To the extent that such a move is available, one has reason to resist Morriss rationale for resisting Pritchards diagnosis of Kvanvigs case. The Myth of Factive Verbs. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80:3 (2010): 497-522.
Shift in Epistemology.edited.docx - Running head: SHIFT IN And furthermore, weakly factive accounts welcome the possibility that internally coherent delusions (for example, those that are drug-induced) that are cognitively disconnected from real events might nonetheless yield understanding of those events. 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. For example, Carter and Gordon (2011) consider that there might be cases in which understanding, and not just knowledge, is the required epistemic credential to warrant assertion. (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. A second reason that adverting to grasping-talk in the service of characterizing understanding raises further question is that it is often not clarified just what relationships or connections are being grasped, when they are grasped in a way that is distinctive of understanding. Consequently, engaging with the project of clarifying and exploring the epistemic states or states attributed when we attribute understanding is a complex matter. Grimm, S. The Value of Understanding. Philosophy Compass 7(2) (2012): 103-177. It is clearly cognitively better than the belief that humans did not evolve. 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. Looks at understandings role in recent debates about epistemic value and contains key arguments against Elgins non-factive view of understanding. Rohwer argues that counterexamples like Pritchards intervening luck cases only appear plausible because the beliefs that make up the agents understanding come exclusively from a bad source. The following sections consider why understanding might have such additional value. The underlying idea in play here is that, in short, thinking about how things would be if it were true is an efficacious way to get to further truths; an insight has attracted endorsement in the philosophy of science (for example, Batterman 2009). Call these, for short, the relation question and the object question. Argues that the ordinary concept of knowledge is not factive and that epistemologists should therefore not concern themselves with said ordinary concept. Introduces intelligibility as an epistemic state similar to understanding but less valuable. 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. Keplers theory is a further advance in understanding, and the current theory is yet a further advance. Moderate factivity implies that we should withhold attributions of understanding when an agent has a single false central belief, even in cases where the would-be understanding is of a large subject matter where all peripheral beliefs in this large subject matter are true. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0863-z. Rationalism is an epistemological theory, so rationalism can be interpreted the distinct aspects or parts of the mind that are separate senses. This is a change from the past. Kelp points out that this type of view is not so restrictive as to deny understanding to, for example, novice students and young children. A monograph that explores the nature and value of achievements in great depth. Trout, J.D. That is, there is something defective about a scientists would-be understanding of gas behavior were that scientist, unlike all other competent scientists, to reject that the ideal gas law is an idealization and instead embraced it as a fact. 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. The Problem of the External World 2. 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). Men Contains Lackeys counterexamples to the knowledge transmission principles. The Case of Richard Rorty A Newer Argument Pro: Hales's Defense o. Resists Pritchards claim that there can be weak achievements, that is, ones that do not necessarily involve great effort. ), Object question: What kinds of things are grasped? Her line is that understanding-why involves (i) knowing what something is, and (ii) making reasonable sense of it. Just as we draw a distinction between this epistemic state (that is, intelligibility, or what Grimm calls subjective understanding) and understanding (which has a much stricter factivity requirement), it makes sense to draw a line between grasping* and grasping where one is factive and the other is not.
The Pros And Cons Of Epistemology - 1280 Words | Cram Attempts to explain away the intuitions suggesting that lucky understanding is incompatible with epistemic luck. 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. Epistemology is the study of sources of knowledge. For a less concessionary critique of Kvanvigs Comanche case, however, see Grimm (2006). True enough. Philosophical issues, 14(1) (2004): 113-131. Goldman, A. Some (for example, Gordon 2012) suggest that attributions of propositional understanding typically involve attributes of propositional knowledge or a more comprehensive type of understandingunderstanding-why, or objectual understanding (these types are examined more closely below). (vi) an ability to give q (the right explanation) when given the information p.
epistemological shift pros and cons - consultoresayc.co For example, while it is easy to imagine a person who knows a lot yet seems to understand very little, think of the student who merely memorizes a stack of facts from a textbook; it is considerably harder to imagine someone who understands plenty yet knows hardly anything at all. According to Grimm, cases like Kvanvig admit of a more general characterisation, depending on how the details are filled in. But is understanding factive? If making reasonable sense merely requires that some event or experience make sense to the epistemic agent herself, Bakers view appears open, as Grimm (2011) has suggested, to counterexamples according to which an agent knows that something happened and yet accounts for that occurrence by way of a poorly supported theory. (2007: 37-8). For example, when the issue is understanding mathematics, as opposed to understanding why 22=4, it is perhaps less obvious that dependence has a central role to play. This is because we dont learn about causes a priori. Description Recall that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with 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. Contains Kims classic discussion of species of dependence (for example, mereological dependence). Objectual understanding is equivalent to what Pritchard has at some points termed holistic understanding (2009: 12). Running head: SHIFT IN EPISTEMOLOGY 1 Shift in Epistemology Student's Name Professor's Name Institution
An epistemological shift: from evidence-based medicine to ), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. 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. Longworth, G. Linguistic Understanding and Knowledge. Nous 42 (2008): 50-79. Here, and unlike in the case of intervening epistemic luck, nothing actually goes awry, and the fact that the belief could easily have been false is owed entirely to the agents being in a bad environment, one with faades nearby. In all these cases, epistemology seeks to understand one or another kind of cognitive success (or, correspondingly, cognitive failure ).
A Seismic Shift in Epistemology | EDUCAUSE Eds. 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. Relatedly, Van Camp (2014) calls understanding a higher level cognition that involves recognizing connections between different pieces of knowledge, and Kosso (2007: 1) submits that inter-theoretic coherence is the hallmark of understanding, stating knowledge of many facts does not amount to understanding unless one also has a sense of how the facts fit together. While such remarks are made with objectual understanding (that is, understanding of a subject matter) in mind, there are similar comments about understanding-why (for example, Hills 2009) that suggest an overlapping need to consider connections between items of information, albeit on a smaller scale.
The Epistemology Shift, Essay Example See answer source: Epistemology in an Hour Caleb Beers 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. See, however, Carter & Gordon (2014) for a recent criticism on the point of identifying understanding with strong cognitive achievement. Includes further discussion of the role of acceptance and belief in her view of understanding. Her key thought here is that grasping the truth can actually impede the chances of ones attaining understanding because such a grasp might come at too high a cognitive cost. Khalifa, K. Inaugurating understanding or repackaging explanation. Alston, W. Beyond Justification: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation. For example, he attempts to explain the intuitions in Pritchards intervening luck spin on Kvanvigs Comanche case by noting that some of the temptation to deny understanding here relates to the writer of the luckily-true book himself lacking the relevant understanding. ), Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology. How should an account of objectual understanding incorporate these types of observationsnamely, where the falsity of a central belief or central beliefs appears compatible with the retention of some degree of understanding? 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. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. When considering interesting features that might set understanding apart from propositional knowledge, the idea of grasping something is often mentioned. al 2014), have for understanding? (For example, propositions, systems, bodies of information, the relationships thereof, and so on?).
Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological shift in an essay ), Epistemic Value. DePaul, M. Ugly Analysis and Value in A. Haddock, A. Millar and D. Pritchard (eds. The surgeons successful bypass is valued differently when one is made aware that it was by luck that he picked an appropriate blood vessel for the bypass. 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. 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. Whitcomb, D. Epistemic Value In A. Cullison (ed. Proposes a framework for reducing objectual understanding to what he calls explanatory understanding. Toon (2015) has recently suggested, with reference to the hypothesis of extended cognition, that understanding can be located partly outside the head. Firstly, achievement is often defined as success that is because of ability (see, for example, Greco 2007), where the most sensible interpretation of this claim is to see the because as signifying a casual-explanatory relationshipthis is, at least, the dominant view. This is a change from the past. Defends a lack of control account of luck. Perhaps, as Harvey (2006b) suggests, we do need to reconfigure academic protocols in order to make more room for these kinds of . How should we distinguish between peripheral beliefs about a subject matter and beliefs that are not properly, Understanding entails true beliefs of the form. Morris (2012), like Rohwer, also defends lucky understandingin particular, understanding-why, or what he calls explanatory understanding). Strevens, M. No Understanding Without Explanation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013): 510-515. Decent Essays. 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.. Endorses the idea that when we consider how things would be if something was true, we increase our access to further truths. Displacements of power in the realm of concepts accompany these new orientations. Gives an overview of recent arguments for revisionist theories of epistemic value that suggest understanding is more valuable than knowledge. To this end, the first section offers an overview of the different types of understanding discussed in the literature, though their features are gradually explored in more depth throughout later sections. Carter, J. Nevertheless, distinguishing between the two in this manner raises some problems for her view of objectual understanding, which should be unsurprising given the aforementioned counterexamples that can be constructed against a non-factive reading of Bakers construal of understanding-why. Pragmatism as an epistemological approach accentuates the reasoning of theories and concepts by studying their consequences and goals, values and interests they support. 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). 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. This is a view to which Grimm (2010) is also sympathetic, remarking that the object of objectual understanding can be profitably viewed along the lines of the object of know-how, where Grimm has in mind here an anti-intellectualist interpretation of know-how according to which knowing how to do something is a matter of possessing abilities rather than knowing facts (compare, Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011). 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. 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). 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. Taking curiosity to be of epistemic significance is not a new idea. 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). Though her work on understanding is not limited to scientific understanding (for example, Elgin 2004), one notable argument she has made is framed to show that a factive conception cannot do justice to the cognitive contributions of science and that a more flexible conception can (2007: 32). Email: emma.gordon@ed.ac.uk He also suggests that what epistemic agents want is not just to feel like they are making sense of things but to actually make sense of them. Gettier, E. Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis 23 (6) (1963). Wilkenfeld (2013) offers the account that most clearly falls under Kelps characterization of manipulationist approaches to understanding.
Epistemological Relativism: Arguments Pro and Con Outlines and evaluates the anti-intellectualist and intellectualist views of know-how. View Shift in Epistemology.edited.docx from SOCIOLOGY 1010 at Columbia Southern University. Criticizes Grimms view of understanding as knowledge of causes. Thirdly, and perhaps most interestingly, objectual understanding is attributed in sentences that take the form I understand X where X is or can be treated as a body of information or subject matter. Such a constraint would preserve the intuition that understanding is a particularly desirable epistemic good and would accordingly be untroubled by the issues highlighted for the weakest view outlined at the start of the section. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Why We Dont Deserve Credit for Everything We Know. Synthese 156 (2007). 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. 824 Words. What is curiosity? If Kelps thought experiment works, manipulation of representations cannot be a necessary condition of understanding after all. Lucky Understanding Without Knowledge. Synthese 191 (2014): 945-959. Section 2 explores the connection between understanding and truth, with an eye to assessing in virtue of what understanding might be defended as factive. In rationalism way of thinking, knowledge is acquired using reasons or reasoning. For example, I can understand the quadratic formula without knowing, or caring, about who introduced it. Strevens (2013) focuses on scientific understanding in his discussion of grasping. We regularly claim that people can understand everything from theories to pieces of technology, accounts of historical events and the psychology of other individuals. 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. 0. Grimm (2011) also advocates for a fairly straightforward manipulationist approach in earlier work. 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. ), Justification and Knowledge. Carter, J. security guard 12 hour shifts aubrey pearsons oaks husband epistemological shift pros and cons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. ), Knowledge, Virtue and Action. Pritchard, D. Knowledge, Understanding and Epistemic Value In A. OHear (ed. epistemological shift pros and cons. In addition, it is important to make explicit differences in terminology that can sometimes confuse discussions of some types of understanding. But, the chief requirement of understanding, for him, is instead that there be the right coherence-making relations in some agents collection of information (that is, that the agent has a grasp of how all this related information fits together. The Psychology of Scientific Explanation. Philosophy Compass 2(3) (2007): 564-591. This would be the non-factive parallel to the standard view of grasping.
Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological - Course Hero 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.
The Oxford Handbook of Social Justice in Music Education epistemological shift pros and cons Knowledge is almost universally taken to be to be factive (compare, Hazlett 2010). CA: Wadsworth, 2009. 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. This is a change from the past. Zagzebski, L. On Epistemology. Pritchard (2008: 8) points out thatfor exampleif one believes that ones house burned down because of the actions of an arsonist when it really burnt down because of faulty wiring, it just seems plain that one lacks understanding of why ones house burned down. 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.
A Brief Reflection On Epistemological Shifts (Essay Sample) The Value of Understanding In D. Pritchard, A. Haddock and A. Millar (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). 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. 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. Understanding entails that such beliefs must be the result of exercising reliable cognitive abilities. 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. Unsurprisingly, the comparison between the nature of understanding as opposed to knowledge has coincided with comparisons of their respective epistemic value, particularly since Kvanvig (2003) first defended the epistemic value of the latter to the former. London: Routledge, 2009. Argues against compatibility between understanding and epistemic luck. Explanatory Knowledge and Metaphysical Dependence. In his Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. Whitcomb, D. Wisdom. In S. Bernecker and D. Pritchard (eds. 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). If Hills is right about this connection between grasping and possessing abilities, it might seem as though understanding-why is, at the end of the day, very similar to knowing-how (see, however, Sullivan 2017 for resistance to this suggestion).. He claims further that this description of the case undermines the intuition that the writers lack of understanding entails the readers lack of understanding. 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. epistemological shift pros and cons. The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding. ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. A view on which the psychics epistemic position in this case qualifies as understanding-why would be unsatisfactorily inclusive. Contrast thiscall it the intervening reading of the casewith Pritchards corresponding environmental reading of the case, where we are to imagine that the agent is reading a reliable academic book which is the source of many true beliefs she acquires about the Comanche. Such cases she claims feature intervening luck that is compatible with understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. A. and Pritchard, D. Knowledge-How and Epistemic Luck. Nos (2013). 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.
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