Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Regarding factivity, then, it seems there is room for a view that occupies the middle ground here. There is debate about both (i) whether understanding-why might fairly be called explanatory understanding and (ii) how understanding-why might differ from propositional knowledge. Furthermore, Section 3 considers whether characterizations of understanding that focus on explanation provide a better alternative to views that capitalize on the idea of manipulating representations, also giving due consideration to views that appear to stand outside this divide. 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. This is a change from the past. 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. It seems as though understanding would possibly be undermined in a case where someone relying on the ideal gas law failed to appreciate it as an idealization. Pritchard, D. Knowledge and Understanding in A. Fairweather (ed. In this respect, it seems Kelps move against the manipulationist might get off the ground only if certain premises are in play which manipulationists as such would themselves be inclined to resist. This would be the non-factive parallel to the standard view of grasping. 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. (vi) an ability to give q (the right explanation) when given the information p. Summary This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Introduction Arguments Con Arguments Pro Ambivalence Concerning Relativism? This entry surveys the varieties of cognitive success, and some recent efforts to understand some of those varieties. ), Object question: What kinds of things are grasped? In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. and (ii) what qualifies a group of beliefs as a system in the sense that is at issue when it is claimed that understanding involves grasping relationships or connections within a system of beliefs? The next section considers some of the most prominent examples of attempts to expand on or replace a grasping condition on understanding. Grimm has put his finger on an important commonality at issue in his argument from parity. Shift in Epistemology.edited.docx - Running head: SHIFT IN 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. Her line is that understanding-why involves (i) knowing what something is, and (ii) making reasonable sense of it. Knowledge is almost universally taken to be to be factive (compare, Hazlett 2010). Where should an investigation of understanding in epistemology take us next? 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. An overview of coherentism that can be useful when considering how theories of coherence might be used to flesh out the grasping condition on understanding. Elgin, C. Exemplification, Idealization, and Understanding in M. Surez (ed. 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. 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. ), The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding. Another significant paper endorsing the claim that knowledge of explanations should play a vital role in our theories of understanding. Email: emma.gordon@ed.ac.uk What is it to have this ability to modify some mental representation? For example, and problematically for any account of objectual understanding that relaxes a factivity constraint, people frequently retract previous attributions of understanding. If, as robust virtue epistemologists have often insisted, cognitive achievement is finally valuable (that is, as an instance of achievements more generally), and understanding necessarily lines up with cognitive achievement but knowledge only sometimes does, then the result is a revisionary story about epistemic value. As such, his commentary here is particularly relevant to the question of whether gasping is factive. Your paper should be 3-4 pages in length, not counting the Title page and Reference . 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. For example: Although a moderate view of understandings factivity may look promising in comparison with competitor accounts, many important details remain left to be spelled out. 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). For example, in Whitcomb (2011) we find the suggestion that theoretical wisdom is a form of particularly deep 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. 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. ), Epistemic Value. 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. As Kvanvig sees it, knowing requires non-accidental links between (internal) mental states and external events in just the right way. Eds. 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. Grimm (2011) also advocates for a fairly straightforward manipulationist approach in earlier work. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Digital Culture and Shifting Epistemology - hybridpedagogy.org . 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. The Epistemology Shift, Essay Example For example, a self-proclaimed psychic might see someone trip and believe that he caused this persons fall. An overview of the background, development and recent issues in epistemology, including a chapter on understanding as an epistemic good. Grimm, S. The Value of Understanding. Philosophy Compass 7(2) (2012): 103-177. 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. Explanatory Knowledge and Metaphysical Dependence. In his Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. What is curiosity? The Nature of Ability and the Purpose of Knowledge. Philosophical Issues 17 (2007): 57-69. 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. 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. Uses the hypothesis of extended cognition to argue that understanding can be located (at least partly) outside the head. In contrast with Pritchards partial compatibility view of the relationship between understanding and epistemic luck, where understanding is compatible with environmental but not with intervening luck, Rohwer (2014) defends understandings full compatibility with veritic epistemic luck (that is, of both intervening and environmental varieties). 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. The Myth of Factive Verbs. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80:3 (2010): 497-522. Keplers theory is a further advance in understanding, and the current theory is yet a further advance. Grimm (2014) also notes that his modal view of understanding fits well with the idea that understanding involves a kind of ability or know-how, as one who sees or grasps how certain propositions are modally related has the ability to answer a wide variety of questions about how things could have been different.
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