Hills (2009) is an advocate of such a view of understanding-why in particular. epistemological shift pros and cons. Consider, for instance, the felicity of the question: Am I understanding this correctly? and I do not know if I understand my own defense mechanisms; I think I understand them, but I am not sure. The other side of the coin is that one often can think that one understands things that one does not (for example, Trout 2007). This paper proposes a revisionist view of epistemic value and an outline of different types of understanding. Since it is central to her take on human evolution, factivists like Kvanvig must conclude that her take on human evolution does not qualify as understanding. Carter (2014) argues that shifting to more demanding practical environments motivates attributing lower degrees of understanding rather than (as Wilkenfeld is suggests) withholding understanding. See, however, Carter & Gordon (2014) for a recent criticism on the point of identifying understanding with strong cognitive achievement. 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. For 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. Explanatory Knowledge and Metaphysical Dependence. In his Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. New York: Free Press, 1965. Many seem to blend manipulationism with explanations, suggesting for example that what is required for understanding is an ability associated with mentally manipulating explanations. He takes his account to be roughly in line with the laymans concept of curiosity. Eds. Although a large number of epistemologists hold that understanding is not a species of knowledge (e.g. ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. 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). Argues against compatibility between understanding and epistemic luck. 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. ), Knowledge, Truth and Obligation. Given the extent to which grasping is highly associated with understanding and left substantively unspecified, it is perhaps unsurprising that the matter of how to articulate grasping-related conditions on understanding has proven to be rather divisive. 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. In other words, they claim that one cannot always tell that one understands. Most notably here is what we can call linguistic understandingnamely, the kind of understanding that is of particular interest to philosophers of language in connection with our competence with words and their meanings (see, for example, Longworth 2008). Dordecht: Springer, 2014. An in-depth exploration of different types of epistemic luck. Kvanvig, J. Resists Pritchards claim that there can be weak achievements, that is, ones that do not necessarily involve great effort. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0863-z. 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). (vi) an ability to give q (the right explanation) when given the information p. Argues that we should replace the main developed accounts of understanding with earlier accounts of scientific explanation. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. There are three potential worries with this general style of approach. Meanwhile, when discussing outright (as opposed to ideal) understanding, Kelp suggests that we adopt a contextualist perspective. Pritchard, D. Knowledge, Understanding and Epistemic Value In A. OHear (ed. Bradford, G. Achievement. Would this impede ones understanding? 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. 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. epistemological shift pros and cons. 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. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. Secondly, there is plenty of scope for understanding to play a more significant role in social epistemology. Some focus on understanding-why while others focus on objectual understanding. With each step in the sequence, we understand the motion of the planets better than we did before. London: Continuum, 2003. ), Epistemic Value. Lipton, P. Understanding Without Explanation in H. de Regt, S. Leonelli, and K. Eigner (eds. If a grasping condition is necessary for understanding, does one satisfy this condition only when one exercises a grasping ability to reflect how things are in the world? Includes further discussion of the role of acceptance and belief in her view of understanding. Outlines a view on which understanding something requires making reasonable sense of it. Solicitar ms informacin: 310-2409701 | administracion@consultoresayc.co. 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. If Pritchard is right to claim that understanding is always a strong cognitive achievement, then understanding is always finally valuable if cognitive achievement is also always finally valuable, and moreover, valuable in a way that knowledge is not. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. philos201 Assignment Details Recall that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. 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. Goldman, A. 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. So the kind of knowledge that it provides is metaknowledgeknowledge about knowledge. However, advocates of moderate approaches to the factivity of understanding are left with some difficult questions to answer. In other words, S knows that p only if p is true. Grimm anticipates this point and expresses a willingness to embrace a looser conception of dependence than causal dependence, one that includes (following Kim 1994) species of dependence such as mereological dependences (that is, dependence of a whole on its parts), evaluative dependences (that is, dependence of evaluative on non-evaluative), and so on. Wilkenfeld (2013) offers the account that most clearly falls under Kelps characterization of manipulationist approaches to understanding. Cases of intervening luck taketo use a simple examplethe familiar pattern of Chisholms sheep in a field case, where an agent sees a sheep-shaped rock which looks just like a sheep, and forms the belief There is a sheep. What is Justified Belief? In G. S. Pappas (ed. Specifically, a very weak view of understandings factivity does not fit with the plausible and often expressed intuition that understanding is something especially epistemically valuable. For, even if understanding why 22=4 does not require a grasp of any causal relation, it might nonetheless involve a grasp of some kind of more general dependence, for instance the kind of dependence picked out by the metaphysical grounding relation. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979. Hetherington, S. There Can be Lucky Knowledge in M. Steup, J. Turri and E. Sosa (eds. Gives an overview of recent arguments for revisionist theories of epistemic value that suggest understanding is more valuable than knowledge. 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. Examines reasons to suppose that attributions of understanding are typically attributions of knowledge, understanding-why or objectual understanding. 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. The epistemological shift in the present In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. University of Edinburgh Grimm has put his finger on an important commonality at issue in his argument from parity. His central claim is that curiosity provides hope for a response-dependent or behaviour-centred explanation of the value of whatever curiosity involves or aims at. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. In all these cases, epistemology seeks to understand one or another kind of cognitive success (or, correspondingly, cognitive failure ). Uses the concept of understanding to underwrite a theory of explanation. However, such a strong view would also make understanding nearly unobtainable and surely very rarefor example, on the extremely strong proposal under consideration, recognized experts in a field would be denied understanding if they had a single false belief about some very minor aspect of the subject matter. New York: Routledge, 2011. Salmon, W. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation. In Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 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. 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. Elgin, C. Z. As Kvanvig sees it, knowing requires non-accidental links between (internal) mental states and external events in just the right way.
