So the kind of knowledge that it provides is metaknowledgeknowledge about knowledge. This objection is worth holding in mind when considering any further positions that incorporate representation manipulability as necessary. 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). Strevens (2013) focuses on scientific understanding in his discussion of grasping. ), Epistemic Value. 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). 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. What is curiosity? Put generally, according to the coherentist family of proposals of the structure of justified belief, a belief or set of beliefs is justified, or justifiably held, just in case the belief coheres with a set of beliefs, the set forms a coherent system, or some variation on these themes (Olsson 2012: 1). 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. This allows the agent to produce a slightly different mental representation of the subject matter that enables efficacious inferences pertaining to (or manipulations of) the subject matter. 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. 1pt1): pp. 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. Khalifa, K. Inaugurating understanding or repackaging explanation. Strevens, M. No Understanding Without Explanation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 44 (2013): 510-515. Epistemology is often defined as the theory of knowledge, and talk of propositional knowledge (that is, S knows that p) has dominated the bulk of modern literature in epistemology. 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. Men His modal model of understanding fits with the intuition that we understand not propositions but relations between parts to wholes or systems of various thoughts.. In rationalism way of thinking, knowledge is acquired using reasons or reasoning. The next section considers some of the most prominent examples of attempts to expand on or replace a grasping condition on understanding. By contrast, the paradigmatic case of environmental epistemic luck is the famous barn faade case (for example, Ginet 1975; Goldman 1979), a case where what an agent looks at is a genuine barn which unbeknownst to the individual is surrounded by faades which are indistinguishable to the agent from the genuine barn. Fifthly, to what extent might active externalist approaches (for example, extended mind and extended cognition) in epistemology, the ramifications of which have recently been brought to bear on the theory of knowledge (see Carter, et. A., Kallestrup, J. Palermos, S.O. Relatedly, Van Camp (2014) calls understanding a higher level cognition that involves recognizing connections between different pieces of knowledge, and Kosso (2007: 1) submits that inter-theoretic coherence is the hallmark of understanding, stating knowledge of many facts does not amount to understanding unless one also has a sense of how the facts fit together. While such remarks are made with objectual understanding (that is, understanding of a subject matter) in mind, there are similar comments about understanding-why (for example, Hills 2009) that suggest an overlapping need to consider connections between items of information, albeit on a smaller scale. According to Elgin, a factive conception of understanding neither reflects our practices in ascribing understanding nor does justice to contemporary science. Many seem to blend manipulationism with explanations, suggesting for example that what is required for understanding is an ability associated with mentally manipulating explanations. This holds regardless of whether we are Platonists or nominalists about such entities. sustainability scholarship 2021; lost vape centaurus replacement panels; This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. As Lackey thinks students can come to know evolutionary theory from this teacher despite the teacher not knowing the propositions she asserts (given that the Stella fails the belief condition for knowledge), we might likewise think, and contra Morris, that Stella might fail to understand evolution. Her line is that understanding-why involves (i) knowing what something is, and (ii) making reasonable sense of it. ), Knowledge, Virtue and Action. Likewise, just as all understanding will presumably involve achieving intelligibility even though intelligibility does not entail understanding, so too will all grasping involve grasping* even though grasping* does not entail grasping. Finally, on the other side of the spectrum from Zagzebski and Kvanvig, and also in opposition with Pritchard, is the view that understandings immunity to epistemic luck is isomorphic to knowledges immunity to epistemic luck. This section considers the connection between understanding-why and truth, and then engages with the more complex issue of whether objectual understanding is factive. 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. Hence, he argues that any propositional knowledge is derivative. Hempel, C. Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. 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. 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. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. He considers that grasping might be a modal sense or ability that allows the understander to, over and above registering how things are. This is not so obvious, and at least, not as obvious as it is in the case of knowledge. Curiosity and a Response-Dependent Account of the Value of Understanding. In T. Henning and D. Schweikard (eds. 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. The Problem of the External World 2. At the other end of the spectrum, we might consider an extremely strong view of understandings factivity, according to which understanding a subject matter requires that all of ones beliefs about the subject matter in question are true. ), The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding. epistemological shift pros and cons. ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. Resists the alleged similarity between understanding and knowing-how. 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. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 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. This is because we might be tempted to say instead that we desire to make sense of things because it is good to do so rather than saying that it is good to make sense of things because we desire it. A discussion of whether linguistic understanding is a form of knowledge. 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. Incudes arguments for the position that understanding need not be factive. Argues that the ordinary concept of knowledge is not factive and that epistemologists should therefore not concern themselves with said ordinary concept. Sliwa 2015, however, defends a stronger view, according to which propositional knowledge is necessary and sufficient for understanding. In this respect, it seems Kelps move against the manipulationist might get off the ground only if certain premises are in play which manipulationists as such would themselves be inclined to resist. However, Strevens nonetheless offers a rough outline of a parallel, non-factive account of grasping, what he calls grasping*. 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. Due to the possibility of overly simple or passive successes qualifying as cognitive achievements (for example, coming to truly believe that it is dark just by looking out of the window in normal conditions after 10pm), Pritchard cautions that we should distinguish between two classes of cognitive achievementstrong and weak: Weak cognitive achievement: Cognitive success that is because of ones cognitive ability. So, understanding is compatible with a kind of epistemic luck that knowledge excludes. This aside, can we consider extending Grimms conception of understanding as non-propositional knowledge of causes to the domain of objectual understanding? One issue worth bringing into sharper focus is whether knowing a good and correct explanation is really the ideal form of understanding-why. Stanley, J and Williamson, T. Knowing How. Journal of Philosophy 98(8) (2001): 411-444. 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. For example, Hills (2009: 4) says you cannot understand why p if p is false (compare: S knows that p only if p). 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). 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. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 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). In the first version, we are to imagine that the agent gets her beliefs from a faux-academic book filled with mere rumors that turn out to be luckily true. An epistemological shift: from evidence-based medicine to epistemological responsibility J Eval Clin Pract. 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. Argues that a type of understanding might be the norm that warrants assertion in a restricted class of cases. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. 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). In addition, it is important to make explicit differences in terminology that can sometimes confuse discussions of some types of understanding. 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 one thing, she admits that these abilities can be possessed by degrees. Moral Testimony and Moral Epistemology. Ethics 120 (2009): 94-127. 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. An earlier paper defending the intellectualist view of know-how. In order to make this point clear, Pritchard suggests that we first consider two versions of a case analogous with Kvanvigs. A paper in which it is argued that (contrary to popular opinion) knowledge does not exclude luck. Introduces intelligibility as an epistemic state similar to understanding but less valuable. Perhaps, as Harvey (2006b) suggests, we do need to reconfigure academic protocols in order to make more room for these kinds of . 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. Grimm, S. The Value of Understanding. Philosophy Compass 7(2) (2012): 103-177. Keplers theory is a further advance in understanding, and the current theory is yet a further advance. Hetherington, S. There Can be Lucky Knowledge in M. Steup, J. Turri and E. Sosa (eds. Kelp (2015) makes a helpful distinction between two broad camps here. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 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. In particular, one might be tempted to suggest that some of the objections raised to Grimms non-propositional knowledge-of-causes model could be recast as objections to Khalifas own explanation-based view. 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.