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. It is not only unnecessary, but moreover, contentious, that a credible scientist would consider the ideal gas law true. Argues that we should replace the main developed accounts of understanding with earlier accounts of scientific explanation. What is curiosity? Grimm, S. Understanding In S. Bernecker and D. Pritchard (eds. In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Hardback) (Vol. 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. 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. ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. This is because we might be tempted to say instead that we desire to make sense of things because it is good to do so rather than saying that it is good to make sense of things because we desire it. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 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. Dordecht: Springer, 2014. 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). 4 Pages. Outlines and evaluates the anti-intellectualist and intellectualist views of know-how. Description Recall that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. As Lackey thinks students can come to know evolutionary theory from this teacher despite the teacher not knowing the propositions she asserts (given that the Stella fails the belief condition for knowledge), we might likewise think, and contra Morris, that Stella might fail to understand evolution. Another significant paper endorsing the claim that knowledge of explanations should play a vital role in our theories of understanding. Resists the alleged similarity between understanding and knowing-how. 121-132. A. and Gordon, E. C. Norms of Assertion: The Quantity and Quality of Epistemic Support. Philosophia 39(4) (2011): 615-635. However, it is not entirely clear that extant views on understanding fall so squarely into these two camps. Gettier, E. Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis 23 (6) (1963). In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Lucky Understanding Without Knowledge. Synthese 191 (2014): 945-959. (iii) an ability to draw from the information that q the conclusion that p (or that probably p). 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. His view is that understanding requires the agent to, in counterfactual situations salient to the context, be able to modify their mental representation of the subject matter. Epistemological assumptions are those that focus on what can be known and how knowledge can be acquired (Bell, 8). al 2014), have for understanding? Rohwer, Y. Moral Testimony and Moral Epistemology. Ethics 120 (2009): 94-127. Boston: Routledge, 2013. Section 3 examines the notion of grasping which often appears in discussions of understanding in epistemology. The cons of the epistemology shift that is a major concern to philosophers are the loss of, reading and communications since the student do not interact physically, these skills be instilled EPISTEMOLOGY SHIFT 5 by the teachers and through the help of physical environments. ), Knowledge, Virtue and Action. Whitcomb, D. Epistemic Value In A. Cullison (ed. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0863-z. Explores the pros and cons with at least 2 credible sources. Epistemology is the study nature of human knowledge itself. 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. 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. The epistemological shift in the present In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Grimm (2011) also advocates for a fairly straightforward manipulationist approach in earlier work. 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. 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. Contains the famous counterexamples to the Justified True Belief account of knowledge. Khalifas (2013) view of understanding is a form of explanatory idealism. 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). 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. 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. One helpful way to think about this is as follows: if one takes a paradigmatic case of an individual who understands a subject matter thoroughly, and manipulates the credence the agent has toward the propositions constituting the subject matter, how low can one go before the agent no longer understands the subject matter in question? Where is the Understanding? Synthese, 2015. Objectual understanding is equivalent to what Pritchard has at some points termed holistic understanding (2009: 12). He takes his account to be roughly in line with the laymans concept of curiosity. 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. On the most straightforward characterization of her proposal, one fails to possess understanding why, with respect to p, if one lacks any of the abilities outlined in (i-vi), with respect to p. Note that this is compatible with one failing to possess understanding why even if one possesses knowledge that involves, as virtue epistemologists will insist, some kinds of abilities or virtues. In particular, how we might define expertise and who has it. ), Fictions in Science: Essays on Idealization and Modeling. This objection is worth holding in mind when considering any further positions that incorporate representation manipulability as necessary. If the latterthat is, if we are to understand grasping literally, then, also unfortunately, we are rarely given concrete details of its nature. Taking curiosity to be of epistemic significance is not a new idea. At the other end of the spectrum, we might consider an extremely strong view of understandings factivity, according to which understanding a subject matter requires that all of ones beliefs about the subject matter in question are true. 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. Argues that requiring knowledge of an explanation is too strong a condition on understanding-why. 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. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. These retractions do not t seem to make sense on the weak view. On such a view, grasping talk could simply be jettisoned altogether. 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. For example, a self-proclaimed psychic might see someone trip and believe that he caused this persons fall. epistemological shift pros and cons. This is not so obvious, and at least, not as obvious as it is in the case of knowledge. Baker, L. R. Third Person Understanding in A. Sanford (ed. On the one hand, we have manipulationists, who think understanding involves an ability (or abilities) to manipulate certain representations or concepts. 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. London: Continuum, 2012. Running head: SHIFT IN EPISTEMOLOGY 1 Shift in Epistemology Student's Name Professor's Name Institution Early defence of explanations key role in understanding. Claims that understanding is entirely compatible with both intervening and environmental forms of veritic luck. Consider here an analogy: a false belief can be subjectively indistinguishable from knowledge. In the first version, we are to imagine that the agent gets her beliefs from a faux-academic book filled with mere rumors that turn out to be luckily true. 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. 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. In recent years epistemology has experienced gradual changes that are critical in human life. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. Stephen P. Stitch: The Fragmentation of Reason. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51(1) (1991): 189-193. On the one hand, there is the increasing support for virtue epistemology that began in the 1980s, and on the other there is growing dissatisfaction with the ever-complicated attempt to generate an account of knowledge that is appropriately immune to Gettier-style counterexamples (see, for example, DePaul 2009). 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). Grimm develops this original position via parity of reasoning, taking as a starting point that the debate about a priori knowledge, for example, knowledge of necessary truths, makes use of metaphors of grasping and seeing that are akin to the ones in the understanding debate. Contains Lackeys counterexamples to the knowledge transmission principles. (2007: 37), COPERNICUS: A central tenet of Copernicuss theory is the contention that the Earth travels around the sun in a circular orbit. If so, then the internally consistent delusion objection typically leveled against weakly nonfactive views raises its head. If understanding entails true beliefs of the form, So understanding entails that beliefs of the form. 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). Consider a student saying, I thought I understood this subject, but my recent grade suggests I dont understand it after all. Whitcomb also cites Alston (2005) as endorsing a stronger view, according to which true belief or knowledge gets at least some of its epistemic value from its connection to, and satisfaction of, curiosity. A good example here is what Riggs (2003) calls intelligibility, a close cousin of understanding that also implies a grasp of order, pattern and connection, but does not seem to require a substantial connection to truth. 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. But more deeply, atemporal phenomena such as mathematical truths have, in one clear sense, never come to be at all, but have always been, to the extent that they are the case at all. 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. Proposes a framework for reducing objectual understanding to what he calls explanatory understanding. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. Is it a kind of knowledge, another kind of propositional attitude, an ability, and so forth? ), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. It is moreover of interest to note that Khalifa (2013b) also sees a potential place for the notion of grasping in an account of understanding, though in a qualified sense. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. For one thing, she admits that these abilities can be possessed by degrees. 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. Though the demandingness of this ability need not be held fixed across practical circumstances. Kepler improved on Copernicus by contending that the Earths orbit is not circular, but elliptical. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. 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. 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).. 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. Hence, he argues that any propositional knowledge is derivative. It is also becoming an increasingly popular position to hold that understanding is more epistemically valuable than knowledge (see Kvanvig 2003; Pritchard 2010). 115, No. epistemological shift pros and cons. 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.