Expanding the Dimensions of Epistemic Cognition: Arguments From Philosophy and Psychology

Abstract

Psychological and educational researchers have developed a flourishing research program on epistemological dimensions of cognition (epistemic cognition). Contemporary philosophers investigate many epistemological topics that are highly relevant to this program but that have not featured in research on epistemic cognition. We argue that integrating these topics into psychological models of epistemic cognition is likely to improve the explanatory and predictive power of these models. We thus propose and explicate a philosophically grounded framework for epistemic cognition that includes five components: (a) epistemic aims and epistemic value; (b) the structure of knowledge and other epistemic achievements; (c) the sources and justification of knowledge and other epistemic achievements, and the related epistemic stances; (d) epistemic virtues and vices; and (e) reliable and unreliable processes for achieving epistemic aims. We further argue for a fine-grained, context-specific analysis of cognitions within the five components.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank James Blachowicz, Carol Chan, David Hammer, Lucia Mason, Michael Pendlebury, and Michael Weinstock for very helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. We have benefited greatly from conversations with Richard Duschl, Jeff Greene, and David Hammer about the issues we discuss. We are particularly grateful to the four anonymous reviewers for their detailed and exceptionally stimulating reviews, which led us to reframe our thinking about many of the issues we address. Finally, we thank Sona Bhavsar, Angela Goff, Christopher Martin, Boris Yakubchik, and Connie Zeng for assistance with editing. This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0529582. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Note. This manuscript was submitted and accepted under the editorial term of Gale M. Sinatra.

Notes

A list of these sources can obtained from the first author.

Although there is considerable disagreement among many of the epistemologists from whose work we draw, discussion of their debates is beyond the scope of this article.

There is indirect evidence from a study by Kruglanski, Peri, and Zakai (1991) that individuals who exhibit a need for closure are pursuing the aim of minimally justified knowledge as we have described it. We discuss need for closure further under epistemic virtues and vices.

The aim of understanding may seem at first appear to be equivalent to the aim of constructing complex interconnected knowledge. However, this is mistaken. Interconnected ideas can be either simple or complex, and one can aim to understand relatively simple as well as highly complex material. Similarly, knowledge can be interconnected without being highly complex.

Our discussion of the aim of understanding raises a question of whether motivational researchers’ measures of mastery goals (characterized as goals to learn, understand, and master material) capture the epistemic aim of understanding. In fact, some items in some measures do assess whether students value the aim of understanding, such as “It's important to me that I thoroughly understand my class work” (Midgley et al., 2000). However, many items in these measures do not measure the adoption of epistemic aims, such as “The opportunity to do challenging work is important to me” (see Hulleman, Shrager, Bodmann, & Harackiewicz, 2010, for further examples). This item measures the value placed on challenging work but does not directly assess whether the student values or aims to acquire truth, justified beliefs, or other epistemic aims; challenging work may be valued simply because it is fun. To properly assess epistemic aims, more carefully targeted measures are needed.

Measures of task importance by expectancy-value theorists have some similarities to epistemic value. However, typical items in these measures are very general, such as rating how important it is to do well in math (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). We advocate a more detailed profile of the specific kinds of knowledge that students find valuable, as well as why they think these kinds of knowledge have value.

It appears to us that the constructs investigated by EC researchers as “sources” and those investigated as “justifications” are often the same (e.g., “authority” and “experience” may be treated as a source in one study and as a basis for justification in another). Most of those in this list would be viewed by philosophers as sources. Hence, we have mixed categories of sources and categories of justification together in generating this list.

There are two broad, complementary approaches to virtue epistemology (Alston, 2005; Greco, 2009). We discuss one approach in this section. The other approach views epistemic virtues as aspects of cognitive faculties such as perception, memory, and reasoning; intellectually virtuous people are those with well-functioning cognitive faculties such as good perception, good memory, and good reasoning. It is thus widely considered to be a form of reliabilism, which we discuss in the next section.