epistemological shift pros and cons

Defends a lack of control account of luck. 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. (iii) an ability to draw from the information that q the conclusion that p (or that probably p). Description Recall that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. 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. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003. sustainability scholarship 2021; lost vape centaurus replacement panels; In terms of parallels with the understanding debate, it is important to note that the knowledge of causes formula is not limited to the traditional propositional reading. 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). Considers some of the ramifications that active externalist approaches might have for epistemology. Specifically, Hills outlines six different abilities that she takes to be involved in grasping the reasons why pabilities which effectively constitute, on her view, six necessary conditions for understanding why p. These six abilities allow one to be able to treat q as the reason why p, not merely believe or know that q is the reason why p. They are as follows: (i) an ability to follow another persons explanation of why p. (ii) an ability to explain p in ones own words. 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. facebook android official. More generally, as this line of criticism goes, sometimes we simply mistake mere (non-factive) intelligibility for understanding. The context-sensitive element of Wilkenfelds account of understanding allows him to attribute adequate understanding to, for example, a student in an introductory history class and yet deny understanding to that student when the context shifts to place him in a room with a panel of experts. In . epistemological shift pros and cons - kaminokawa-shokokai.net 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. Even so, and especially over the past decade, there has been agreement amongst most epistemologists working on epistemic value that that understanding is particularly valuable (though see Janvid 2012 for a rare dissenting voice). Both are veritic types of luck on Pritchards viewthey are present when, given how one came to have ones true belief, it is a matter of luck that this belief is true (Pritchard 2005: 146). Although a large number of epistemologists hold that understanding is not a species of knowledge (e.g. Examines reasons to suppose that attributions of understanding are typically attributions of knowledge, understanding-why or objectual understanding. Wilkenfeld suggests that this ability consists at least partly in being able to correct minor mistakes in ones mental representation and use it to make assessments in similar cases. This is a change from the past. But is understanding factive? 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. Rohwer argues that counterexamples like Pritchards intervening luck cases only appear plausible because the beliefs that make up the agents understanding come exclusively from a bad source. 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. The Problem of the External World 2. Strevens (2013) focuses on scientific understanding in his discussion of grasping. Contains Lackeys counterexamples to the knowledge transmission principles. Argues against a factive conception of scientific understanding. While his view fits well with understanding-why, it is less obvious that objectual understanding involves grasping how things came to be. epistemological shift pros and cons - oshawanewhome.ca But in this version of the case, suppose that, although the book is entirely authoritative, genuine and reliable, it is the only trustworthy book on the Comanche on the shelvesevery book on the shelves nearby, which she easily could have grabbed rather than the genuine authoritative book, was filled with rumors and ungrounded suppositions. Her main supporting example is of understanding the rate at which objects in a vacuum fall toward the earth (that is, 32 feet per second), a belief that ignores the gravitational attraction of everything except the earth and so is therefore not true. In particular, how we might define expertise and who has it. 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. Solicitar ms informacin: 310-2409701 | administracion@consultoresayc.co. 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, if I competently grasp the relevant coherence-making and explanatory relations between propositions about chemistry which I believe and which are true but which I believed on an improper basis. Salmon, W. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation. In Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. Elgin, C. Z. In practice, individuals' epistemological beliefs determine how they think knowledge or truth can be comprehended, what problems - if any - are associated with various views of pursuing and presenting knowledge and what role researchers play in its discovery (Robson, 2002). 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. However, Elgin takes this line further and insists thatwith some qualificationsfalse central beliefs, and not merely false peripheral beliefs, are compatible with understanding a subject matter to some degree. 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. (For example, is it a kind of knowledge, another kind of propositional attitude, an ability, and so on? On this basis Pritchard insists that Grimms analogy breaks down. Goldman, A. This section considers the connection between understanding-why and truth, and then engages with the more complex issue of whether objectual understanding is factive. And, thirdly, two questions about what is involved in grasping can easily be run together, but should be kept separate. ), Fictions in Science: Essays on Idealization and Modeling. Contains the famous counterexamples to the Justified True Belief account of knowledge. PHIL 201 AIU Philosophy Pros & Cons of The Epistemological Shift Essay Dordrecht: Springer, 2014. 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. New York: Free Press, 1965. Whitcomb, D. Epistemic Value In A. Cullison (ed. 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. But it is not strictly true. 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. Grimm thinks the metaphor involves something like apprehending how things stand in modal space (that is, that there are no possible worlds in which the necessary truth is false). This holds regardless of whether we are Platonists or nominalists about such entities. 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. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. 824 Words. Janvid, M. Knowledge versus Understanding: The Cost of Avoiding Gettier. Acta Analytica 27 (2012): 183-197. Gordon, E. C. Is There Propositional Understanding? Logos & Episteme 3 (2012): 181-192. Carter (2014) argues that shifting to more demanding practical environments motivates attributing lower degrees of understanding rather than (as Wilkenfeld is suggests) withholding understanding. But when the object of understanding why is essentially evaluativefor example, understanding why the statue is beautifulit seems that the quality of ones understanding could vary dramatically even when we hold fixed that one possesses a correct and complete explanation of how the statue came to be (that is, both a physical and social description of these causes). 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. Stanley, J. He leaves grasping at the level of metaphor or uses it them literally but never develops it. In particular, he wants to propose a non-propositional view that has at its heart seeing or grasping, of the terms of the casual relata, their modal relatedness, which he suggests amounts to seeing or grasping how things might have been if certain conditions had been different. To be clear, the nuanced view Grimm suggests is that while understanding is a kind of knowledge of causes, it is not propositional knowledge of causes but rather non-propositional knowledge of causes, where the non-propositional knowledge is itself unpacked as a kind of ability or know-how. Grimm anticipates this point and expresses a willingness to embrace a looser conception of dependence than causal dependence, one that includes (following Kim 1994) species of dependence such as mereological dependences (that is, dependence of a whole on its parts), evaluative dependences (that is, dependence of evaluative on non-evaluative), and so on. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. According to Goldman (1991) curiosity is a desire for true belief; by contrast, Williamson views curiosity as a desire for knowledge. Hills (2009) is an advocate of such a view of understanding-why in particular. Grimm, S. Understanding In S. Bernecker and D. Pritchard (eds. 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). 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. Lucky Understanding Without Knowledge. Synthese 191 (2014): 945-959. See Elgin (2004) for some further discussion of the role of acceptance and belief in her account. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Khalifas (2013) view of understanding is a form of explanatory idealism. Pros and cons of the epistemological shift - Ideal Term Papers reptarium brian barczyk; new milford high school principal; salisbury university apparel store Where is the Understanding? Synthese, 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). Philosophers concern on epistemological shift - Eddusaver CA: Wadsworth, 2009. This is a change from the past. 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. This line merits discussion not least because the idea that understanding-why comes by degrees is often ignored in favor of discussing the more obvious point that understanding a subject matter clearly comes by degrees. Lackey, J. Hills, A. 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. Discusses and defines ability in the sense often appealed to in work on cognitive ability and the value of knowledge. The distinctive aspects can be identified as human abilities to engage in mathematics and intellectual reasoning. Zagzebski, L. On 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. (2007: 37), COPERNICUS: A central tenet of Copernicuss theory is the contention that the Earth travels around the sun in a circular orbit. Khalifa, K. Understanding, Grasping and Luck. Episteme 10 (1) (2013b): 1-17. 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. As will see, a good number of epistemologists would agree that false beliefs are compatible with understanding. Grimm (2011) calls this subjective understanding. He describes subjective understanding as being merely a grasp of how specific propositions interlinkone that does not depend on their truth but rather on their forming a coherent picture. Though the demandingness of this ability need not be held fixed across practical circumstances. Hempel, C. Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. 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. Lipton, P. Understanding Without Explanation in H. de Regt, S. Leonelli, and K. Eigner (eds. Would this impede ones understanding? De Regt, H. and Dieks, D. A Contextual Approach to Scientific Understanding. Synthese 144 (2005): 137-170. Trout, J.D. 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). Grimm puts the template formulation as follows: A Comanche-style case is one in which we form true beliefs on the basis of trusting some source, and either (a) the source is unreliable, or (b) the source is reliable, but in the current environment one might easily have chosen an unreliable source. After analysing variations of the Comanche case so conceived, Grimm argues that in neither (a)- or (b)-style Comanche cases do knowledge and understanding come apart. New York: Routledge, 2011. 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. al 2014), have for understanding? epistemological shift pros and cons Offers an account of understanding that requires having a theory of the relevant phenomenon. Argues that the ordinary concept of knowledge is not factive and that epistemologists should therefore not concern themselves with said ordinary concept. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Curiosity and a Response-Dependent Account of the Value of Understanding. In T. Henning and D. Schweikard (eds. 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. Grimm (2011) suggests that what we should regard as being understood in cases of objectual understandingnamely, the object of the objectual attitude relationcan be helpfully thought of as akin to a system or structure [that has] parts or elements that depend upon one another in various ways.. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Given that the instrumental value is the same, our reaction to the two contrasting bypass cases seems to count in favor of the final value of successes because of abilityachievements. Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological shift 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. It is controversial just which epistemological issues concerning understanding should be central or primarygiven that understanding is a relative newcomer in the mainstream epistemological literature. DePaul, M. Ugly Analysis and Value in A. Haddock, A. Millar and D. Pritchard (eds. This in part for three principal reasons. 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. This point aligns with the datum that we often attribute understanding by degrees. Builds an account of understanding according to which understanding a subject matter involves possessing a representation that could be manipulated in a useful way. 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. Gettier, E. Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis 23 (6) (1963). The surgeons successful bypass is valued differently when one is made aware that it was by luck that he picked an appropriate blood vessel for the bypass. 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). Putting this all together, a scientist who embraces the ideal gas law, as an idealization, would not necessarily have any relevant false beliefs. 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. The possession of such judgment plausibly lines up more closely with ability possession (that is, (i)-(vi)) than with propositional attitude possession. Keplers theory is a further advance in understanding, and the current theory is yet a further advance. It focuses on means of human knowledge acquisition and how to differentiate the truth knowledge claims from the false one. Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological shift in an essay. Secondly, she concedes that it is possible that in some cases additional abilities must be added before the set of abilities will be jointly sufficient. 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. Most notably here is what we can call linguistic understandingnamely, the kind of understanding that is of particular interest to philosophers of language in connection with our competence with words and their meanings (see, for example, Longworth 2008). See answer source: Epistemology in an Hour Caleb Beers An overview of the background, development and recent issues in epistemology, including a chapter on understanding as an epistemic good. ), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2nd Edition). 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. 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. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. The Pros And Cons Of Epistemology - 824 Words | Bartleby ), The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding. In other words, S knows that p only if p is true. As it were, from the inside, these can be indistinguishable much as, from the first-person perspective, mere true belief and knowledge can be indistinguishable.

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