Some philosophical proposals seem to die hard. In a recent paper, Jason Stanley has worked to resurrect the description theory of reference, at least as it might apply to natural kind terms like ‘elm’ (Stanley, 1999). The theory’s founding idea is that to understand ‘elm’ one must know a uniquely identifying truth about elms. Famously, Hilary Putnam showed that ordinary users of ‘elm’ may understand it while lacking such knowledge, and may even be unable to distinguish elms from beeches (...) (Putnam, 1975). In response, Stanley claims that linguistic understanding in the case of natural kind terms comes in levels, and that only those at the top level need have the knowledge in question. The description theory, in Stanley’s hands, applies only to those with top level understanding and it is their understanding that fixes the term’s reference. To use the term successfully, those with inferior understanding need only be defer- ential to those at the top. However, Stanley’s appeal to expert knowledge fails to revive the description theory. (shrink)

Anyone teaching in theological schools or university departments of religion in the West should be struck by two related factors which seem to influence the attitude and thinking, of today's students. The first is the preoccupation with ‘experience’, while the second is the openness toward Eastern religious insights as well as their meditation techniques. In this paper, the writer intends to reflect on these two factors both as the causes and the effects of the significant change that has taken place (...) in Western man's world of meaning in our time. (shrink)

This article discusses how to deal with the relations between different cultural perspectives in classrooms, based on a proposal for considering understanding and knowledge as goals of science education, inspired by Dewey’s naturalistic humanism. It thus combines educational and philosophical interests. In educational terms, our concerns relate to how science teachers position themselves in multicultural classrooms. In philosophical terms, we are interested in discussing the relations between belief, understanding, and knowledge under the light of Dewey’s philosophy. (...) We present a synthesis of Dewey’s theory of inquiry through his naturalistic humanism and discuss its implications for the concepts of belief, understanding, and knowledge, as well as for the goals of science teaching. In particular, we highlight problems arising in the context of possible conflicts between scientific and religious claims in the school environment that result from totalitarian positions. We characterize an individual’s position as totalitarian if he or she takes some way of thinking as the only one capable of expressing the truth about all that exists in the world, lacks open-mindedness to understand different interpretative perspectives, and attempts to impose her or his interpretation about the facts to others by violent means or not. From this stance, any other perspective is taken to be false a priori and, accordingly, as a putative target to be suppressed or adapted to the privileged way of thinking. We argue, instead, for a more fallibilist evaluation of our own beliefs and a more respectful appraisal of the diversity of students’ beliefs by both students and teachers. (shrink)

This study takes inquiry as the starting point for epistemological theorising. It uses this idea to develop new and systematic answers to some of the most fundamental questions in epistemology, including about the nature of core epistemic phenomena as well as their value and the extent to which we possess them.

Writers on education have frequently contrasted knowledge and understanding as educational aims. I shall be prepared to defend the view that this contrast can mislead us in our thinking about education, and can direct our attention away from facts which are important to take into account in the evaluation of educational procedures.

This paper offers and analysis of Ernest Sosa's Virtue Perspectivism. Although Sosa has been credited with fathering the influential contemporary movement known as Virtue Epistemology, I argue that Sosa imprudently abandons the reliabilist-based insights of Virtue Epistemology in favor of a reflection-based, "perspectival"' view. Sosa's mixed allegiance to reliabilist-based and reflection-based views of knowledge, in fact, leads to an unwelcome tension in his thought which can be relieved by recognizing that his reflection-based view is in fact an account of (...) the cognitive state of understanding, rather than an account of knowledge. Sosa makes matters difficult for himself because he expects too much, as it were, from the concept of knowledge, and in the process burdens his view with elements of reflection it does not require. To solve the problem, I suggest that Sosa needs to develop a two-tiered epistemology which recognizes that knowledge, on the one hand, and understanding, on the other, both have necessary and sufficient conditions unique to themselves. (shrink)

This paper connects two important debates in epistemology—to wit, on the goal of inquiry and on the nature of understanding—and offers a unified knowledge-based account of both.

Some philosophers, like Alex Rosenberg, claim that natural science delivers epistemic values such as knowledge and understanding, whereas, say, literature and, according to some, literary studies, merely have aesthetic value. Many of those working in the field of literary studies oppose this idea. But it is not clear exactly how works of literary art embody knowledge and understanding and how literary studies can bring these to the light. After all, literary works of art are pieces of (...) fiction, which suggests that they are not meant to represent the actual world. How then can they deliver knowledge and understanding? I argue that literature and literary studies confer knowledge and understanding in at least five ways: they give us insight into the work and the world of the work of art in question, they shape our intellectual virtues, they invite us to apply various hypotheses, they deliver moral propositional knowledge, and they increase or bring about full understanding with respect to meaning, virtue, and significance. In the course of my argument, I refer at several junctures to Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Edith Wharton’s Summer, in order to illustrate each of these claims. (shrink)

The arguments for and against a truth-relativist semantics for propositional knowledge attributions (KTR) have been debated almost exclusively in the philosophy of language. But what implications would this semantic thesis have in epistemology? This question has been largely unexplored. The aim of this paper is to establish and critique several ramifications of KTR in mainstream epistemology. The first section of the paper develops, over a series of arguments, the claim that MacFarlane's (2005, 2010) core argument for KTR ultimately motivates (...) (for better or worse) the extension of a truth-relativist semantics to a subset of understanding attributions – attributions of understanding-why. I conclude by presenting some reasons to think that even if KTR were otherwise plausible, a truth-relativist semantics for understanding-why attributions is not. These claims, taken together, constitute a kind of epistemological argument against MacFarlane-style truth-relativism for knowledge attributions. (shrink)

In this paper I defend a unified approach to knowledge and understanding. Both are achievements due to cognitive abilities or skills. The difference between them is a difference of aspects. Knowledge emphasizes the successful aspect of an achievement and the exclusion of epistemic luck, whereas understanding emphasizes the agent's contribution in bringing about an achievement through the exercise of one's cognitive skills. Knowledge and understanding cannot be separated. I argue against the claim that (...) class='Hi'>understanding is distinct from knowledge because the former is compatible with environmental luck. Achievements rule out environmental luck because abilities can be exercised only in their proper environment. I also reject the intellectualist claim that understanding requires the ability to explain what one intends to understand. The understanding of an item is reflected in our ability to solve cognitive tasks using that item. The more tasks one can deal with by using an item, the deeper is one’s understanding of that item. Being able to explain why a claim holds is not necessary for possessing understanding, even though it may be necessary for accomplishing some very specific tasks. Neither understanding nor knowledge require any kind of second-order cognition by default. (shrink)

In the aftermath of Gettier’s examples, knowledge came to be thought of as what you would have if in addition to a true belief and your favorite epistemic goody, such as justifiedness, you also were ungettiered, and the theory of knowledge was frequently equated, especially by its detractors, with the project of pinning down that extra bit. It would follow that knowledge contributes something distinctive that makes it indispensable in our pantheon of epistemic concepts only if avoiding (...) gettierization has a value that can be explained without presupposing the value of knowledge. Tracking-type knowledge has a value that no other logically possible conditions on true belief does. As an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy it preserves appropriate belief states through time and changing circumstances. If we characterize gettierization through the concept of relevance matching, then we see that avoiding gettierization has a value independent of that of knowledge, namely, understanding, and that it is unnecessary to add a clause to the tracking conditions to make them suppress gettierization directly, though fallibly. The bright line of value is between gettierization avoidance and understanding on the one hand and knowledge on the other, and so should be the bright line defining concepts. The concept of relevance matching is key to a definition of what it is to understand why p is true, as opposed merely to knowing that p is true. Perfect tracking implies perfect relevance matching, so knowledge and understanding are intimately connected but understanding also requires that one own states that accomplish the relevance matching rather than achieving it vicariously. The theory of understanding based on relevance matching implies that understanding requires appreciation of not only p but its connections to other matters, and explains how it is possible to know that p is true without understanding why. The view implies that understanding is literally simulation, and is suggestive about understanding other minds. (shrink)

This book attempts to revolutionise epistemology. A traditional goal of epistemology is to provide an analysis of knowledge in terms of more basic things. But the post-Gettier literature has made some philosophers like Timothy Williamson suspect that knowledge cannot be analysed. Kelp claims that both the traditional project and Williamson's knowledge-first project are misguided. He provides an alternative: Knowledge is an item in an inquiry-related network and can thereby be analysed in terms of its relations to (...) other items in the network, rather than of things that are more basic than knowledge.Kelp begins his book by distinguishing two types of inquiry: inquiry into specific questions (such as whether Plato's Republic advocates totalitarianism and when World War I took place) and inquiry into general phenomena (such as the rise of the Roman Empire and the origins of species). Chapter 1 argues that the goal of inquiry into specific questions—Kelp's discussion focuses on whether questions—is knowledge. This is because even if the inquirer into whether p acquires a Gettierised justified true belief that p, she has not achieved the goal of inquiry, for the question of whether p has not been properly closed for her: she can be sensibly asked to do more research. (shrink)

Reductive intellectualists about knowledge-how hold, contra Ryle, that knowing how to do something is just a kind of propositional knowledge. In a similar vein, traditional reductivists about understanding-why insist, in accordance with a tradition beginning with Aristotle, that the epistemic standing one attains when one understands why something is so is itself just a kind of propositional knowledge—viz., propositional knowledge of causes. A point that has been granted on both sides of these debates is that (...) if these reductive proposals are right, then knowledge-how and understanding-why should be susceptible to the same extent as knowledge-that is to being undermined by epistemic luck. This paper reports experimental results that test these luck-based predictions. Interestingly, these results suggest a striking positive correlation between self-reported philosophical expertise and attributions of knowledge-how, understanding-why and knowledge-that which run contrary to reductive proposals. We contextualize these results by showing how they align very well with a particular kind of overarching non-reductive proposal, one that two of the authors have defended elsewhere according to which knowledge-how and understanding-why, but not knowledge-that, essentially involve cognitive achievement. We conclude by situating the interpretive narrative advanced within contemporary discussions about the role of expertise in philosophical judgment. (shrink)

Jonathan Kvanvig's book, The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding (Kvanvig, 2003), is a wonderful example of doing epistemology in a style that Kvanvig himself has termed "value−driven epistemology." On this approach, one takes questions about epistemic value to be central to theoretical concerns, including the concern to provide an adequate account of knowledge. This approach yields the demand that theories of knowledge must provide, not just an adequate account of the nature of (...) class='Hi'>knowledge, but also an account of the value of knowledge. Given the near−universal assumption that knowledge has a special kind of value, this demand seems reasonable, though surprisingly hard to satisfy. Another consequence of this approach to doing epistemology is that certain assumptions about epistemic value, like what sorts of things have it and what sorts of things don't, and where such value comes from, become much more salient to the epistemic enterprise. In his book, Kvanvig challenges the assumption that knowledge has some unique store of epistemic value. And he investigates the matter by asking questions about what the bearers of epistemic value are and where they get it. He concludes, of course, that knowledge as we have come to conceive it in 21st century epistemology has no such special value. (shrink)

Imagine you had the functions of your smartphone miniaturized to a cellular level and accessible by your neural network. Reflection on this possibility suggests that we should not just concern ourselves with whether our knowledge is extending “out” to our devices; our devices are extending in, and with them, possibly the information that they bring. If so, then the question of whether knowledge is “extended” becomes wrapped up with the question of whether knowing is something we do, or (...) something we can share with, or outsource to, instruments. And that in turn raises the two questions of this paper: First, to what extent does such technology put pressure on the idea that we might have more than one conception of knowledge? And second, what is the value of states that fit these conceptions of knowledge? (shrink)

Epistemologists have recently debated whether understanding is a species of knowledge. However, because they have offered little in the way of a detailed analysis of understanding, they lack the resources to resolve this issue. In this paper, I propose that S understands why p if and only if S has the non-Gettierised true belief that p, and for some proposition q, S has the non-Gettierised true belief that q is the best available explanation of p, S can (...) correctly explain p with q, and S can identify the features that make q the best explanation of p. On this analysis, understanding is reducible to knowing that p and that q is the best available explanation of p. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 297-319, July 2022.

This book examines all verses of the Quran involving knowledge related concepts. It begins with the argument that an analysis of the Quranic concept of ignorance points to epistemic virtues that can pave our way towards gaining knowledge and/or understanding. It deals with the Quranic concepts of perceptual, rational, and revelatory knowledge as well as understanding and wisdom in the light of recent discussions in Western analytic epistemology. It also argues that the relevant Quranic verses (...) seem to involve concept of an epistemic conscience whose proper exercise can yield knowledge or understanding. While not overlooking the Quranic emphasis on revelation as a source of knowledge, the book draws our attention to a remarkable overlap between some strains of contemporary virtue epistemology and Quranic approach to knowledge. It shows that the Quranic verses suggest a progressive sequence from propositional knowledge to understanding to wisdom. (shrink)

In discussing Drucilla Cornell's remarks about Toni Morrison's Beloved, I consider epistemological questions raised by the acquiring of understanding of racism, particularly the deep-rooted racism embodied in social norms and values. I suggest that questions about understanding racism are, in part, questions about personal and political identities and that questions about personal and political identities are often, importantly, epistemological questions.

Willing and Understanding elucidates a variety of issues in and approaches to debating the will-intellect interplay in the late Middle Ages. Authored by prominent scholars in the field, the contributions offer different perspectives on the development of late medieval theories of the will. Charting a dense map of voluntarist and epistemological ideas - entrenched leitmotifs of late medieval philosophy, seminal insights sparking original trends, and ephemeral novelties - the volume is a testimony to the conceptual multidimensionality and ethical complexity (...) of the past and present iterations of the debate on the will. Contributors are Pascale Bermon, Magdalena Bieniak, Michael W. Dunne, Riccardo Fedriga, Giacomo Fornasieri, Tobias Hoffmann, Severin V. Kitanov, Monika Michałowska, Riccardo Saccenti, Sonja Schierbaum, Michael Szlachta, Łukasz Tomanek, and Francesco Omar Zamboni. (shrink)

Holding content explicitly requires a form of self knowledge. But what does the relevant self knowledge look like? Using theory of mind as an example, this paper argues that the correct answer to this question will have to take into account the crucial role of language based deliberation, but warns against the standard assumption that explicitness is necessary for ascribing awareness. It argues in line with Bayne that intentional action is at least an equally valid criterion for awareness. (...) This leads to a distinction between different levels of implicitness. Postulating these different levels, it is argued, allows us to make better sense of the empirical literature on early false belief task abilities. (shrink)

Epistemology has for a long time focused on the concept of knowledge and tried to answer questions such as whether knowledge is possible and how much of it there is. Often missing from this inquiry, however, is a discussion on the value of knowledge. In The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding Jonathan Kvanvig argues that epistemology properly conceived cannot ignore the question of the value of knowledge. He also questions one of (...) the most fundamental assumptions in epistemology, namely that knowledge is always more valuable than the value of its subparts. Taking Platos' Meno as a starting point of his discussion, Kvanvig tackles the different arguments about the value of knowledge and comes to the conclusion that knowledge is less valuable than generally assumed. Clearly written and well argued, this 2003 book will appeal to students and professionals in epistemology. (shrink)

D W Hamlyn; Knowledge and the Beginnings of Understanding: a reply to R. K. Elliott, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 14, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages.

Goodman and Elgin have recommended a reconception of philosophy. A central part of their recommendation is to replace knowledge by understanding. According to Elgin, some important internalist and externalist theories of knowledge favor a sort of undesirable cognitive minimalism. Against Elgin I try to show how the challenge of cognitive minimalism can be met. Goodman and Elgin claim that defeat and confusion are built into the concept of knowledge. They demand either its revision or its replacement (...) or its supplement. I show that these are three very different options. While agreeing with the view that there may be good reasons for some revisions and supplements, I strongly disagree with Elgin and Goodman's replacement thesis. (shrink)

Reliabilism is a theory that countenances basic knowledge, that is, knowledge from a reliable source, without requiring that the agent knows the source is reliable. Critics (especially Cohen 2002 ) have argued that such theories generate all-too-easy, intuitively implausible cases of higher-order knowledge based on inference from basic knowledge. For present purposes, the criticism might be recast as claiming that reliabilism implausibly generates cases of understanding from brute, basic knowledge. I argue that the easy (...) knowledge (or easy understanding) criticism rests on an implicit mischaracterization of the notion of a reliable process. Properly understood, reliable processes do not permit the transition from basic knowledge to understanding based on inference. (shrink)

The paper argues that no criterion-referenced assessment system can achieve both reliability and validity at one and the same time. It shows that the reasons for this are conceptual, and hence that empirical research into the‘problem’ is a waste of money and effort. Considerable discussion is devoted to ideas of knowledge and understanding, and to proper educational objectives pertaining to these. Much reference is made to the current National Curriculum context in the United Kingdom, and conclusions are drawn (...) for appropriate educational policy in this area. (shrink)

R K Elliott; D. W. Hamlyn on Knowledge and the Beginnings of Understanding, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 14, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 109–116.

Is language understanding a special case of social cognition? To help evaluate this view, we can formalize it as the rational speech-act theory: Listeners assume that speakers choose their utterances approximately optimally, and listeners interpret an utterance by using Bayesian inference to “invert” this model of the speaker. We apply this framework to model scalar implicature (“some” implies “not all,” and “N” implies “not more than N”). This model predicts an interaction between the speaker's knowledge state and the (...) listener's interpretation. We test these predictions in two experiments and find good fit between model predictions and human judgments. (shrink)

Stanley and Williamson (The Journal of Philosophy 98(8), 411–444 2001 ) reject the fundamental distinction between what Ryle once called ‘knowing-how’ and ‘knowing-that’. They claim that knowledge-how is just a species of knowledge-that, i.e. propositional knowledge, and try to establish their claim relying on the standard semantic analysis of ‘knowing-how’ sentences. We will undermine their strategy by arguing that ‘knowing-how’ phrases are under-determined such that there is not only one semantic analysis and by critically discussing and refuting (...) the positive account of knowing-how they offer. Furthermore, we argue for an extension of the classical ‘knowing-how’/‘knowing-that’-dichotomy by presenting a new threefold framework: Using some core-examples of the recent debate, we will show that we can analyze knowledge situations that are not captured by the Rylean dichotomy and argue that, therefore, the latter has to be displaced by a more fine-grained theory of knowledge-formats. We will distinguish three different formats of knowledge we can have of our actions, namely (1) propositional, (2) practical, and (3) image-like formats of knowledge. Furthermore, we will briefly analyze the underlying representations of each of these knowledge-formats. (shrink)

Historical sciences like paleontology and archaeology have uncovered unimagined, remarkable and mysterious worlds in the deep past. How should we understand the success of these sciences? What is the relationship between knowledge and history? In Scientific Knowledge and the Deep Past: History Matters, Adrian Currie examines recent paleontological work on the great changes that occurred during the Cretaceous period - the emergence of flowering plants, the splitting of the mega-continent Gondwana, and the eventual fall of the dinosaurs - (...) to analyse the knowledge of historical scientists, and to reflect upon the nature of history. He argues that distinctively historical processes are 'peculiar': they have the capacity to generate their own highly specific dynamics and rules. This peculiarity, Currie argues, also explains the historian's interest in narratives and stories: the contingency, complexity and peculiarity of the past demands a narrative treatment. Overall, Currie argues that history matters for knowledge. (shrink)

Moral progress is often modeled as an increase in moral knowledge and understanding, with achievements in moral reasoning seen as key drivers of progressive moral change. Contemporary discussion recognizes two (rival) accounts: knowledge-based and understanding-based theories of moral progress, with the latter recently contended as superior (Severini 2021 ). In this article, we challenge the alleged superiority of understanding-based accounts by conducting a comparative analysis of the theoretical advantages and disadvantages of both approaches. We assess (...) them based on their potential to meet the following criteria: (i) moral progress must be possible despite evolutionary and epistemic constraints on moral reasoning; (ii) it should be epistemically achievable to ordinary moral agents; and (iii) it should be explainable via doxastic change. Our analysis suggests that both accounts are roughly equally plausible, but knowledge-based accounts are slightly less demanding and more effective at explaining doxastic change. Therefore, contrary to the prevailing view, we find knowledge-based accounts of moral progress more promising. (shrink)

In the current discussion on epistemic value, several philosophers argue that understanding enjoys higher epistemological significance and epistemic value than knowledge—the epistemic state the epistemological tradition has been preoccupied with. By noting a tension between the necessary conditions for understanding in the perhaps most prominent of these philosophers, Jonathan Kvanvig, this paper disputes the higher epistemological relevance of understanding. At the end, on the basis of the results of the previous sections, some alternative comparative contrasts between (...) knowledge and understanding are briefly explored, including one in which an analogue to the KK-principle for knowledge, the “UU-principle”, does not hold for a different reason than that for which the former principle fails. (shrink)

On knowledge and practices: a manifesto -- The web of practices -- Agents and frameworks -- Complementarity in mathematics -- Ancient Greek mathematics: a role for diagrams -- Advanced math: the hypothetical conception -- Arithmetic certainty -- Mathematics developed: the case of the reals -- Objectivity in mathematical knowledge -- The problem of conceptual understanding.

I argue that Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda differed in their conclusions regarding the status of Indigenous persons at least partly because las Casas had significant, yet incomplete, understanding of Indigenous persons, culture and societies and Sepúlveda had mere knowledge of them. To this end, I show that the epistemic state of understanding explains why Las Casas properly concluded that Indigenous persons deserve the same moral status afforded to Europeans. And I show how (...) las Casas’ understanding of Indigenous persons, culture and societies related to what he got wrong about Indigenous persons. (shrink)

Hampton illumines the overall structure of the Philebus. Taking the interrelations of pleasure, knowledge, and being as the keys to understanding the unity of the dialogue, she focuses on the central point.

The Platonic view that art is incapable of providing us with knowledge is sufficiently widely held as to merit a serious attempt at refutation. Once it is acknowledged that there are alternative forms of knowledge other than propositional, then it is possible to establish the truth of the claim that the knowledge which art affords has a value on a par with that provided by other disciplines. Art, it is argued, has a unique potential to provide imaginative (...) insights by reference to which we may understand what it is like to experience and to feel, in ways very different from those with which we may be familiar. It is shown to be instrumental in enabling us to refine our moral concepts as well as in determining what is salient from the moral point of view. As a powerful tool in the education of the emotions, artworks have the power to increase our moral sensitivity and to sharpen our perception of what is required of us inways that are otherwise unobtainable. (shrink)

Chapter 1 reconstructs Gadamer's fundamental philosophical task. The task is the problem of certainty, which is the problem of responding in some way or another to reasons that seem to show that we need, but cannot complete, the justificationalist project. Justificationalism is the view that we need a special philosophical of all human knowledge all at once. Chapter 2 argues that Hegel and Heidegger both try to solve the problem of certainty by transforming the realist conception of truth on (...) which it depends. Chapters 3 and 4 argue that Gadamer provides the resources for a different response. By exploiting similarities between Gadamer's account of understanding and externalism in analytic epistemology, I argue that there is a possible position, hermeneutic externalism, which is based on Gadamer's concept of authority. Chapter 5 tries to show how hermeneutic externalism finally provides an answer to the problem of certainty. The conclusion that I would like to draw from the whole of this work is that Gadamer is a realist and an externalist, in the sense that those views represent what he should think. He should embrace externalism and realism because they best represent his genuine insights and they best address the philosophical task as he conceives it. (shrink)

We attribute knowledge to institutions on a daily basis, saying things like "the government knew about the threat" or "the university did not act upon the knowledge it had about the harassment". Institutions can also attribute knowledge to themselves, like when Maybank Global Banking claims that it offers its customers "deep expertise and vast knowledge" of the Southeast Asia region, or when the United States Geological Survey states that it understands complex natural science phenomena like the (...) probability of earthquakes occurring along a given fault line. This article aims to discover when we can correctly attribute knowledge to an institution. I find this an interesting question, especially because when something does go wrong, all too often the official line of response from institutions is that they were unaware of the situation: in other words, they did not have enough information at their disposal. I will argue that institutions have fewer excuses for being ignorant than individuals do, and that many admissions of institutional knowledge are too modest. I begin by discussing a real-life example of the latter, before turning my attention to the usually fragmented nature of institutional knowledge. I also discuss the robustness of this knowledge, offering a distinction between two types of institutional knowledge. I then discuss knowledge parameters and why institutions have fewer excuses for not knowing about something than individuals do. I round off the chapter by examining institutional knowledge on climate change. (shrink)