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Epistemology of Understanding

Project description

Our epistemic endeavors do not only aim at knowledge and rational belief. We also want to understand what we believe. We search for explanations of facts we know and for theories which organize our knowledge. But what does it mean to understand why some fact holds by means of an explanation (explanatory understanding)? And what does understanding some subject matter by means of a theory (objectual understanding) amount to? So far, neither in epistemology nor in philosophy of science these questions have been satisfactorily answered. In epistemology, the traditional focus on propositional knowledge has recently been challenged and there is a growing insight that understanding, rather than knowledge, is our main cognitive goal. However, epistemologists have little to say about explanations and theories and, as a result, little about what it means to understand something by means of an explanation or theory. In philosophy of science, explanations and theories are widely discussed, but rarely with respect to understanding. Often, understanding is either ignored as a subjective by-product of explanation, or simply identified with having an explanation. Only recently a debate about the relation between understanding and explanation has been started. However, philosophers of science have rarely attempted to give an explication of understanding.

In its main part, this project develops an explication of explanatory understanding by comparing it with different forms of knowledge. Furthermore, it argues that objectual understanding cannot be reduced to explanatory understanding and suggests an explication of objectual understanding which is based on the model of reflective equilibrium. The second part of the project is devoted to three applications. The first concerns scientific understanding and examines how models and simulations contribute to understanding; this is investigated with a focus on computer simulations in the climate sciences. The second concerns moral understanding and discusses the roles moral experts might play if we acknowledge that moral inquiry does not only aim at knowledge how to act, but also at some more ambitious understanding. The third concerns understanding by the arts and investigates how non-verbal symbols might contribute to understanding.

This project is a continuation of the project "Reflective equilibrium and epistemology of understanding" (together with Georg Brun). From 2010 to 2013, it was a collaboration with the external pageResearch Priority Program Ethics of the University of Zurich.

Contact

Key publications

Conferences and Workshops

  • Moral Expertise and Moral Testimony, workshop at the Centre for Ethics, University of Zurich, November 28 2014, with Christian Budnik (Berne), Julia Driver (St. Louis), David Enoch (Jerusalem), Michel Meliopoulos (Zurich) and Paulina Sliwa (Cambridge)
  • Towards an Epistemology of Understanding - Rethinking Justification, conference at the University of Berne, March 21-22 2014, with Catherine Z. Elgin (Harvard), Christoph Baumberger (Zurich), Georg Brun (Zurich), Christoph Kelp (Leuven), Henk de Regt (Amsterdam), John Greco (Saint Louis), Kareem Khalifa (Middlebury), Sabine Ammon (Basel), Stephen Grimm (Fordham) and Victor Gijsbers (Leiden)
  • Moral Understanding, colloquium at GAP.8, University of Constance, September 20 2012, with Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (Chapel Hill), Alison Hills (Oxford) and Gerhard Ernst (Erlangen)
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