Riggs, W. Understanding Virtue and the Virtue of Understanding In M. DePaul and L. Zagzebski (eds. 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. ), Justification and Knowledge. Argues against compatibility between understanding and epistemic luck. Running head: SHIFT IN EPISTEMOLOGY 1 Shift in Epistemology Student's Name Professor's Name Institution Includes criticism of Kvanvigs line on epistemic luck and understanding. 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. An in-depth exploration of different types of epistemic luck. In other words, they claim that one cannot always tell that one understands. 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. CA: Wadsworth, 2009. Grimm, S. The Value of Understanding. Philosophy Compass 7(2) (2012): 103-177. For example, by trusting someone I should not have trusted, or even worse, by reading tea leaves which happened to afford me true beliefs about chemistry. He considers that grasping might be a modal sense or ability that allows the understander to, over and above registering how things are. Kim, J. One natural place to start will be to examine the relationship between understanding and epistemic luck. 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). Grasping also allows the understander to anticipate what would happen if things were relevantly differentnamely, to make correct inferences about the ways in which relevant differences to the truth-values of the involved propositions would influence the inferences that obtain in the actual world. Utilize at least 2 credible sources to support the arguments presented in the paper. 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. He suggests that manipulating the system allows the understander to see the way in which the manipulation influences (or fails to influence) other parts of the system (2011: 11). 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. Pritchards verdict is that we should deny understanding in the intervening case and attribute it in the environmental case. Khalifa, K. Inaugurating understanding or repackaging explanation. In addition, Zagzebski supports the provocative line that understanding can perhaps sometimes be more desirable when the epistemic agent does not have the relevant true beliefs. The root of the recent resurgence of interest in understanding in epistemology. 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. 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. The advances are clearly cognitive advances. It is controversial just which epistemological issues concerning understanding should be central or primarygiven that understanding is a relative newcomer in the mainstream epistemological literature. 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. Argues that requiring knowledge of an explanation is too strong a condition on understanding-why. Carter, 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. (vi) an ability to give q (the right explanation) when given the information p. Further, suppose that the self-proclaimed psychic even has reason to believe he is right to think he is psychic, as his friends and family deem that it is safer or kinder to buy into his delusions outwardly. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. An overview of the background, development and recent issues in epistemology, including a chapter on understanding as an epistemic good. The Pros And Cons Of Epistemology. Resists the alleged similarity between understanding and knowing-how. 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). If Kelps thought experiment works, manipulation of representations cannot be a necessary condition of understanding after all. Is it problematic to embrace, for example, a contextualist semantics for knowledge attributions while embracing, say, invariantism about understanding? 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. In particular, he wants to propose a non-propositional view that has at its heart seeing or grasping, of the terms of the casual relata, their modal relatedness, which he suggests amounts to seeing or grasping how things might have been if certain conditions had been different. To be clear, the nuanced view Grimm suggests is that while understanding is a kind of knowledge of causes, it is not propositional knowledge of causes but rather non-propositional knowledge of causes, where the non-propositional knowledge is itself unpacked as a kind of ability or know-how. Pritchard, D. Knowledge and Understanding in A. Fairweather (ed. Proposes an account of understandings value that is related to its connection with curiosity. This would be the non-factive parallel to the standard view of grasping. For example, Pritchards case of the fake fire officerwhich recall is one in which he thinks understanding (as well as knowledge) is lackingis one in which Rower points out taht all of the true beliefs and grasped connections between those beliefs are from a bad source. south east england accent; spend billionaires money game; kaplan data entry work from home. Explores the epistemological role of exemplification and aims to illuminate the relationship between understanding and scientific idealizations construed as fictions. University of Edinburgh But no one claims that science has as yet arrived at the truth about the motion of the planets. 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? Your paper should be 3-4 pages in length, not counting the Title page and Reference . Gives an overview of recent arguments for revisionist theories of epistemic value that suggest understanding is more valuable than knowledge. View Shift in Epistemology.edited.docx from SOCIOLOGY 1010 at Columbia Southern University. Consider a student saying, I thought I understood this subject, but my recent grade suggests I dont understand it after all. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. 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. Decent Essays. Lipton, P. Understanding Without Explanation in H. de Regt, S. Leonelli, and K. Eigner (eds. Hills thinks that moral understanding, if it were any kind of propositional knowledge at all, would be knowing a proposition under a practical mode and not necessarily under a theoretical mode.. Whitcomb (2010) notes that Goldman (1999) has considered that the significance or value of some item of knowledge might be at least in part determined by whether, and to what extent, it provides the knower with answers to questions that they are curious about. It is just dumb luck the genuine sheep happened to be in the field. Sullivan, E. Understanding: Not Know-How. Philosohpical Studies (2017). 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. 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. Includes further discussion of the role of acceptance and belief in her view of understanding. London: Routledge, 2009. 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.. However, Grimm is quick to point out that defending one of these two similar views does not depend on the correctness of the other. Hetherington, S. There Can be Lucky Knowledge in M. Steup, J. Turri and E. Sosa (eds. Gettier, E. Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis 23 (6) (1963). 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. Running head: SHIFT IN EPISTEMOLOGY 1 Shift in Epistemology Student's Name Professor's Name Institution As Kvanvig sees it, knowing requires non-accidental links between (internal) mental states and external events in just the right way. ), Fictions in Science: Essays on Idealization and Modeling. As will see, a good number of epistemologists would agree that false beliefs are compatible with understanding. Outlines and evaluates the anti-intellectualist and intellectualist views of know-how. Kelps account, then, explains our attributions of degrees of understanding in terms of approximations to such well-connected knowledge. 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). According to Zagzebski (2001), the epistemic value of understanding is tied not to elements of its factivity, but rather to its transparency. security guard 12 hour shifts aubrey pearsons oaks husband epistemological shift pros and cons. 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. This entry surveys the varieties of cognitive success, and some recent efforts to understand some of those varieties. See answer source: Epistemology in an Hour Caleb Beers Pritchard, D. The Value of Knowledge: Understanding. In A. Haddock, A. Millar and D. Pritchard (eds. 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. 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. Grimm has put his finger on an important commonality at issue in his argument from parity. Considers some of the ramifications that active externalist approaches might have for epistemology. Defends views that hold explanation as indispensable for account of understanding and discusses what a non-factive account of grasping would look like. Though in light of this fact, it is not obvious that understanding is the appropriate term for this state. The Case of Richard Rorty A Newer Argument Pro: Hales's Defense o. 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. He leaves grasping at the level of metaphor or uses it them literally but never develops it. Consider here two cases she offers to this effect: EVOLUTION: A second graders understanding of human evolution might include as a central strand the proposition that human beings descended from apes. To the extent that such a move is available, one has reason to resist Morriss rationale for resisting Pritchards diagnosis of Kvanvigs case. ), The Continuum Companion to Epistemology. 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. However, it is not entirely clear that extant views on understanding fall so squarely into these two camps. On this basis Pritchard insists that Grimms analogy breaks down. The next section considers some of the most prominent examples of attempts to expand on or replace a grasping condition on understanding. Much of the philosophical tradition has viewed the central epistemological problems concerning perception largely and sometimes exclusively in terms of the metaphysical responses to skepticism. For one thing, if understanding is both a factive and strongly internalist notion then a radical skeptical argument that threatens to show that we have no understanding is a very intimidating prospect (as Pritchard 2010:86 points out). Hazlett, A. Even so, and especially over the past decade, there has been agreement amongst most epistemologists working on epistemic value that that understanding is particularly valuable (though see Janvid 2012 for a rare dissenting voice). 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. This is a change from the past. philos201 Assignment Details Recall that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. 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. Her line is that understanding-why involves (i) knowing what something is, and (ii) making reasonable sense of it. This allows the agent to produce a slightly different mental representation of the subject matter that enables efficacious inferences pertaining to (or manipulations of) the subject matter. Moral Understanding and Knowledge. Philosophical Studies 172(2) (2015): 113-128. It is not only unnecessary, but moreover, contentious, that a credible scientist would consider the ideal gas law true. 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). 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. ), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. 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. 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). 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. New York: Routledge, 2011. An overview of wisdom, including its potential relationship to understanding. The proponent of moderate factivity owes an explanation. Epistemological assumptions are those that focus on what can be known and how knowledge can be acquired (Bell, 8). Bradford, G. The Value of Achievements. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 94(2) (2013): 204-224. Kelp, C. Understanding Phenomena. Synthese (2015). Explores understanding as the proper goal of inquiry, in addition to discussing understandings distinctive value. Rohwers inventive move involves a contrast case featuring unifying understanding, that is, understanding that is furnished from multiple sources, some good and some bad. That said, for manipulationists who are not already inclined to accept the entailment from all-knowing to omni-understanding, the efficacy against the manipulationist is diffused as the example does not get off the ground. How should we distinguish between peripheral beliefs about a subject matter and beliefs that are not properly, Understanding entails true beliefs of the form. It is helpful to consider an example. For if the view is correct, then an explanation for why ones understanding why the painting is beautiful is richer, when it is, will simply be in terms of ones possession of a correct answer to the question of why it is beautiful. Both are veritic types of luck on Pritchards viewthey are present when, given how one came to have ones true belief, it is a matter of luck that this belief is true (Pritchard 2005: 146). 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. 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. To what extent do the advantages and disadvantages of, for example, sensitive invariantist, contextualist, insensitive invariantist and relativist approaches to knowledge attributions find parallels in the case of understanding attributions. Defends the strong claim that propositional knowledge is necessary and sufficient for understanding. When considering interesting features that might set understanding apart from propositional knowledge, the idea of grasping something is often mentioned. In addition, it is important to make explicit differences in terminology that can sometimes confuse discussions of some types of understanding. 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. This in part for three principal reasons. 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. This is of course an unpalatable result, as we regularly attribute understanding in the presence of not just one, but often many, false beliefs. One issue worth bringing into sharper focus is whether knowing a good and correct explanation is really the ideal form of understanding-why. Zagzebski (2001), whose view maintains that at least not all cases of understanding require true beliefs, gestures to something like this view. 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.