The Case of Richard Rorty A Newer Argument Pro: Hales's Defense o. The topic of epistemic value has only relatively recently received sustained attention in mainstream epistemology. The following sections consider why understanding might have such additional value. 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. For example, Hills (2009: 4) says you cannot understand why p if p is false (compare: S knows that p only if p). 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. It is clearly cognitively better than the belief that humans did not evolve. However, advocates of moderate approaches to the factivity of understanding are left with some difficult questions to answer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. But is understanding factive? The modern epistemology deals with the debate between rationalism and empiricism. Moral Testimony and Moral Epistemology. Ethics 120 (2009): 94-127. 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. 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. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Includes Alstons view of curiosity, according to which the epistemic value of true belief and knowledge partially comes from a link to curiosity. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. Some focus on understanding-why while others focus on objectual understanding. This is because Stella lacks beliefs on the matter, even though the students can gain understanding from her. This section considers the connection between understanding-why and truth, and then engages with the more complex issue of whether objectual understanding is factive. 824 Words. The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding. Given the extent to which grasping is highly associated with understanding and left substantively unspecified, it is perhaps unsurprising that the matter of how to articulate grasping-related conditions on understanding has proven to be rather divisive. 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. This paper proposes a revisionist view of epistemic value and an outline of different types of understanding. ), Epistemology (Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures). Claims that understanding is entirely compatible with both intervening and environmental forms of veritic luck. 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. Given that the result is the same (that is, the patients heart muscle blood supply is improved) regardless of whether he successfully completes the operation by luck or by skill, the instrumental value of the action is the same. Morris challenges the assumption that hearers cannot gain understanding through the testimony of those who lack understanding, and accordingly, embraces a kind of understanding transmission principle that parallels the kind of knowledge transmission principle that is presently a topic of controversy in the epistemology of testimony. Abstract. Strevens (2013) focuses on scientific understanding in his discussion of grasping. 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). 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. Hempel, C. Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. On such a view, grasping talk could simply be jettisoned altogether. Sliwa, P. IVUnderstanding and Knowing. Morris, K. A Defense of Lucky Understanding. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (2012): 357-371. 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.. For example, we might suppose an agent has a maximally complete explanation of how Michelangelos David came into existence between 1501 and 1504, what methods were used to craft it, what Michelangelos motivating reasons were at the time, how much clay was used, and so on. 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). Many of these questions have gone largely unexplored in the literature. Defends a lack of control account of luck. ), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. reptarium brian barczyk; new milford high school principal; salisbury university apparel store Batterman, R. W. Idealization and modelling. Synthese, 169(3) (2009): 427-446. 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. by | Jun 9, 2022 | prayers of dedication presbyterian | advance australia national director | Jun 9, 2022 | prayers of dedication presbyterian | advance australia national director Explores the epistemological role of exemplification and aims to illuminate the relationship between understanding and scientific idealizations construed as fictions. The group designated explanationists by Kelp (2015) share a general commitment to the idea that knowledge of explanations should play a key role in a theory of understanding (for example, Hempel 1965; Salmon 1989; Khalifa 2012; 2013). 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. Utilize at least 2 credible sources to support the arguments presented in the paper. The root of the recent resurgence of interest in understanding in epistemology. 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. This is not so obvious, and at least, not as obvious as it is in the case of knowledge. It focuses on means of human knowledge acquisition and how to differentiate the truth knowledge claims from the false one. Pritchards verdict is that we should deny understanding in the intervening case and attribute it in the environmental case. Although many chapters take as their starting point an analysis of how dominant political, educational, and musical ideologies serve to construct and sustain inequities and undemocratic practices, authors also identify practices that seek to promote socially just pedagogy and approaches to music education. 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. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. Argues that understanding (unlike knowledge) is a type of cognitive achievement and therefore of distinctive value. 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. Looks at understandings role in recent debates about epistemic value and contains key arguments against Elgins non-factive view of understanding. In order to make this point clear, Pritchard suggests that we first consider two versions of a case analogous with Kvanvigs. Keplers theory is a further advance in understanding, and the current theory is yet a further advance. On the weakest view, one can understand a subject matter even if none of ones beliefs about that subject matter are true. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. With each step in the sequence, we understand the motion of the planets better than we did before. Hetherington, S. There Can be Lucky Knowledge in M. Steup, J. Turri and E. Sosa (eds. 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. Longworth, G. Linguistic Understanding and Knowledge. Nous 42 (2008): 50-79. These retractions do not t seem to make sense on the weak view. 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. Positivism follows an identical approach as the study of natural sciences in the testing of a theory. Zagzebski, L. Recovering Understanding In M. Steup (ed. 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. Is it a kind of knowledge, another kind of propositional attitude, an ability, and so forth? 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? Such cases she claims feature intervening luck that is compatible with understanding. 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. An overview of issues relating to epistemic value, including discussion of understanding as a higher epistemic state. London: Continuum, 2012. An in-depth exploration of different types of epistemic luck. 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. This would be the non-factive parallel to the standard view of grasping. If so, why, and if not why not? Philosophy of Science, 79(1) (2012): 15-37. Usually philosophical problems are overcome not by their resolution but rather by redefinition. 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. Grimm, S. The Value of Understanding. Philosophy Compass 7(2) (2012): 103-177. 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. Since it is central to her take on human evolution, factivists like Kvanvig must conclude that her take on human evolution does not qualify as understanding. Grimm (2011) also advocates for a fairly straightforward manipulationist approach in earlier work. 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. Morris suggests that the writer of the Comanche book might lack understanding due to failing to endorse the relevant propositions, while the reader might have understanding because she does endorse the relevant proposition. 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. 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. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. See, however, Carter & Gordon (2014) for a recent criticism on the point of identifying understanding with strong cognitive achievement. University of Edinburgh Considers some of the ramifications that active externalist approaches might have for epistemology. 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. Olsson, E. Coherentist Theories of Epistemic Justification in E. Zalta (ed. Another significant paper endorsing the claim that knowledge of explanations should play a vital role in our theories of understanding. But it is not strictly true. 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. 4 Pages. Divides recent views of understanding according to whether they are manipulationist or explanationst; argues for a different view according to which understanding is maximally well-connected knowledge. London: Routledge, 2009. According to Goldman (1991) curiosity is a desire for true belief; by contrast, Williamson views curiosity as a desire for knowledge. For one thing, abstract objects, such as mathematical truths and other atemporal phenomena, can plausibly be understood even though our understanding of them does not seem to require an appreciation of their coming to existence. To the extent that such a move is available, one has reason to resist Morriss rationale for resisting Pritchards diagnosis of Kvanvigs case. A paper in which it is argued that (contrary to popular opinion) knowledge does not exclude luck. Early defence of explanations key role in understanding. Resists the alleged similarity between understanding and knowing-how. Gives an overview of recent arguments for revisionist theories of epistemic value that suggest understanding is more valuable than knowledge. However, Pritchards work on epistemic luck (for example, 2005) and how it is incompatible with knowledge leads him to reason that understanding is immune to some but not all forms of malignant luck (that is, luck which is incompatible with knowledge). Pritchards assessment then of whether understanding is compatible with epistemic luck that is incompatible with knowledge depends on which kind of epistemic luck incompatible with knowledge one is discussing. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014. 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. Make sure you cite them appropriately within your paper, and list them in APA format on your Reference page. Nevertheless, considering weakly factive construals of objective understanding draws attention to an important pointthat there are also interesting epistemic states in the neighborhood of understanding. Email: emma.gordon@ed.ac.uk For example, Kvanvig (2003) holds that understanding is particularly valuable in part because it requires a special grasp of explanatory and other coherence-making relationships. Riggs (2003: 20) agrees, stating that understanding of a subject matter requires a deep appreciation, grasp or awareness of how its parts fit together, what role each one plays in the context of the whole, and of the role it plays in the larger scheme of things (italics added). New York: Routledge, 2011. Riggs, W. Understanding Virtue and the Virtue of Understanding In M. DePaul and L. Zagzebski (eds. The Varieties of Cognitive Success 1.1 What Kinds of Things Enjoy Cognitive Success? This is a point Elgin is happy to grant. ), The Stanford Enclopedia of Philosophy. Incudes arguments for the position that understanding need not be factive. Riaz, A. Pritchard, D. Knowing the Answer, Understanding and Epistemic Value. Grazer Philosophische Studien 77 (2008): 325-39. 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. If the former, then this is unfortunate given the theoretical work the term is supposed to be doing in characterizing understanding. Eds. 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. philos201 Assignment Details Recall that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Stanley, J. 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). Another seemingly promising lineone that engages with the relation question discussed aboveviews grasping as intimately connected with a certain set of abilities. (vi) an ability to give q (the right explanation) when given the information p. endangered species in the boreal forest; etown high school basketball roster. Thirdly, even if one accepts something like a moderate factivity requirement on objectual understandingand thus demand of at least a certain class of beliefs one has of a subject matter that they be trueone can also ask further and more nuanced questions about the epistemic status of these true beliefs. Therefore, the need to adopt a weak factivity constraint on objectual understandingat least on the basis of cases that feature idealizationslooks at least initially to be unmotivated in the absence of a more sophisticated view about the relationship between factivity, belief and acceptance (however, see Elgin 2004). It is not only unnecessary, but moreover, contentious, that a credible scientist would consider the ideal gas law true. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 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). 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. In this sense, the history of thought can be seen as the sometimes imperceptibly fluid, sometimes bizarre and abrupt, movements of our concepts. Since, for instance, the ideal gas law (for example, Elgin 2007) is recognized as a helpful fiction and is named and taught as such, as is, nave Copernicanism or the simple view that humans evolved from apes. 1. 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. epistemological shift pros and cons. Should we say that the use of the term understanding that applies to such cases should be of no interest to epistemology? What is Justified Belief? In G. S. Pappas (ed. 115, No. 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. According to Zagzebski (2001), the epistemic value of understanding is tied not to elements of its factivity, but rather to its transparency. 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. 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 complicate matters further, some of the philosophers who appear to endorse one approach over the other can elsewhere be seen considering a more mixed view (for example, Khalifa 2013b). A more sophisticated understanding has it that human beings and the other great apes descended from a common hominid ancestor (who was not, strictly speaking, an ape). So, on Grimms (2011) view, grasping the relationships between the relevant parts of the subject matter amounts to possessing the ability to work out how changing parts of that system would or would not impact on the overall system. However, Kelp admits that he wonders how his account will make sense of the link between understanding and explanation, and one might also wonder whether it is too strict to say that understanding requires knowledge as opposed to justified belief or justified true belief. 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. As Elgin (2007) notes, it is normal practice to attribute scientific understanding to individuals even when parts of the bodies of information that they endorse diverge somewhat from the truth. So, understanding is compatible with a kind of epistemic luck that knowledge excludes. 1. Khalifas (2013) view of understanding is a form of explanatory idealism. Outlines a view on which understanding something requires making reasonable sense of it. ), 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. 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). Fourthly, a relatively fertile area for further research concerns the semantics of understanding attribution. Trout, J.D. Contains the famous counterexamples to the Justified True Belief account of knowledge. Hills, A. 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. Zagzebski (2001), whose view maintains that at least not all cases of understanding require true beliefs, gestures to something like this view. Zagzebski (2001) and Kvanvig (2003), have suggested that understandings immunity to being undermined by the kinds of epistemic luck which undermine knowledge is one of the most important ways in which understanding differs from knowledge. Carter, J. Salmon, W. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation. In Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. In all these cases, epistemology seeks to understand one or another kind of cognitive success (or, correspondingly, cognitive failure ). (2007: 37), COPERNICUS: A central tenet of Copernicuss theory is the contention that the Earth travels around the sun in a circular orbit. 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. Lucky Understanding Without Knowledge. Synthese 191 (2014): 945-959. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. manage list views salesforce. De Regt, H. and Dieks, D. A Contextual Approach to Scientific Understanding. Synthese 144 (2005): 137-170. Dordecht: Springer, 2014. And, thirdly, two questions about what is involved in grasping can easily be run together, but should be kept separate. When considering interesting features that might set understanding apart from propositional knowledge, the idea of grasping something is often mentioned. A restatement of Grimms view might accordingly be: understanding is knowledge of dependence relations. Suppose further that the agent could have easily ended up with a made-up and incorrect explanation because (unbeknownst to the agent) everyone in the vicinity of the genuine fire officer who is consulted is dressed up as fire officers and would have given the wrong story (whilst failing to disclose that they were merely in costume). ), Fictions in Science: Essays on Idealization and Modeling. This broader interpretation seems well positioned to handle abstract object cases, for example, mathematical understanding, when the kind of understanding at issue is understanding-why. 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. A monograph that explores the nature and value of achievements in great depth. 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). 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. 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? This consequence does not intuitively align with our practices of attributing understanding. However, it is not entirely clear that extant views on understanding fall so squarely into these two camps. 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. Such discussions, though they can be initially helpful, raise a nest of further questions. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Essentially, this view traditionally holds that understanding why X is the case is equivalent to knowing why X is the case (which is in turn supposed to be equivalent to knowing that X is the case because of Y). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 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.