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. His central claim in his recent work is that understanding can be viewed as knowledge of causes, though appreciating how he is thinking of this takes some situating, given that the knowledge central to understanding is non-propositional. In short: understanding is causal propositional knowledge. If Pritchard is right to claim that understanding is always a strong cognitive achievement, then understanding is always finally valuable if cognitive achievement is also always finally valuable, and moreover, valuable in a way that knowledge is not. Curiosity and a Response-Dependent Account of the Value of Understanding. In T. Henning and D. Schweikard (eds. 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. On such a view, grasping talk could simply be jettisoned altogether. What is it to have this ability to modify some mental representation? That said, this article nonetheless attempts to outline a selection of topics that have generated the most discussion and highlights what is at issue in each case and what some of the available positions are. Hazlett, A. Zagzebski does not mean to say that to understand X, one must also understand ones own understanding of X (as this threatens a psychologically implausible regress), but rather, that to understand X one must also understand that one understands X. 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. Consider a student saying, I thought I understood this subject, but my recent grade suggests I dont understand it after all. 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. Working hypotheses and idealizations need not, on this line, be viewed as representative of realityidealizations can be taken as useful fictions, and working hypotheses are recognized as the most parsimonious theories on the table without thereby being dubbed as wholly accurate. The topic of epistemic value has only relatively recently received sustained attention in mainstream epistemology. A second reason that adverting to grasping-talk in the service of characterizing understanding raises further question is that it is often not clarified just what relationships or connections are being grasped, when they are grasped in a way that is distinctive of understanding. Secondly, there is plenty of scope for understanding to play a more significant role in social epistemology. One natural place to start will be to examine the relationship between understanding and epistemic luck. Outlines and evaluates the anti-intellectualist and intellectualist views of know-how. Consequently, engaging with the project of clarifying and exploring the epistemic states or states attributed when we attribute understanding is a complex matter. ), Justification and Knowledge. Kepler improved on Copernicus by contending that the Earths orbit is not circular, but elliptical. Wilkenfeld (2013) offers the account that most clearly falls under Kelps characterization of manipulationist approaches to understanding. 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. Hills (2009) is an advocate of such a view of understanding-why in particular. On the other hand, there are explanationists, who argue that it is knowledge or evaluation of explanations that is doing the relevant work. 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. Gettier, E. Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis 23 (6) (1963). This aside, can we consider extending Grimms conception of understanding as non-propositional knowledge of causes to the domain of objectual understanding? 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. 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. An overview of issues relating to epistemic value, including discussion of understanding as a higher epistemic state. In particular, as Pritchard suggests, we might want to consider that agents working with the ideal gas law or other idealizations do not necessarily have false beliefs as a result, even if the content of the proposition expressed by the law is not strictly true. This entry surveys the varieties of cognitive success, and some recent efforts to understand some of those varieties. It also allows attributions of understanding in the presence of peripheral false beliefs, without going so far as to grant that understanding is present in cases of internally consistent delusionsas such delusions will feature at least some false central beliefs. This leaves us, however, with an interesting question about the point at which there is no understanding at all, rather than merely weaker or poorer understanding. 57-74, 2015. 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). She claims, it may be possible to know without knowing one knows, but it is impossible to understand without understanding one understands (2001: 246) and suggests that this property of understanding might insulate it from skepticism. 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.. Endorses the idea that when we consider how things would be if something was true, we increase our access to further truths. 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. The epistemological shift in the present In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. 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. 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. 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. 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. Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological shift in an essay. 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. In short, then, Kvanvig wants to insist that the true beliefs that one attains in acquiring ones understanding can all be Gettiered, even though the Gettier-style luck which prevents these beliefs from qualifying as knowledge does not undermine the understanding this individual acquires. Includes Alstons view of curiosity, according to which the epistemic value of true belief and knowledge partially comes from a link to curiosity. One issue worth bringing into sharper focus is whether knowing a good and correct explanation is really the ideal form of understanding-why. philos201 Assignment Details Recall that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. This would be the non-factive parallel to the standard view of grasping. 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. 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). If so, then the internally consistent delusion objection typically leveled against weakly nonfactive views raises its head. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014. However, such a strong view would also make understanding nearly unobtainable and surely very rarefor example, on the extremely strong proposal under consideration, recognized experts in a field would be denied understanding if they had a single false belief about some very minor aspect of the subject matter. In particular, how we might define expertise and who has it. In looking at moral understanding-why, outlines some key abilities that may be necessary to the grasping component of understanding. Grasping also allows the understander to anticipate what would happen if things were relevantly differentnamely, to make correct inferences about the ways in which relevant differences to the truth-values of the involved propositions would influence the inferences that obtain in the actual world. These retractions do not t seem to make sense on the weak view. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Elgin, C. Exemplification, Idealization, and Understanding in M. Surez (ed. ), Epistemic Value. Explanatory Knowledge and Metaphysical Dependence. In his Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. Autor de la entrada: Publicacin de la entrada: junio 16, 2022 Categora de la entrada: rivian executive vice president Comentarios de la entrada: most touchdowns in california high school football most touchdowns in california high school football Offers an account of understanding that requires having a theory of the relevant phenomenon. This is a point Elgin is happy to grant. Kvanvig, J. In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Hardback) (Vol. 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 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. 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. ), Knowledge, Truth and Obligation. Grimm, S. The Value of Understanding. Philosophy Compass 7(2) (2012): 103-177. To the extent that this is correct, there is some cause for reservation about measuring degrees of understanding according to how well they approximate the benefits provided by knowing a good and correct explanation. A proponent of Khalifas position might, however, view the preceding response as question-begging. However, Grimm is quick to point out that defending one of these two similar views does not depend on the correctness of the other. 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. 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. 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). ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. Carter, J. Kelp points out that this type of view is not so restrictive as to deny understanding to, for example, novice students and young children.