Understanding (for The Routledge Companion to Epistemology)

Understanding comes in a variety of forms, and many of its forms are highly prized. According to many philosophers of science, for example, understanding is the good at which scientific inquiry aims.1 On this way of looking at things, what scientists want, when they begin their inquiries, is not just to acquire a range of true beliefs about the world; rather, their goal is to understand the world (or at least some part of it), where understanding the world involves something more than the acquisition of true beliefs. More generally, and looking outside of science, understanding is often said to be one of the great goods that makes life worth living. Thus according to value theorists such as James Griffin, understanding stands as one of the few goods—along with accomplishment, pleasure, and deep personal relations—that deserves to be thought of as an intrinsic good.2 There are thus a few different questions we might ask about understanding. For one thing, we might ask about the value of understanding. For example, does understanding really deserve to be thought of as an intrinsic good? For another, we might ask about the nature of understanding. For example, understanding clearly seems to be a kind of cognitive accomplishment of some kind—but what kind of accomplishment is it, exactly? Although questions concerning the value of understanding have recently gained attention,3 in this entry I will mainly focus on the nature of understanding rather than its value. What’s more, although the concept of understanding covers a vast amount of ground