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. London: Routledge, 2009. 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. ), Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology. bella vista catholic charities housing; wills point tx funeral homes; ptvi triathlon distance; is frankie beverly in the hospital; birria tacos long branch; This type of a view is a revisionist theory of epistemic value (see, for example, Pritchard 2010), which suggests that one would be warranted in turning more attention to an epistemic state other than propositional knowledgespecifically, according to Pritchardunderstanding. Epistemological assumptions are those that focus on what can be known and how knowledge can be acquired (Bell, 8). If so, why, and if not why not? 1. Zagzebski notes that this easily leads to a vicious circle because neglect leads to fragmentation of meaning, which seems to justify further neglect and further fragmentation until eventually a concept can disappear entirely.. London: Continuum, 2012. An important question is whether there are philosophical considerations beyond simply intuition to adjudicate in a principled way why we should think about unifying understanding cases in one way rather than the other. Consequently, engaging with the project of clarifying and exploring the epistemic states or states attributed when we attribute understanding is a complex matter. 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. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Know How. ), The Stanford Enclopedia of Philosophy. Argues against compatibility between understanding and epistemic luck. 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. Salmon, W. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation. In Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. Carter (2014) argues that shifting to more demanding practical environments motivates attributing lower degrees of understanding rather than (as Wilkenfeld is suggests) withholding understanding. By contrast, Pritchard believes that understanding always involves strong cognitive achievement, that is, an achievement that necessarily involves either a significant exercise of skill or the overcoming of a significant obstacle. This in part for three principal reasons. Consider how some people think they grasp the ways in which their zodiac sign has an influence on their life path, yet their sense of understanding is at odds with the facts of the matter. But is understanding factive? The Psychology of Scientific Explanation. Philosophy Compass 2(3) (2007): 564-591. Where is the Understanding? Synthese, 2015. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Is it problematic to embrace, for example, a contextualist semantics for knowledge attributions while embracing, say, invariantism about understanding? 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. He concedes, though, that sometimes curiosity on a smaller scale can be sated by epistemic justification, and that what seems like understanding, but is actually just intelligibility, can sate the appetite when one is deceived. On the basis of considerations Pritchard argues for in various places (2010; 2012; 2013; 2014), relating to cognitive achievements presence in the absence of knowledge (for example. There is a common and plausible intuition that understanding might be at least as epistemically valuable as knowledgeif not more soand relatedly that it demands more intellectual sophistication than other closely related epistemic states. His alternative suggestion is to propose explanation as the ideal of understanding, a suggestion that has as a consequence that one should measure degrees of understanding according to how well one approximate[s] the benefits provided by knowing a good and correct explanation. Khalifa submits that this line is supported by the existence of a correct and reasonably good explanation in the background of all cases of understanding-why that does not involve knowledge of an explanationa background explanation that would, if known, provide a greater degree of understanding-why. 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. This paper proposes a revisionist view of epistemic value and an outline of different types 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. Looks at the increasing dissatisfaction with ever-more complicated attempts to generate a theory of knowledge immune to counterexamples. 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. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. While his view fits well with understanding-why, it is less obvious that objectual understanding involves grasping how things came to be. 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. For example, I can understand the quadratic formula without knowing, or caring, about who introduced it. What is it to have this ability to modify some mental representation? 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.. Knowledge in a Social World. Wilkenfeld (2013) offers the account that most clearly falls under Kelps characterization of manipulationist approaches to understanding. If this is right, then at least one prominent case used to illustrate a luck-based difference between knowledge and understanding does not hold up to scrutiny. 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. Defends the strong claim that propositional knowledge is necessary and sufficient for understanding. This type of understanding is ascribed in sentences that take the form I understand why X (for example, I understand why the house burnt down). If Kelps thought experiment works, manipulation of representations cannot be a necessary condition of understanding after all. In this Gettier-style case, she has good reason to believe her true beliefs, but the source of these beliefs (for example, the rumor mill) is highly unreliable and this makes her beliefs only luckily true, in the sense of intervening epistemic luck. Morris (2012), like Rohwer, also defends lucky understandingin particular, understanding-why, or what he calls explanatory understanding). He claims further that this description of the case undermines the intuition that the writers lack of understanding entails the readers lack of understanding. As Wilkenfeld sees it, understanding should be construed as representational manipulability, which is to say that understanding is, essentially, the possessing of some representation that can be manipulated in useful ways. Strevens, however, holds that than an explanation is only correct if its constitutive propositions are true, and therefore the reformulation of grasping that he provides is not intended by Strevens to be used in an actual account of understanding. Usually philosophical problems are overcome not by their resolution but rather by redefinition. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Strevens (2013) focuses on scientific understanding in his discussion of grasping. ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. A useful taxonomising question is the following: how strong a link does understanding demand between the beliefs we have about a given subject matter and the propositions that are true of that subject matter? Incudes arguments for the position that understanding need not be factive. Kim, J. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. So the kind of knowledge that it provides is metaknowledgeknowledge about knowledge. For example, by trusting someone I should not have trusted, or even worse, by reading tea leaves which happened to afford me true beliefs about chemistry. 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. Although a range of epistemologists highlighting some of the important features of understanding-why and objectual understanding have been discussed, there are many interesting topics that warrant further research. 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). We can acknowledge this simply by regarding Bs understanding as, even if only marginally, relatively impoverished, rather than by claiming, implausibly, that no understanding persists in such cases. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. 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. Stanley, J. Claims that understanding is entirely compatible with both intervening and environmental forms of veritic luck. Consider the view that the kinds of epistemic luck that suffice to undermine knowledge do not also undermine understanding. How should we distinguish between peripheral beliefs about a subject matter and beliefs that are not properly, Understanding entails true beliefs of the form. Armed with this distinction, Pritchard criticizes Kvanvigs assessment of the Comanche case by suggesting that just how we should regard understanding as being compatible or incompatible with epistemic luck depends on how we fill out the details of Kvanvigs case, which is potentially ambiguous between two kinds of readings. If understanding entails true beliefs of the form, So understanding entails that beliefs of the form. 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. Email: emma.gordon@ed.ac.uk Moral Understanding and Knowledge. Philosophical Studies 172(2) (2015): 113-128. However, the core explanationist insight also offers the resources to supplement a grasping account. To the extent that these worries with transparency are apt, a potential obstacle emerges for the prospects of accounting for the value of understanding in terms of its transparency. Thirdly, Kelp (2015) has an objection that he thinks all who favor a manipulationist line should find worrying. 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. Although the analysis of the value of epistemic states has roots in Plato and Aristotle, this renewed and more intense interest was initially inspired by two coinciding trends in epistemology. This skeptical argument is worth engaging with, presumably with the goal of showing that understanding does not turn out to be internally indistinguishable from mere intelligibility. Pritchard, D. Recent Work on Epistemic Value. American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2007): 85-110. 0. Ginet, C. Knowledge, Perception and Memory. The medical epistemology we propose conforms to the epistemological responsibility of doctors, which involves a specific professional attitude and epistemological skills. It will accordingly be helpful to narrow our focus to the varieties of understanding that feature most prominently in the epistemological literature. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. and Pritchard, D. Varieties of Externalism. Philosophical Issues 41(1) (2014): 63-109. One can split views on this question into roughly three positions that advocate varying strengths of a factivity constraint on objectual understanding. 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. 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. Kvanvig (2003; 2009) offers such a view, according to which understanding of some subject matter is incompatible with false central beliefs about the subject matter. Take first the object question. Many epistemologists have sought to distinguish understanding from knowledge on the basis of alleged differences in the extent to which knowledge and understanding are susceptible to being undermined by certain kinds of epistemic luck. On such an interpretation, explanationism can be construed as offering a simple answer to the object question discussed above: the object of understanding-relevant grasping would, on this view, be explanations. Criticizes Grimms view of understanding as knowledge of causes. Section 3 examines the notion of grasping which often appears in discussions of understanding in epistemology. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Epistemology is the study of sources of knowledge. Secondly, even subject matters that traffic in empirical rather than abstract atemporal phenomena (for example, pure mathematics), are not clearly such that understanding them should involve any appreciation for their coming to be, or their being caused to exist. One issue worth bringing into sharper focus is whether knowing a good and correct explanation is really the ideal form of understanding-why. In looking at moral understanding-why, outlines some key abilities that may be necessary to the grasping component of understanding. However, if understanding-why actually is a type of knowing how then this means that intellectualist arguments to the effect that knowing how is a kind of propositional knowledge might apply, mutatis mutandis, to understanding-why as well (see Carter and Pritchard 2013). ), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Whitcomb, D. Wisdom. In S. Bernecker and D. Pritchard (eds. Kvanvig, J. 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. Carter, J. Firstly, Wilkenfelds context-sensitive approach is in tension with a more plausible diagnosis of the example just considered: rather than to withhold attributing understanding in the case where the student is surrounded by experts, why notinsteadand in a way that is congruous with the earlier observation that understanding comes in degreesattribute understanding to the student surrounded by experts, but to a lesser degree (for example, Tim has some understanding of physics, while the professor has a much more complete understanding). 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. 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. 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). Consider here two cases she offers to this effect: EVOLUTION: A second graders understanding of human evolution might include as a central strand the proposition that human beings descended from apes. 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). 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. A. and Gordon, E. C. On Pritchard, Objectual Understanding and the Value Problem. American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (2014): 1-14. 121-132. 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. Moral Testimony and Moral Epistemology. Ethics 120 (2009): 94-127. For those who wonder about whether the often-discussed grasping associated with understanding might just amount to the possession of further beliefs (rather than, say, the possession of manipulative abilities), this type of view may seem particularly attractive (and comparatively less mysterious). facebook android official. Carter, J. Grimm, S. Is Understanding a Species of Knowledge? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2006): 515-535. Men For a less concessionary critique of Kvanvigs Comanche case, however, see Grimm (2006). New York: Free Press, 1965. Perhaps, as Harvey (2006b) suggests, we do need to reconfigure academic protocols in order to make more room for these kinds of . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. We regularly claim that people can understand everything from theories to pieces of technology, accounts of historical events and the psychology of other individuals. in barn faade cases, where environmental luck is incompatible with knowledge but compatible with cognitive achievement) and the absence of cognitive achievement in the presence of knowledge (e.g. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. Much of the philosophical tradition has viewed the central epistemological problems concerning perception largely and sometimes exclusively in terms of the metaphysical responses to skepticism. Grimm (2012) has wondered whether this view might get things explanatorily backwards. Orand this is a point that has received little attentioneven more weakly, can the true beliefs be themselves unreliably formed or held on the basis of bad reasons. Another seemingly promising lineone that engages with the relation question discussed aboveviews grasping as intimately connected with a certain set of abilities. Elgin, C. Z. Gettier, E. Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis 23 (6) (1963). The notion of curiosity that plays a role in Kvanvigs line is a broadly inclusive one that is meant to include not just obvious problem-solving examples but also what he calls more spontaneous examples, such as turning around to see what caused a noise you just heard. Pritchards verdict is that we should deny understanding in the intervening case and attribute it in the environmental case. 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. Zagzebskis weak approach to a factivity constraint aligns with her broadly internalist thinking about what understanding actually does involvenamely, on her view, internal consistency and what she calls transparency. A theoretical advantage to a weak factivity constraint is that it neatly separates propositional knowledge and objectual understanding as interestingly different. The Case of Richard Rorty A Newer Argument Pro: Hales's Defense o. 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. philos201 Assignment Details Recall that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. 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. The Varieties of Cognitive Success 1.1 What Kinds of Things Enjoy Cognitive Success? 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. This is not so obvious, and at least, not as obvious as it is in the case of knowledge. If so, then the internally consistent delusion objection typically leveled against weakly nonfactive views raises its head. In other words, one mistakenly take knowledge to be distinctively valuable only because knowledge often does have somethingcognitive achievementwhich is essential to understanding and which is finally valuable. 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. Explores the pros and cons with at least 2 credible sources. We can accommodate the thought that not all beliefs relevant to an agents understanding must be true while nonetheless insisting that cases in which false beliefs run rampant will not count as understanding. One natural place to start will be to examine the relationship between understanding and epistemic luck. He leaves grasping at the level of metaphor or uses it them literally but never develops 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. Goldman, A. 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. The epistemological shift in the present In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift.
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