Understanding and belief

This paper aims to provide support for a knowledge-based account of understanding. More specifically, I will outline an account of understanding according to which, roughly, (i) ideal understanding of phenomenon P is maximal knowledge of P and (ii) degrees of understanding of P are distances from maximal knowledge of P. In addition (iii), (i) and (ii) are combined with a contextualist semantics for outright attributions of understanding. I will argue that there is positive reason to favour this account over the internalist competitors offered by Kvanvig and Elgin as only this account can do proper justice to data concerning comparative degrees of understanding. Finally, it will be shown that this account does not fall prey to a number of attacks on knowledge-based accounts of understanding in recent literature, due to 1 Notice that objectual understanding may itself have propositional objects. Crucially, however, these objects will be what Kvanvig (2003, 192) calls "bodies of information" rather than individual propositions. 2

American Philosophical Quarterly, 2020

The philosophical interest in the nature, value, and varieties of human understanding has swelled in recent years. This article provides an overview of new research in the epistemology of understanding, with a particular focus on the following questions: What is understanding and why should we care about it? Is understanding reducible to knowledge? Does it require truth, belief, or justification? Can there be lucky understanding? Does it require ‘grasping’ or some kind of ‘know-how’? This cluster of questions has largely set the research agenda for the study of understanding in epistemology. I will conclude by discussing some varieties of understanding and highlight directions for future research.

In this paper I propose a new definition for knowledge as an exclusive conscious mental state – a justified purposeful belief for most practical purposes and a justified true belief in clearly defined special cases. The paper first clarifies what a conscious mental state is according to the neuropsychoanalytical framework, uses this base to redefine knowledge, and then looks at some possible ramifications of this change in definition such as on skepticism, Gettier cases and the colloquial use of the term. One of the implications of this redefinition is that knowledge looses its meaning outside of the conscious awareness of a subject – such as the existence of knowledge in itself (in the abstract) or in any form of visual, written or verbal representation. This change comes at the price of also loosing its true value for most practical purposes, except for very few special cases.

Epistemology is often defined as the theory of knowledge, and talk of propositional knowledge (i.e. " S knows that p ") has dominated the bulk of modern literature in epistemology. 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. There is a common and plausible intuition that understanding might be at least as epistemically valuable as knowledge—if not more so—and relatedly that it demands more intellectual sophistication than other closely related epistemic states. For example, while it's easy to imagine a person who knows a lot yet seems to understand very little (think of the student who merely memories a stack of facts from a textbook), it's considerably harder to imagine someone who understands plenty yet knows hardly anything at all. It is controversial just which epistemological issues concerning understanding should be thought of as the central or primary ones—given that understanding is a relative newcomer in the mainstream epistemological literature. That said, this entry will nonetheless attempt to outline a selection of topics that have generated the most discussion and to highlight what is at issue in each case and what some of the available positions are. To this end, I'll begin in §1 by offering an overview of the different types of understanding discussed in the literature, though their features will gradually be explored in more depth throughout later sections. §2 explores the connection between understanding and truth with an eye to assessing in virtue of what understanding might be defended as 'factive'; §3 examines the notion 'grasping' which we find often in discussions of understanding in epistemology; in particular, §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. §4 examines the relationship between understanding and types of epistemic luck that are typically thought to undermine knowledge. §5 considers questions about what might explain the value of understanding; for example, various epistemologists have made suggestions focusing on transparency, distinctive types of achievement and curiosity (while others have challenged the assumption that understanding is of special value). Finally, §6 proposes various potential avenues for future research, with an eye to anticipating how considerations relating to understanding might shed light on a range of live debates elsewhere in epistemology and in philosophy more generally.

Philosophy of Science, 2009

This paper analyzes the epistemic value of understanding and offers an account of the role of understanding in science. First, I discuss the objectivist view of the relation between explanation and understanding, defended by Carl Hempel and J.D. Trout. I challenge this view by arguing that pragmatic aspects of explanation are crucial for achieving the epistemic aims of science. Subsequently, I present an analysis of these pragmatic aspects in terms of 'intelligibility', and a contextual account of scientific understanding based on this notion.

Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, 2016

Contemporary philosophy in the west has begun with emphasizing "subjectivism" and the theory of "knowledge". Discussing the nature of knowledge leads inevitably to investigating the nature of "belief". However, it is important to note that knowledge is always something more than mere belief. To demarcate between truthful and untruthful belief we must have certain criteria. In this essay, an analytical approach has been adopted to first present a historical review of the meanings of "knowledge" and then to discuss the three parameters of knowledge (belief, truth, justification) in contemporary epistemology. The main ideas with regard to truthful belief and epistemological justification are investigated within the framework of two approaches: foundationalism and coherentism.

The intuition that knowledge is more valuable than true belief generates the value problem in epistemology. The aim in this paper is to focus on the intuitive notion of knowledge itself, in the context of the value problem, and to attempt to bring out just what it is that we intuitively judge to be valuable. It seems to me that the value problem brings to the fore certain commitments we have to the intuitive notion of knowledge, which, if we take seriously, reveal that we actually think of knowledge as an irreducible factive mental state.

Understanding and Conscious Experience: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives

An account is offered of the nature and value of understanding. In particular, an explanation of the special value of understanding is presented which flows from the account given of its nature. In terms of the nature of understanding, it is argued that it essentially involves a strong kind of cognitive achievement. This explains the distinctive relationship that understanding bears to epistemic luck and thus how it diverges from propositional knowledge, such that it is usually a more demanding epistemic standing but not always (as in cases of environmental epistemic luck). It is then shown how treating understanding as a strong cognitive achievement can account for its special value, both in broad terms and in terms of epistemic value specifically.