding one understands (2001: 246) and suggests that this property of understanding might insulate it from skepticism. Consider, on this point, that a conspiracy theorist might very well grasp* the connection between (false) propositions so as to achieve a coherent, intelligible, though wildly off-base, picture. 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. If understanding entails true beliefs of the form, So understanding entails that beliefs of the form. 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. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. Pritchard, D. The Value of Knowledge: Understanding. In A. Haddock, A. Millar and D. Pritchard (eds. 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. New York: Routledge, 2011. A. and Gordon, E. C. On Pritchard, Objectual Understanding and the Value Problem. American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2014): 1-14. Intervening epistemic luck is the sort present in the Gettiers original cases (1963) which convinced most epistemologists to abandon the traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief. Knowledge is almost universally taken to be to be factive (compare, Hazlett 2010). In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Argues that requiring knowledge of an explanation is too strong a condition on understanding-why. As will see, a good number of epistemologists would agree that false beliefs are compatible with understanding. 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). 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). Drawing from Stanley and Williamson, she makes the distinction between knowing a proposition under a practical mode of presentation and knowing it under a theoretical mode of presentation. Stanley and Williamson admit that the former is especially tough to spell out (see Glick 2014 for a recent discussion), but it must surely involve having complex dispositions, and so it is perhaps possible to know some proposition under only one of these modes of presentation (that is, by lacking the relevant dispositions, or something else). 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. Many epistemologists have sought to distinguish understanding from knowledge on the basis of alleged differences in the extent to which knowledge and understanding are susceptible to being undermined by certain kinds of epistemic luck. 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? I side with positivism; which states knowledge can be found via empirical observations (obtained through the senses). But is understanding factive? More generally, as this line of criticism goes, sometimes we simply mistake mere (non-factive) intelligibility for understanding. This is a point Elgin is happy to grant. On the weakest view, one can understand a subject matter even if none of ones beliefs about that subject matter are true. 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. 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. 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. Consider how some people think they grasp the ways in which their zodiac sign has an influence on their life path, yet their sense of understanding is at odds with the facts of the matter. Rationalism is an epistemological theory, so rationalism can be interpreted the distinct aspects or parts of the mind that are separate senses. Grimm, S. The Value of Understanding. Philosophy Compass 7(2) (2012): 103-177. 57-74, 2015. 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. However, it is not entirely clear that extant views on understanding fall so squarely into these two camps. 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). However, Elgin takes this line further and insists thatwith some qualificationsfalse central beliefs, and not merely false peripheral beliefs, are compatible with understanding a subject matter to some degree. See further Bradford (2013; 2015) for resistance to the very suggestion that there can be weak achievements on Pritchards sensenamely, achievements that do not necessarily involve great effort, regardless of whether they are primarily due to ability. 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). 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. ), Justification and Knowledge. Includes criticism of Kvanvigs line on epistemic luck and understanding. Criticizes the claim that understanding-why should be identified with strong cognitive achievement. What is curiosity? The notion of curiosity that plays a role in Kvanvigs line is a broadly inclusive one that is meant to include not just obvious problem-solving examples but also what he calls more spontaneous examples, such as turning around to see what caused a noise you just heard. For example, a self-proclaimed psychic might see someone trip and believe that he caused this persons fall. While his view fits well with understanding-why, it is less obvious that objectual understanding involves grasping how things came to be. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. facebook android official. by | Jun 9, 2022 | prayers of dedication presbyterian | advance australia national director | Jun 9, 2022 | prayers of dedication presbyterian | advance australia national director Uses the concept of understanding to underwrite a theory of explanation. 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. Contains the famous counterexamples to the Justified True Belief account of knowledge. London: Routledge, 2009. Wilkenfeld (2013) offers the account that most clearly falls under Kelps characterization of manipulationist approaches to understanding. Contrast thiscall it the intervening reading of the casewith Pritchards corresponding environmental reading of the case, where we are to imagine that the agent is reading a reliable academic book which is the source of many true beliefs she acquires about the Comanche. Strevens, M. No Understanding Without Explanation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013): 510-515. Offers an account of understanding that requires having a theory of the relevant phenomenon. 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. This is a change from the past. 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). 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. 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. He argues that we can gain some traction on the nature of grasping significant to understanding if we view it along such manipulationist lines. The guiding task was to clarify what versions of historical epistemology exist and the pros and cons each of them presents. View Shift in Epistemology.edited.docx from SOCIOLOGY 1010 at Columbia Southern University. 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. 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. 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. 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. However, advocates of moderate approaches to the factivity of understanding are left with some difficult questions to answer. 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). Contains the paradigmatic case of environmental epistemic luck (that is, the fake barn case). Introduces intelligibility as an epistemic state similar to understanding but less valuable. Outlines a view on which understanding something requires making reasonable sense of it. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Argues that understanding (unlike knowledge) is a type of cognitive achievement and therefore of distinctive value. Specifically, he takes his opponents view to be that knowledge through direct experience is what sates curiosity, a view that traces to Aristotle. For a less concessionary critique of Kvanvigs Comanche case, however, see Grimm (2006). 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. 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 holds regardless of whether we are Platonists or nominalists about such entities. If, as robust virtue epistemologists have often insisted, cognitive achievement is finally valuable (that is, as an instance of achievements more generally), and understanding necessarily lines up with cognitive achievement but knowledge only sometimes does, then the result is a revisionary story about epistemic value. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. (vi) an ability to give q (the right explanation) when given the information p. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. 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. This is a change from the past. 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. . The modern epistemology deals with the debate between rationalism and empiricism. As such, his commentary here is particularly relevant to the question of whether gasping is factive. 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). The Pros And Cons Of Epistemology. An overview of coherentism that can be useful when considering how theories of coherence might be used to flesh out the grasping condition on understanding. Open Document. 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. Make sure you cite them appropriately within your paper and list them in APA format on your Reference page. On such a view, grasping talk could simply be jettisoned altogether. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Kvanvig (2013) claims that both of these views are mistaken, and in the course of doing so, locates curiosity at the center of his account of understandings value. Knowledge in a Social World. Perhaps the strongest of these is his suggestion that while the faculty of rational insight is indispensable to the grasping account of a priori, it is actually essential to knowledge of causes that it not be grasped through rational insight. Carter, J. 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. ), Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology. For the purposes of thinking about understanding, some of the most important will include: (i) what makes a system of beliefs coherent? An overview of wisdom, including its potential relationship to understanding. 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. endangered species in the boreal forest; etown high school basketball roster. 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. Stephen P. Stitch: The Fragmentation of Reason. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51(1) (1991): 189-193. ), Knowledge, Virtue and Action. It will accordingly be helpful to narrow our focus to the varieties of understanding that feature most prominently in the epistemological literature. 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. For example, Kvanvig (2003: 206) observes that we have an ordinary conception that understanding is a milestone to be achieved by long and sustained efforts at knowledge acquisition and Whitcomb (2012: 8) reflects 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. Yet, these observations do not fit with the weak views commitment to, for example, the claim that understanding is achievable in cases of delusional hallucinations that are disconnected from the facts about how the world is. There are three potential worries with this general style of approach. Explores the epistemological role of exemplification and aims to illuminate the relationship between understanding and scientific idealizations construed as fictions. Goldman, A. Establishes a pro position, supporting that the shift in how people take in knowledge is good. 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. 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). Understanding entails that such beliefs must be the result of exercising reliable cognitive abilities. 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. In particular, how we might define expertise and who has it. Resists the alleged similarity between understanding and knowing-how. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. For one thing, she admits that these abilities can be possessed by degrees. However, Strevens nonetheless offers a rough outline of a parallel, non-factive account of grasping, what he calls grasping*. While Pritchard can agree with Rohwers conclusion that understanding (and specifically as Rohwer is interested in, scientific understanding) is not a species of knowledge, the issue of adjudicating between Rohwers intuition in the case of unifying understanding and the diagnosis Pritchard will be committed to in such a case is complicated. 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. 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. Lipton, P. Understanding Without Explanation in H. de Regt, S. Leonelli, and K. Eigner (eds. ), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2nd Edition). 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. (2007: 37), COPERNICUS: A central tenet of Copernicuss theory is the contention that the Earth travels around the sun in a circular orbit. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. Orand this is a point that has received little attentioneven more weakly, can the true beliefs be themselves unreliably formed or held on the basis of bad reasons. Know How. Such a constraint would preserve the intuition that understanding is a particularly desirable epistemic good and would accordingly be untroubled by the issues highlighted for the weakest view outlined at the start of the section. 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. True enough. Philosophical issues, 14(1) (2004): 113-131. Secondly, one might wonder if Wilkenfelds account of understanding as representation manipulation is too inclusivethat it rules in, as cases of bona fide understanding, representations that are based on inaccurate but internally consistent beliefs. 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. According to Zagzebski (2001), the epistemic value of understanding is tied not to elements of its factivity, but rather to its transparency. Pragmatism as an epistemological approach accentuates the reasoning of theories and concepts by studying their consequences and goals, values and interests they support. This line merits discussion not least because the idea that understanding-why comes by degrees is often ignored in favor of discussing the more obvious point that understanding a subject matter clearly comes by degrees. One helpful way to think about this is as follows: if one takes a paradigmatic case of an individual who understands a subject matter thoroughly, and manipulates the credence the agent has toward the propositions constituting the subject matter, how low can one go before the agent no longer understands the subject matter in question? Discusses whether intellectualist arguments for reducing know-how to propositional knowledge might also apply to understanding-why (if it is a type of knowing how). 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). We can accommodate the thought that not all beliefs relevant to an agents understanding must be true while nonetheless insisting that cases in which false beliefs run rampant will not count as understanding. 824 Words. One can split views on this question into roughly three positions that advocate varying strengths of a factivity constraint on objectual understanding. Bradford, G. The Value of Achievements. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 94(2) (2013): 204-224. In other words, S knows that p only if p is true. Hence, he argues that any propositional knowledge is derivative. Pritchard, D. Knowing the Answer, Understanding and Epistemic Value. Grazer Philosophische Studien 77 (2008): 325-39. 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. 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). 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. 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