Kvanvig stipulates that there are no falsehoods in the relevant class of beliefs that this individual has acquired from the book, and also that she can correctly answer all relevant questions whilst confidently believing that she is expressing the truth. Argues that understanding (unlike knowledge) is a type of cognitive achievement and therefore of distinctive value. 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. For the purposes of thinking about understanding, some of the most important will include: (i) what makes a system of beliefs coherent? Grimm, S. The Value of Understanding. Philosophy Compass 7(2) (2012): 103-177. 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. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. ), The Nature and Value of Knowledge: Three Investigations. 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. An important observation Grimm makes is that merely assenting to necessary truths is insufficient for knowing necessary truths a priorione must also grasp orsee the necessity of the necessary truth. 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. Another significant paper endorsing the claim that knowledge of explanations should play a vital role in our theories of understanding. Strong cognitive achievement: Cognitive success that is because of ones cognitive ability where the success in question either involves the overcoming of a significant obstacle or the exercise of a significant level of cognitive ability. Assuming that we need an account of degrees of understanding if we are going to give an account of outright understanding (as opposed to working the other way around, as he thinks many others are inclined to do), Kelp (2015) suggests we adopt a knowledge based account of objectual understanding according to which maximal understanding of a given phenomenon is to be cashed out in terms of fully comprehensive and maximally well-connected knowledge of that phenomenon. In fact, he claims, the two come apart in both directions: yielding knowledge without strong cognitive achievement andas in the case of understanding that lacks corresponding knowledgestrong cognitive achievement without knowledge. In this respect, then, Kvanvigs view achieves the result of a middle ground. 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. This section considers the connection between understanding-why and truth, and then engages with the more complex issue of whether objectual understanding is factive. 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. The possession of such judgment plausibly lines up more closely with ability possession (that is, (i)-(vi)) than with propositional attitude possession. Grimm, S. Understanding as Knowledge of Causes in A. Fairweather (ed. More specifically, Kvanvig aims to support the contention that objectual understanding has a special value knowledge lacks by arguing that the nature of curiositythe motivational element that drives cognitive machinery (2013: 152)underwrites a way of vindicating understandings final value. 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. 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. One issue worth bringing into sharper focus is whether knowing a good and correct explanation is really the ideal form of understanding-why. Argues that the ordinary concept of knowledge is not factive and that epistemologists should therefore not concern themselves with said ordinary concept. 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. ), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Lackey, J. . Uses the hypothesis of extended cognition to argue that understanding can be located (at least partly) outside the head. University of Edinburgh 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). Kvanvig identifies the main opponent to his view, that the scope of curiosity is enough to support the unrestricted value of understanding, to be one on which knowledge is what is fundamental to curiosity. 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. He argues that intuitions that rule against lucky understanding can be explained away. According to Goldman (1991) curiosity is a desire for true belief; by contrast, Williamson views curiosity as a desire for knowledge. 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. Here is one potential example to illustrate this point: consider that it is not clear that people who desire to understand chemistry generally care about the cause of chemistry. On this basis Pritchard insists that Grimms analogy breaks down. Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. 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). 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 will see, a good number of epistemologists would agree that false beliefs are compatible with understanding. epistemological shift pros and cons. Hempel, C. Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. If Kelps thought experiment works, manipulation of representations cannot be a necessary condition of understanding after all. The proponent of moderate factivity owes an explanation. Carter, J. Summary This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Introduction Arguments Con Arguments Pro Ambivalence Concerning Relativism? This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. 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. (2007: 37-8). 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. The advances are clearly cognitive advances. by | Jun 9, 2022 | prayers of dedication presbyterian | advance australia national director | Jun 9, 2022 | prayers of dedication presbyterian | advance australia national director Such discussions, though they can be initially helpful, raise a nest of further questions. While his view fits well with understanding-why, it is less obvious that objectual understanding involves grasping how things came to be. Grimm has put his finger on an important commonality at issue in his argument from parity. In other words, they claim that one cannot always tell that one understands. Running head: SHIFT IN EPISTEMOLOGY 1 Shift in Epistemology Student's Name Professor's Name Institution Where is the Understanding? Synthese, 2015. If so, then the internally consistent delusion objection typically leveled against weakly nonfactive views raises its head. 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. Incudes arguments for the position that understanding need not be factive. Khalifa, K. Inaugurating understanding or repackaging explanation. 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. Carter, J. Knowledge is almost universally taken to be to be factive (compare, Hazlett 2010). Toon, A. 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. 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. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 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. Men Taking curiosity to be of epistemic significance is not a new idea. ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. However, Grimm is quick to point out that defending one of these two similar views does not depend on the correctness of the other. On the view he recommends, the ability to grasp explanatory or evidential connections is an ability that is central to understanding only if the relevant grasping ability is understood as involving reliable explanatory evaluation. 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? If the former, then this is unfortunate given the theoretical work the term is supposed to be doing in characterizing understanding. Regarding factivity, then, it seems there is room for a view that occupies the middle ground here. Some focus on understanding-why while others focus on objectual understanding. This paper proposes a revisionist view of epistemic value and an outline of different types of understanding. 0. However, Baker (2003) has offered an account on which at least some instances of understanding-why are non-factive. For example, Kvanvig (2003: 206) observes that we have an ordinary conception that understanding is a milestone to be achieved by long and sustained efforts at knowledge acquisition and Whitcomb (2012: 8) reflects 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. Yet, these observations do not fit with the weak views commitment to, for example, the claim that understanding is achievable in cases of delusional hallucinations that are disconnected from the facts about how the world is. 1pt1): pp. Ginet, C. Knowledge, Perception and Memory. Kim, J. However, the core explanationist insight also offers the resources to supplement a grasping account. While we would apply a description of better understanding to agent A even if the major difference between her and agent B was that A had additional true beliefs, we would also describe A as having better understanding than B if the key difference was that A had fewer false beliefs. Builds an account of understanding according to which understanding a subject matter involves possessing a representation that could be manipulated in a useful way. and Pritchard, D. Varieties of Externalism. Philosophical Issues 41(1) (2014): 63-109. 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. For example, in Whitcomb (2011) we find the suggestion that theoretical wisdom is a form of particularly deep understanding. Sliwa, P. IVUnderstanding and Knowing. With each step in the sequence, we understand the motion of the planets better than we did before. For one thing, if understanding is both a factive and strongly internalist notion then a radical skeptical argument that threatens to show that we have no understanding is a very intimidating prospect (as Pritchard 2010:86 points out). These retractions do not t seem to make sense on the weak view. This is perhaps partially because there is a tendency to hold a persons potential understanding to standards of objective appropriateness as well as subjective appropriateness. (2007: 37), COPERNICUS: A central tenet of Copernicuss theory is the contention that the Earth travels around the sun in a circular orbit. Riggs, W. Understanding Virtue and the Virtue of Understanding In M. DePaul and L. Zagzebski (eds. The Nature of Ability and the Purpose of Knowledge. Philosophical Issues 17 (2007): 57-69. Kelp, C. Understanding Phenomena. Synthese (2015). Goldman, A. Philosophy of Science, 79(1) (2012): 15-37. 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).. Description Recall that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Hills, A. Resists the alleged similarity between understanding and knowing-how. Keplers theory is a further advance in understanding, and the current theory is yet a further advance. For example, we might suppose that a system of beliefs contains only beliefs about a particular subject matter, and that these beliefs will ordinarily be sufficient for a rational believer who possesses them to answer questions about that subject matter reliably. He argues that we can gain some traction on the nature of grasping significant to understanding if we view it along such manipulationist lines. Kvanvig (2013) claims that both of these views are mistaken, and in the course of doing so, locates curiosity at the center of his account of understandings value. 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. Toon (2015) has recently suggested, with reference to the hypothesis of extended cognition, that understanding can be located partly outside the head. Pragmatism as an epistemological approach accentuates the reasoning of theories and concepts by studying their consequences and goals, values and interests they support. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005. Pritchard, meanwhile, claims that the matter of understandings compatibility with epistemic luck can be appreciated only against the background of a distinction between two kinds of epistemic luckintervening and environmentalboth of which are incompatible with knowledge. ), Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology. In this sense, the history of thought can be seen as the sometimes imperceptibly fluid, sometimes bizarre and abrupt, movements of our concepts. 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. 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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