The literature on the nature of understanding can be divided into two broad camps. Explanationists believe that it is knowledge of explanations that is key to understanding. In contrast, their manipulationist rivals maintain that understanding essentially involves an ability to manipulate certain representations. The aim of this paper is to provide a novel knowledge based account of understanding. More specifically, it proposes an account of maximal understanding of a given phenomenon in terms of fully comprehensive and maximally well-connected knowledge of it and of degrees of understanding in terms of approximations to such knowledge. It is completed by a contextualist semantics for outright attributions of understanding according to which an attribution of understanding is true of one just in case one knows enough about it to perform some contextually determined task. It is argued that this account has an edge over both its explanationist and manipulationist competitors.
According to virtue epistemology, knowledge involves cognitive success that is due to cognitive competence. This paper explores the prospects of a virtue theory of knowledge that, so
This chapter aims to develop a novel virtue epistemological account of knowledge and justified belief, which gives the view a knowledge first spin. It is virtue epistemological in that it offers accounts of knowledge and justified belief in terms of exercises of epistemic abilities. It has a knowledge first twist because, unlike traditional virtue epistemology, it does not unpack the relevant notion of an epistemic ability as an ability to form true beliefs but as an ability to know. In addition, this chapter aims to show that the resulting knowledge first virtue epistemology compares favourably with its traditional cousins as it offers an appealing new solution to the Gettier problem.
In Knowledge and the State of Nature Edward Craig defends the thesis that the function of the concept of knowledge is to flag good informants. This paper aims to show that Craig's thesis (CT) is false. In order to establish this, I will point to some data that CT fails to explain in a satisfactory manner. I will then introduce an alternative thesis that is not only able to secure the acclaimed benefits of CT, but also provides a neat explanation of the recalcitrant data.
Abstract. This paper raises a problem for so-called safety-based conceptions of knowledge: It is argued that none of the versions of the safety condition that can be found in the literature succeeds in identifying a necessary condition on knowledge. Furthermore, reason is provided to believe that the argument generalises at least in the sense that there can be no version of the safety condition that does justice to the considerations motivating a safety condition whilst, at the same time, being requisite for knowledge.
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