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theses

Understanding consists in integration and coherence amongst beliefs, the individual’s grasping of these connections, and the explanatory power of the individual’s representations of the world. Understanding is under-theorised in contemporary epistemology. Most epistemological research focuses on knowledge, and related epistemic kinds such as knowledge-relevant justification. This dissertation begins by motivating the value of thinking about understanding in epistemology. This is the aim of section A, ‘Understanding and Value’. I begin, in ‘Understanding, Integration, and Epistemic Value’, with a debate about the ultimate bearers of epistemic value. Veritism holds that attaining true belief (and avoiding false belief) is the sole ultimate epistemic good. All epistemic value is ultimately epistemically valuable in virtue of its relation to these dual aims. Value pluralists deny this, and posit plural sources of epistemic value. I suggest this debate has reached an impasse, and I appeal to the nature and value of understanding to make progress. I argue that veritism is committed to a supervenience thesis stating that if two sets of beliefs are identical with regard to true and false beliefs and propensity to gain further true beliefs and avoid false beliefs, then they have equivalent levels of epistemic value. I argue that comparing mere true belief with understanding indicates the supervenience thesis is false. Understanding contributes value that does not reduce to the value of true belief. I motivate this claim by arguing that the integration and coherence-making relations characteristic of understanding have epistemic value, and this value does not reduce to the value of true belief. I argue, further, these relations amongst beliefs do not themselves reduce to further true beliefs; the structure of beliefs that constitutes understanding is not simply a matter of aggregating further true beliefs. This paper thereby motivates the claim that thinking about understanding can help advance and inform debates in epistemology. It also motivates a second—more important—claim: understanding has a distinctive nature and value. When we understand, our beliefs and knowledge cohere; structural, organising relations are formed and maintained. This epistemic kind is not simply a matter of possessing more knowledge. (Or, if understanding is an agglomeration of knowledge, it is a distinctive and important kind of knowledge, one characterised by structural relations amongst beliefs.) I thus hope to motivate the importance of theorising about, and pursuing, understanding.

ETD_8389

doi:10.7282/T37P92GP

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Georgina Jayne Gardiner

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.