Nonetheless, Zagzebski thinks that believing this actually allows us more understanding for most purposes than the vastly more complicated truth owing to our cognitive limitations. 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). Lipton, P. Understanding Without Explanation in H. de Regt, S. Leonelli, and K. Eigner (eds. For It is clearly cognitively better than the belief that humans did not evolve. This is explained in the following way: If it is central to ordinary cognitive function that one is motivated to pursue X, then X has value in virtue of its place in this functional story. Regarding the comparison between the value of understanding and the value of knowledge, then, he will say that if understanding is fundamental to curiosity then this provides at least a partial explanation for why it is superior to the value of knowledge. He claims further that this description of the case undermines the intuition that the writers lack of understanding entails the readers lack of understanding. 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.. London: Continuum, 2012. . Or, should we adopt a more relaxed view of what would be required to satisfy this conditionnamely, a view that focuses on the way the agent connects information. In all these cases, epistemology seeks to understand one or another kind of cognitive success (or, correspondingly, cognitive failure ). 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. Boston: Routledge, 2013. ), The Stanford Enclopedia of Philosophy. Kvanvig, J. 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. Another seemingly promising lineone that engages with the relation question discussed aboveviews grasping as intimately connected with a certain set of abilities. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 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. Zagzebski (2001), whose view maintains that at least not all cases of understanding require true beliefs, gestures to something like this view. body positive tiktok accounts; tough guise 2 summary sparknotes; tracking polls quizlet NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 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. 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. Argues that requiring knowledge of an explanation is too strong a condition on understanding-why. 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). In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. 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. Epistemology is a branch in philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0863-z. 57-74, 2015. This view, while insisting that central beliefs must all be true, is flexible enough to accommodate that there are degrees of understandingthat is, that understanding varies not just according to numbers of true beliefs but also numbers of false, peripheral beliefs. In particular, how we might define expertise and who has it. Riaz (2015), Rohwer (2014) and Morris (2012) have continued to uphold this line on understandings compatibility with epistemic luck and defend this line against some of the objections that are examined below. But no one claims that science has as yet arrived at the truth about the motion of the planets. Looks at the increasing dissatisfaction with ever-more complicated attempts to generate a theory of knowledge immune to counterexamples. 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. ), Fictions in Science: Essays on Idealization and Modeling. Goldman, A. 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. Whitcomb, D. Wisdom. In S. Bernecker and D. Pritchard (eds. 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). A., Kallestrup, J. Palermos, S.O. Consider here an analogy: a false belief can be subjectively indistinguishable from knowledge. 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. Autore dell'articolo: Articolo pubblicato: 16/06/2022 Categoria dell'articolo: fixed gantry vs moving gantry cnc Commenti dell'articolo: andy's dopey transposition cipher andy's dopey transposition cipher Hills thinks that mere propositional knowledge does not essentially involve any of these abilities even if (as per the point above) propositional knowledge requires other kinds of abilities. 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. Make sure you cite them appropriately within your paper and list them in APA format on your Reference page. Are the prospects of extending understanding via active externalism on a par with the prospects for extending knowledge, or is understanding essentially internal in a way that knowledge need not be? Her line is that understanding-why involves (i) knowing what something is, and (ii) making reasonable sense of it. Specifically, Hills outlines six different abilities that she takes to be involved in grasping the reasons why pabilities which effectively constitute, on her view, six necessary conditions for understanding why p. These six abilities allow one to be able to treat q as the reason why p, not merely believe or know that q is the reason why p. They are as follows: (i) an ability to follow another persons explanation of why p. (ii) an ability to explain p in ones own words. Your paper should be 3-4 pages in length, not counting the Title page and Reference page. Due to the possibility of overly simple or passive successes qualifying as cognitive achievements (for example, coming to truly believe that it is dark just by looking out of the window in normal conditions after 10pm), Pritchard cautions that we should distinguish between two classes of cognitive achievementstrong and weak: Weak cognitive achievement: Cognitive success that is because of ones cognitive ability. Though the demandingness of this ability need not be held fixed across practical circumstances. If the former, then this is unfortunate given the theoretical work the term is supposed to be doing in characterizing understanding. manage list views salesforce. Epistemology is a way of framing knowledge, it defines how it can be produced and augmented. The Varieties of Cognitive Success 1.1 What Kinds of Things Enjoy Cognitive Success? Fourthly, a relatively fertile area for further research concerns the semantics of understanding attribution. He claims that while we would generally expect her to have knowledge of her relevant beliefs, this is not essential for her understanding and as a result it would not matter if these true beliefs had been Gettierised (and were therefore merely accidentally true). Sullivan, E. Understanding: Not Know-How. Philosohpical Studies (2017). An overview of wisdom, including its potential relationship to understanding. ), Knowledge, Virtue and Action. ), The Continuum Companion to Epistemology. Argues against the view that moral understanding can be immune to luck while moral knowledge is not. See, however, Carter & Gordon (2014) for a recent criticism on the point of identifying understanding with strong cognitive achievement. So the kind of knowledge that it provides is metaknowledgeknowledge about knowledge. His conception of mental representations defines these representations as computational structures with content that are susceptible to mental transformations. Wilkenfeld constructs a necessary condition on objectual understanding around this definition. Discusses and defines ability in the sense often appealed to in work on cognitive ability and the value of knowledge. A. and Gordon, E. C. On Pritchard, Objectual Understanding and the Value Problem. American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2014): 1-14. However, the core explanationist insight also offers the resources to supplement a grasping account. In . Where is the Understanding? Synthese, 2015. (For example, is it a kind of knowledge, another kind of propositional attitude, an ability, and so on? 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. Sliwa, P. IVUnderstanding and Knowing. Considers some of the ramifications that active externalist approaches might have for epistemology. And, relatedly in social epistemology, we might wonder what if any testimonial transmission principles hold for understanding, and whether there are any special hearer conditions demanded by testimonial understanding acquisition that are not shared in cases of testimonial knowledge acquisition. This aside, can we consider extending Grimms conception of understanding as non-propositional knowledge of causes to the domain of objectual understanding? Section 4 examines the relationship between understanding and types of epistemic luck that are typically thought to undermine knowledge. Rohwer, Y. The childs opinion displays some grasp of evolution. 121-132. Proposes an account of understandings value that is related to its connection with curiosity. (2007: 37-8). Whether wisdom might be a type of understanding or understanding might be a component of wisdom is a fascinating question that can draw on both work in virtue ethics and epistemology. A monograph that explores the nature and value of achievements in great depth. The Myth of Factive Verbs. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80:3 (2010): 497-522. 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. Questions about when and what type of understanding is required for permissible assertion connect with issues related to expertise. (iv) an ability to draw from the information q the conclusion that p (or probably p), (v) an ability to give q (the right explanation) when given the information that p, and. Includes further discussion of the role of acceptance and belief in her view of understanding. As such, his commentary here is particularly relevant to the question of whether gasping is factive. 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. Pritchard, D. Knowing the Answer, Understanding and Epistemic Value. Grazer Philosophische Studien 77 (2008): 325-39. For one thing, it is prudent to note up front that there are uses of understanding that, while important more generally in philosophy, fall outside the purview of mainstream epistemology. 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. I side with positivism; which states knowledge can be found via empirical observations (obtained through the senses). Unlike de Regt and Dieks (2005), Wilkenfeld aims to propose an inclusive manipulation-based view that allows agents to have objectual understanding even if they do not have a theory of the phenomenon in question. In other words, each denies all of the others respective beliefs about the subject, and yet the weak view in principle permits that they might nonetheless understand the subject equally well. 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 is a change from the past. Despite the fact that Copernicuss central claim was strictly false, the theory it belongs to constitutes a major advance in understanding over the Ptolemaic theory it replaced. This holds regardless of whether we are Platonists or nominalists about such entities. ), Epistemic Value. If so, why, and if not why not? Zagzebski, L. On Epistemology. The ambiguity between assenting to a necessary proposition and the grasping or seeing of certain properties and their necessary relatedness mirrors the ambiguity between assenting to a casual proposition and grasping or seeing of the terms of the causal relata: their modal relatedness. 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.. 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. The agents belief is justified and true, thanks to the fact that there is a genuine sheep hiding behind the rock, but the belief is not knowledge, as it could easily have been false. Establishes a pro position, supporting that the shift in how people take in knowledge is good. ), Knowledge, Truth and Obligation. Although, many commentators suggest that understanding requires something further, that is something in additional to merely knowing a proposition or propositions, Grimm thinks we can update the knowledge of causes view so that this intuition is accommodated and explained. Lucky Understanding Without Knowledge. Synthese 191 (2014): 945-959. 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). In other words, even though there is no such gas as that referred to in the law, accepting the law need not involve believing the law to be true and thus believing there to be some gas with properties that it lacks. For example, we might require that the agent make sense of X in a way that is reasonablefew would think that the psychic above is reasonable, though it is beyond the scope of the current discussion to stray into exploring accounts of reasonableness. (For example, propositions, systems, bodies of information, the relationships thereof, and so on?). Grimm, S. Is Understanding a Species of Knowledge? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2006): 515-535. Grimm, S. Understanding In S. Bernecker and D. Pritchard (eds. 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). It will accordingly be helpful to narrow our focus to the varieties of understanding that feature most prominently in the epistemological literature. Epistemological assumptions are those that focus on what can be known and how knowledge can be acquired (Bell, 8). In practice, individuals' epistemological beliefs determine how they think knowledge or truth can be comprehended, what problems - if any - are associated with various views of pursuing and presenting knowledge and what role researchers play in its discovery (Robson, 2002). In particular, one might be tempted to suggest that some of the objections raised to Grimms non-propositional knowledge-of-causes model could be recast as objections to Khalifas own explanation-based view. Greco, J. 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 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. Van Camp, W. Explaining Understanding (or Understanding Explanation. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 4(1) (2014): 95-114. A worry about this move can be put abstractly: consider that if understanding entails true beliefs of form , and that beliefs of form must themselves be the result of exercising reliable cognitive abilities, it might still be that ones reliable -generating abilities are exercised in a bad environment. While his view fits well with understanding-why, it is less obvious that objectual understanding involves grasping how things came to be. Analyzes Kvanvigs Comanche case and argues that knowledge and understanding do not come apart in this example. Kelp points out that this type of view is not so restrictive as to deny understanding to, for example, novice students and young children. For example, and problematically for any account of objectual understanding that relaxes a factivity constraint, people frequently retract previous attributions of understanding. Gordon, E. C. Is There Propositional Understanding? Logos & Episteme 3 (2012): 181-192. Firstly, Kvanvig introduces propositional understanding as what is attributed in sentences that take the form I understand that X (for example, John understands that he needs to meet Harold at 2pm). 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. reptarium brian barczyk; new milford high school principal; salisbury university apparel store If understanding entails true beliefs of the form, So understanding entails that beliefs of the form. Khalifas (2013) view of understanding is a form of explanatory idealism. 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. 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. 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. (iii) an ability to draw from the information that q the conclusion that p (or that probably p). What is the grasping relation? 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. 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. 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. In addition, the weak view leaves it open that two agents might count as understanding some subject matter equally well in spite of the fact that for every relevant belief that one has, the other agent maintains its denial. For a less concessionary critique of Kvanvigs Comanche case, however, see Grimm (2006). In rationalism way of thinking, knowledge is acquired using reasons or reasoning. These similar states share some of the features we typically think understanding requires, but which are not bona fide understanding specifically because a plausible factivity condition is not satisfied. Introduces intelligibility as an epistemic state similar to understanding but less valuable. 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). If Kelps thought experiment works, manipulation of representations cannot be a necessary condition of understanding after all. 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. Criticizes Grimms view of understanding as knowledge of causes. 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. 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. This is because we dont learn about causes a priori. Defends a lack of control account of luck. This is a change from the past. Putting this all together, a scientist who embraces the ideal gas law, as an idealization, would not necessarily have any relevant false beliefs. The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding. 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. 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. With these three types of understanding in mindpropositional understanding, understanding-why and objectual understandingthe next section considers some of the key questions that arise when one attempts to think about when, and under what conditions, understanding should be ascribed to epistemic agents. Elgin, C. Understanding and the Facts. Philosophical Studies 132 (2007): 33-42. Owing to Kvanvigs use of the words perceived achievement, Grimm thinks that the curiosity account of understandings value suggests that subjective understanding (or what is referred to as intelligibility above) can satisfy the desire to make sense of the world or really marks the legitimate end of inquiry.. Baker, L. R. Third Person Understanding in A. Sanford (ed. 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. It is helpful to consider an example. The epistemological shift in the present In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Includes Alstons view of curiosity, according to which the epistemic value of true belief and knowledge partially comes from a link to curiosity. Resists Pritchards claim that there can be weak achievements, that is, ones that do not necessarily involve great effort. Pritchard, D. Knowledge and Understanding in A. Fairweather (ed. Assume that the surgeon is suffering from the onset of some degenerative mental disease and the first symptom is his forgetting which blood vessel he should be using to bypass the narrowed section of the coronary artery. 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. Another significant paper endorsing the claim that knowledge of explanations should play a vital role in our theories of understanding. 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. Knowledge is almost universally taken to be to be factive (compare, Hazlett 2010). Khalifa, K. Inaugurating understanding or repackaging explanation. Khalifa, K. Understanding, Grasping and Luck. Episteme 10 (1) (2013b): 1-17. 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? Moral Testimony and Moral Epistemology. Ethics 120 (2009): 94-127. Stephen P. Stitch: The Fragmentation of Reason. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51(1) (1991): 189-193. Hazlett, A. A. and Gordon, E. C. Norms of Assertion: The Quantity and Quality of Epistemic Support. Philosophia 39(4) (2011): 615-635. That said, Grimms more recent work (2014) expands on these earlier observations to form the basis of a view that spells out grasping in terms of a modal relationship between properties, objects or entitiesa theory on which what is grasped when one has understanding-why will be how changes in one would lead (or fail to lead) to changes in the other. The topic of epistemic value has only relatively recently received sustained attention in mainstream epistemology. A paper in which it is argued that (contrary to popular opinion) knowledge does not exclude 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). Morris (2012), like Rohwer, also defends lucky understandingin particular, understanding-why, or what he calls explanatory understanding). 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 argues that we can gain some traction on the nature of grasping significant to understanding if we view it along such manipulationist lines. Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. An overview of the object, psychology, and normativity of understanding. Hetherington, S. There Can be Lucky Knowledge in M. Steup, J. Turri and E. Sosa (eds. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. 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). Relatedly, if framed in terms of credence, what credence threshold must be met, with respect to propositions in some set, for the agent to understand that subject matter? Resists the alleged similarity between understanding and knowing-how. 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.