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. True enough. Philosophical issues, 14(1) (2004): 113-131. The topic of epistemic value has only relatively recently received sustained attention in mainstream epistemology. 2015 Jun;21(3):433-9. doi: 10.1111/jep.12282. According to his positive proposal, objectual understanding is the goal and what typically sates the appetite associated with curiosity. Some focus on understanding-why while others focus on objectual understanding. See, however, Carter & Gordon (2014) for a recent criticism on the point of identifying understanding with strong cognitive achievement. View Shift in Epistemology.edited.docx from SOCIOLOGY 1010 at Columbia Southern University. More generally, though, it is important to note that Khalifa, via his grasping argument, is defending reliable explanatory evaluation as merely a necessarythough not sufficientcomponent of grasping. Hence, he argues that any propositional knowledge is derivative. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. In a given context, then, one understands some subject matter P only if one approximates fully comprehensive and maximally well-connected knowledge of P closely enough that one is sufficiently likely to successfully perform any task relating to P that is determined by the context, assuming that one has the skills needed to do so and to exercise them in suitably favorable conditions. 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. 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. 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. 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. In short: understanding is causal propositional knowledge. Running head: SHIFT IN EPISTEMOLOGY 1 Shift in Epistemology Student's Name Professor's Name Institution 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). This leaves us, however, with an interesting question about the point at which there is no understanding at all, rather than merely weaker or poorer understanding. Explores understanding as the proper goal of inquiry, in addition to discussing understandings distinctive value. Toon, A. A potential worry then is that the achievement one attains when one understands chemistry need not involve the subject working the subject matterin this case, chemistryscause. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. Criticizes Grimms view of understanding as knowledge of causes. In other words, they claim that one cannot always tell that one understands. For example, an environment where ones abilities so easily could generate false beliefs of form despite issuing (luckily) true beliefs of the form on this occasion. 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. His modal model of understanding fits with the intuition that we understand not propositions but relations between parts to wholes or systems of various thoughts.. According to Grimm, cases like Kvanvig admit of a more general characterisation, depending on how the details are filled in. 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. Stanley, J and Williamson, T. Knowing How. Journal of Philosophy 98(8) (2001): 411-444. On the weakest view, one can understand a subject matter even if none of ones beliefs about that subject matter are true. View Shift in Epistemology.docx from SOCIOLOGY 1010 at Columbia Southern University. 1. ), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2nd Edition). 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. 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. DePaul, M. Ugly Analysis and Value in A. Haddock, A. Millar and D. Pritchard (eds. Carter, J. For one thing, she admits that these abilities can be possessed by degrees. Explores the epistemological role of exemplification and aims to illuminate the relationship between understanding and scientific idealizations construed as fictions. There is arguably a further principled reason that an overly weak view of the factivity of understanding will not easily be squared with pretheoretical intuitions about understanding. For example, in Whitcomb (2010: 8), we find the observation 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. Meanwhile, Pritchard (2009: 11) notes as we might be tempted to put the point, we would surely rather understand than merely know. A helpful clarification here comes from Grimm (2012: 105), who in surveying the literature on the value of understanding points out that the suggestion seems to be that understanding (of a complex of some kind) is better than the corresponding item of propositional knowledge. epistemological shift pros and cons Hills (2009) is an advocate of such a view of understanding-why in particular. In other words, S knows that p only if p is true. Grimm (2011) also advocates for a fairly straightforward manipulationist approach in earlier work. A second variety of understanding that has generated interest amongst epistemologists is, understanding-why. Relation question: What is the grasping relationship? 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. al 2014), have for understanding? . 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. On the other hand, there are explanationists, who argue that it is knowledge or evaluation of explanations that is doing the relevant work. He considers that grasping might be a modal sense or ability that allows the understander to, over and above registering how things are. Morris (2012), like Rohwer, also defends lucky understandingin particular, understanding-why, or what he calls explanatory understanding). Secondly, she concedes that it is possible that in some cases additional abilities must be added before the set of abilities will be jointly sufficient. Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological shift in an essay. Carter, J. Consider the view that the kinds of epistemic luck that suffice to undermine knowledge do not also undermine 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. The advances are clearly cognitive advances. Alston, W. Beyond Justification: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation. However, Pritchards work on epistemic luck (for example, 2005) and how it is incompatible with knowledge leads him to reason that understanding is immune to some but not all forms of malignant luck (that is, luck which is incompatible with 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? Outlines and evaluates the anti-intellectualist and intellectualist views of know-how. According to Zagzebski (2001), the epistemic value of understanding is tied not to elements of its factivity, but rather to its transparency. ), Epistemic Value. Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological shift Goldman, A. 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. fort hood cif inprocessing; bucks county inspector of elections candidates; lockdown limerick poem; boeing seattle badge office. epistemological shift pros and cons. A central component of Kvanvigs argument is negative; he regards knowledge as ill-suited to play the role of satisfying curiosity, and in particular, by rejecting three arguments from Whitcomb to this effect. 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. One point that could potentially invite criticism is the move from (1) and (2) to (3). For example, in Whitcomb (2011) we find the suggestion that theoretical wisdom is a form of particularly deep understanding. Kelps account, then, explains our attributions of degrees of understanding in terms of approximations to such well-connected knowledge. 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, Baker (2003) has offered an account on which at least some instances of understanding-why are non-factive. 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). Grimm (2006) and Pritchard (2010) counter that many of the most desirable instances of potential understanding, such as when we understand another persons psychology or understand how the world works, are not transparent. The possession of such judgment plausibly lines up more closely with ability possession (that is, (i)-(vi)) than with propositional attitude possession. 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. ), Knowledge, Virtue and Action. 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. Fourthly, a relatively fertile area for further research concerns the semantics of understanding attribution.