Types of understanding: Their nature and their relation to knowledge
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: What does it mean to understand something? I approach this question by comparing understanding with knowledge. Like knowledge, understanding comes, at least prima facia , in three varieties: propositional, interrogative and objectual. I argue that explanatory understanding (this being the most important form of interrogative understanding) and objectual understanding are not reducible to one another and are neither identical with, nor even a form of, the corresponding type of knowledge (nor any other type of knowledge). My discussion suggests that definitions of the concepts of explanatory and of objectual understanding must include a commitment condition, a grasping condition, an answering-the-facts condition, and an epistemically internal justification condition, but no further external anti-luck condition. On this basis I argue against reducing explanatory understanding to propositional understanding, and in favour of identifying propositional understanding with propositional knowledge.
Source: Conceptus
Author: Christoph Baumberger
Institutions: ETH Zurich, Institute for Environmental Decisions
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2321788206