epistemological shift pros and cons
Hills, A. Taking curiosity to be of epistemic significance is not a new idea. This is a change from the past. Pritchard, D. Recent Work on Epistemic Value. American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2007): 85-110. View Shift in Epistemology.docx from SOCIOLOGY 1010 at Columbia Southern University. Kepler improved on Copernicus by contending that the Earths orbit is not circular, but elliptical. 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. Epistemology is the study of sources of knowledge. Men In . 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. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. 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. 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. See answer source: Epistemology in an Hour Caleb Beers A. and Gordon, E. C. Norms of Assertion: The Quantity and Quality of Epistemic Support. Philosophia 39(4) (2011): 615-635. Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. But most knowledge is not metaknowledge, and epistemology is therefore a relatively insignificant source of knowledge. ), Scientific Understanding: Philosophical Perspectives. 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. If we consider some goalsuch as the successful completion of a coronary bypassit is obvious that our attitude towards the successful coronary bypass is different when the completion is a matter of ability as opposed to luck. 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). Many seem to blend manipulationism with explanations, suggesting for example that what is required for understanding is an ability associated with mentally manipulating explanations. More generally, as this line of criticism goes, sometimes we simply mistake mere (non-factive) intelligibility for understanding. See further Bradford (2013; 2015) for resistance to the very suggestion that there can be weak achievements on Pritchards sensenamely, achievements that do not necessarily involve great effort, regardless of whether they are primarily due to ability. Abstract. 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. Argues against the view that moral understanding can be immune to luck while moral knowledge is not. 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. By contrast, Pritchard believes that understanding always involves strong cognitive achievement, that is, an achievement that necessarily involves either a significant exercise of skill or the overcoming of a significant obstacle. While his view fits well with understanding-why, it is less obvious that objectual understanding involves grasping how things came to be. He suggests that the primary object of a priori knowledge is the modal reality itself that is grasped by the mind and that on this basis we go on to assent to the proposition that describes these relationships. epistemological shift pros and cons. This aside, can we consider extending Grimms conception of understanding as non-propositional knowledge of causes to the domain of objectual understanding? 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. New York: Routledge, 2011. Regarding factivity, then, it seems there is room for a view that occupies the middle ground here. Discuss the pros and cons of the epistemological shift in an essay. 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. Call these, for short, the relation question and the object question. 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. The next section considers some of the most prominent examples of attempts to expand on or replace a grasping condition on understanding. If, as robust virtue epistemologists have often insisted, cognitive achievement is finally valuable (that is, as an instance of achievements more generally), and understanding necessarily lines up with cognitive achievement but knowledge only sometimes does, then the result is a revisionary story about epistemic value. He leaves grasping at the level of metaphor or uses it them literally but never develops it. 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. Some focus on understanding-why while others focus on objectual understanding. Unlike de Regt and Dieks (2005), Wilkenfeld aims to propose an inclusive manipulation-based view that allows agents to have objectual understanding even if they do not have a theory of the phenomenon in question. ), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. 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. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975. Early defence of explanations key role in understanding. Understanding entails that such beliefs must be the result of exercising reliable cognitive abilities. Should we say that the use of the term understanding that applies to such cases should be of no interest to epistemology? Longworth, G. Linguistic Understanding and Knowledge. Nous 42 (2008): 50-79. The distinctive aspects can be identified as human abilities to engage in mathematics and intellectual reasoning. Although a large number of epistemologists hold that understanding is not a species of knowledge (e.g. It is helpful to consider an example. However, this concern might be abated with the addition of a moderate factivity constraint (for example, the constraint discussed in section two above) that rules out cases of mere intelligibility or subjective understanding). Argues that the concerns plaguing theories of knowledge do not cause problems for a theory of understanding. 4 Pages. 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). 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. He wants us to suppose that grasping has two componentsone that is a purely psychological (that is, narrow) component and one that is the actual obtaining of the state of affairs that is grasped. However, the core explanationist insight also offers the resources to supplement a grasping account. Another seemingly promising lineone that engages with the relation question discussed aboveviews grasping as intimately connected with a certain set of abilities. If so, why, and if not why not? For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. That said, Grimms more recent work (2014) expands on these earlier observations to form the basis of a view that spells out grasping in terms of a modal relationship between properties, objects or entitiesa theory on which what is grasped when one has understanding-why will be how changes in one would lead (or fail to lead) to changes in the other. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Such a constraint would preserve the intuition that understanding is a particularly desirable epistemic good and would accordingly be untroubled by the issues highlighted for the weakest view outlined at the start of the section. It is not only unnecessary, but moreover, contentious, that a credible scientist would consider the ideal gas law true. 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. Salmon, W. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation. In Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. Grimm (2006) and Pritchard (2010) counter that many of the most desirable instances of potential understanding, such as when we understand another persons psychology or understand how the world works, are not transparent. Carter, J. 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. Specifically, a very weak view of understandings factivity does not fit with the plausible and often expressed intuition that understanding is something especially epistemically valuable. Hazlett, A. ), Justification and Knowledge. On such a view, grasping talk could simply be jettisoned altogether. He suggests that manipulating the system allows the understander to see the way in which the manipulation influences (or fails to influence) other parts of the system (2011: 11). But it is not strictly true. Elgin, C. Understanding and the Facts. Philosophical Studies 132 (2007): 33-42. The Nature of Ability and the Purpose of Knowledge. Philosophical Issues 17 (2007): 57-69. fort hood cif inprocessing; bucks county inspector of elections candidates; lockdown limerick poem; boeing seattle badge office. Solicitar ms informacin: 310-2409701 | administracion@consultoresayc.co. Decent Essays. Establishes a pro position, supporting that the shift in how people take in knowledge is good. Take first the object question. Looks at understandings role in recent debates about epistemic value and contains key arguments against Elgins non-factive view of understanding. Thirdly, and perhaps most interestingly, objectual understanding is attributed in sentences that take the form I understand X where X is or can be treated as a body of information or subject matter. What kind of historical enterprise is historical epistemology? This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. While Pritchard can agree with Rohwers conclusion that understanding (and specifically as Rohwer is interested in, scientific understanding) is not a species of knowledge, the issue of adjudicating between Rohwers intuition in the case of unifying understanding and the diagnosis Pritchard will be committed to in such a case is complicated. A monograph that explores the nature and value of achievements in great depth. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. With each step in the sequence, we understand the motion of the planets better than we did before. To the extent that this is right, Zagzebski is endorsing a kind of KU principle (compare: KK). Consider how some people think they grasp the ways in which their zodiac sign has an influence on their life path, yet their sense of understanding is at odds with the facts of the matter. 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). 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. However, Baker (2003) has offered an account on which at least some instances of understanding-why are non-factive. The following sections consider why understanding might have such additional value. Eds. Your paper should be 3-4 pages in length, not counting the Title page and Reference . To defend the claim that possessing the kinds of abilities Hills draws attention to is not a matter of simply having extra items of knowledgeshe notes that one could have the extra items of knowledge and still lack the good judgment that allows you to form new, related true beliefs. For example, a self-proclaimed psychic might see someone trip and believe that he caused this persons fall. He says that knowledge about a phenomenon (P) is maximally well-connected when the basing relations that obtain between the agents beliefs about P reflect the agents knowledge about the explanatory and support relations that obtain between the members of the full account of P (2015: 12). 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. He gives the name grasping* to the purely psychological component that would continue to be satisfied even if, say, an evil demon made it the case at the moment of your grasping that there was only an appearance of the thing that appears to you to be the case. 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). Grimm, S. Is Understanding a Species of Knowledge? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2006): 515-535. 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 rationalism way of thinking, knowledge is acquired using reasons or reasoning. Discusses whether intellectualist arguments for reducing know-how to propositional knowledge might also apply to understanding-why (if it is a type of knowing how). However, Strevens nonetheless offers a rough outline of a parallel, non-factive account of grasping, what he calls grasping*. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. For example, and problematically for any account of objectual understanding that relaxes a factivity constraint, people frequently retract previous attributions of understanding. For example, Pritchards case of the fake fire officerwhich recall is one in which he thinks understanding (as well as knowledge) is lackingis one in which Rower points out taht all of the true beliefs and grasped connections between those beliefs are from a bad source. That said, Hills adds some qualifications. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979. 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. luxury private label candles, texas state holiday schedule for fiscal year 2022, ahead vs done adhd,