epistemological shift pros and cons

He considers that grasping might be a modal sense or ability that allows the understander to, over and above registering how things are. In other words, they claim that one cannot always tell that one understands. 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. Discusses and defines ability in the sense often appealed to in work on cognitive ability and the value of knowledge. While we would apply a description of better understanding to agent A even if the major difference between her and agent B was that A had additional true beliefs, we would also describe A as having better understanding than B if the key difference was that A had fewer false beliefs. 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. Carter, J. (For example, is it a kind of knowledge, another kind of propositional attitude, an ability, and so on? 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. How should we distinguish between peripheral beliefs about a subject matter and beliefs that are not properly, Understanding entails true beliefs of the form. Endorses the idea that when we consider how things would be if something was true, we increase our access to further truths. Wilkenfeld, D. Understanding as Representation Manipulability. Synthese 190 (2013): 997-1016. Essentially, this view traditionally holds that understanding why X is the case is equivalent to knowing why X is the case (which is in turn supposed to be equivalent to knowing that X is the case because of Y). A monograph that explores the nature and value of achievements in great depth. However, Baker (2003) has offered an account on which at least some instances of understanding-why are non-factive. ), Knowledge, Truth and Obligation. 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. Thirdly, Kelp (2015) has an objection that he thinks all who favor a manipulationist line should find worrying. Since what Grimm is calling subjective understanding (that is, Riggss intelligibility) is by stipulation essentially not factive, the question of the factivity of subjective understanding simply does not arise. In this respect, it seems Kelps move against the manipulationist might get off the ground only if certain premises are in play which manipulationists as such would themselves be inclined to resist. If the former, then this is unfortunate given the theoretical work the term is supposed to be doing in characterizing understanding. 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. 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. . A. and Gordon, E. C. On Pritchard, Objectual Understanding and the Value Problem. American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2014): 1-14. Consider the view that the kinds of epistemic luck that suffice to undermine knowledge do not also undermine understanding. Pritchard (2007) has put forward some ideas that may prevent the need to adopt a weak view of understandings factivity while nonetheless maintaining the key thrust of Elgins insight. Grimm, S. Is Understanding a Species of Knowledge? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2006): 515-535. 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). Lucky Understanding Without Knowledge. Synthese 191 (2014): 945-959. Where should an investigation of understanding in epistemology take us next? 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. See Elgin (2004) for some further discussion of the role of acceptance and belief in her account. Argues that understanding (unlike knowledge) is a type of cognitive achievement and therefore of distinctive value. 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. Kim, J. 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. An epistemological shift: from evidence-based medicine to epistemological responsibility J Eval Clin Pract. Putting this all together, a scientist who embraces the ideal gas law, as an idealization, would not necessarily have any relevant false beliefs. Khalifas (2013) view of understanding is a form of explanatory idealism. Elgin (2007), like Zagzebski, is sympathetic to a weak factivity constraint on objectual understanding, where the object of understanding is construed as a fairly comprehensive, coherent body of information (2007: 35). This view, embraced by DePaul and Grimm (2009), implies that to the extent that understanding and knowledge come apart, it is not with respect to a difference in susceptibility to being undermined by epistemic luck. Open Document. 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). 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. 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. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Grimm (2011) calls this subjective understanding. He describes subjective understanding as being merely a grasp of how specific propositions interlinkone that does not depend on their truth but rather on their forming a coherent picture. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005. True enough. Philosophical issues, 14(1) (2004): 113-131. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. A novel interpretation of the traditional view according to which understanding-why can be explained in terms of knowledge of causes. On such a view, grasping talk could simply be jettisoned altogether. Wilkenfeld suggests that this ability consists at least partly in being able to correct minor mistakes in ones mental representation and use it to make assessments in similar cases. 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. A more charitable interpretation of Bakers position would be to read making reasonable sense more strongly. Of course, many interrelated questions then emerge regarding coherence. Know How. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. 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. and (ii) what qualifies a group of beliefs as a system in the sense that is at issue when it is claimed that understanding involves grasping relationships or connections within a system of beliefs? Whitcomb also cites Alston (2005) as endorsing a stronger view, according to which true belief or knowledge gets at least some of its epistemic value from its connection to, and satisfaction of, curiosity. 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. Riggs, W. Why Epistemologists Are So Down on Their Luck. Synthese 158 (3) (2007): 329-344. 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. Epistemological assumptions are those that focus on what can be known and how knowledge can be acquired (Bell, 8). To borrow a case from Riggs, stealing an Olympic medal or otherwise cheating to attain it lacks the kind of value one associates with earning the medal, through ones own skill. But most knowledge is not metaknowledge, and epistemology is therefore a relatively insignificant source of knowledge. Zagzebski (2001), whose view maintains that at least not all cases of understanding require true beliefs, gestures to something like this view. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. See, however, Carter & Gordon (2014) for a recent criticism on the point of identifying understanding with strong cognitive achievement. The root of the recent resurgence of interest in understanding in epistemology. Claims that understanding is entirely compatible with both intervening and environmental forms of veritic luck. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. I side with positivism; which states knowledge can be found via empirical observations (obtained through the senses). Is it a kind of knowledge, another kind of propositional attitude, an ability, and so forth? 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. Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological shift in an essay. ), Fictions in Science: Essays on Idealization and Modeling. As such, his commentary here is particularly relevant to the question of whether gasping is factive. Knowledge is almost universally taken to be to be factive (compare, Hazlett 2010). Grimm (2011) also advocates for a fairly straightforward manipulationist approach in earlier work. Van Camp, W. Explaining Understanding (or Understanding Explanation. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 4(1) (2014): 95-114. Curiosity and a Response-Dependent Account of the Value of Understanding. In T. Henning and D. Schweikard (eds. Includes Alstons view of curiosity, according to which the epistemic value of true belief and knowledge partially comes from a link to curiosity. This is perhaps partially because there is a tendency to hold a persons potential understanding to standards of objective appropriateness as well as subjective appropriateness. He takes his account to be roughly in line with the laymans concept of curiosity. This point aligns with the datum that we often attribute understanding by degrees. So the kind of knowledge that it provides is metaknowledgeknowledge about knowledge. 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. A paper in which it is argued that (contrary to popular opinion) knowledge does not exclude luck. 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. Grimm (2012) has wondered whether this view might get things explanatorily backwards. For example, and problematically for any account of objectual understanding that relaxes a factivity constraint, people frequently retract previous attributions of 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. Goldman, A. The medical epistemology we propose conforms to the epistemological responsibility of doctors, which involves a specific professional attitude and epistemological skills. 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. 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. Achievements are thought of as being intrinsically good, though the existence of evil achievements (for example, skillfully committing genocide) and trivial achievements (for example, competently counting the blades of grass on a lawn) shows that we are thinking of successes that have distinctive value as achievements (Pritchard 2010: 30) rather than successes that have all-things-considered value. ), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2nd Edition). 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. 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). Secondly, even subject matters that traffic in empirical rather than abstract atemporal phenomena (for example, pure mathematics), are not clearly such that understanding them should involve any appreciation for their coming to be, or their being caused to exist. Consider a student saying, I thought I understood this subject, but my recent grade suggests I dont understand it after all. The Case of Richard Rorty A Newer Argument Pro: Hales's Defense o. This is of course an unpalatable result, as we regularly attribute understanding in the presence of not just one, but often many, false beliefs. 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. 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. The Value of Understanding In D. Pritchard, A. Haddock and A. Millar (eds. 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. New York: Routledge, 2011. Many seem to blend manipulationism with explanations, suggesting for example that what is required for understanding is an ability associated with mentally manipulating explanations. One point that could potentially invite criticism is the move from (1) and (2) to (3). 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. Questions about when and what type of understanding is required for permissible assertion connect with issues related to expertise. A second variety of understanding that has generated interest amongst epistemologists is, understanding-why. Meanwhile, he suggests that were you to ask a fake fire officer who appeared to you to be a real officer and just happened to give the correct answer, it is no longer plausible (by Pritchards lights) that you have understanding-why. For one thing, she admits that these abilities can be possessed by degrees. 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..