Can Testimony Generate Understanding?

Malfatti, Federica Isabella

doi:10.1080/02691728.2019.1628319

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Recently, however, this contention has been questioned. At least some kinds of understanding can be acquired directly from testimony (Boyd 2017 ; Malfatti 2019 , 2020 , 2021 ; Green 2019 ; Grimm 2019 ). This position can be motivated in the following ways.…”

Section: True Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Selfless assertions show that the speaker’s knowledge is not necessary for the hearer’s testimonial knowledge acquisition. Importantly, this argument was already extended to understanding, i.e., it has been argued that understanding can be generated in the audience even when the speaker lacks such understanding herself (Malfatti 2019 ; Simion 2018 ; Kelp 2020 ; cf. Gordon 2017 ).…”

Section: Selfless Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Helping Others to Understand: A Normative Account of the Speech Act of Explanation

Gaszczyk

2023

Topoi

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This paper offers a normative account of the speech act of explanation with understanding as its norm. The previous accounts of the speech act of explanation rely on the factive notion of understanding and maintain that proper explanations require knowledge. I argue, however, that such accounts are too demanding and do not reflect the everyday practice of explanation and the attribution of understanding. Instead, I argue that the non-factive, objectual attitude of understanding is sufficient for a proper explanation. On the normative level, explanations are governed by an audience-centred norm, i.e., they are sensitive to the epistemic position of the audience. According to the proposed account, an explanation is a communicative act in which one puts the audience in a position to understand the explained phenomenon. This proposal fits into the recent wave of applications of the normative account and makes space for the pluralism of illocutionary acts.

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Section: True Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Selfless Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Helping Others to Understand: A Normative Account of the Speech Act of Explanation

Gaszczyk

2023

Topoi

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“…Arguably, they do not. (See Malfatti, 2019 for a full defense of this claim.) They do understand the theory of anthropogenic climate change, and this will put them in the position to exercise certain abilities.…”

Section: Collective Understandingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding phenomena: From social to collective?

Malfatti

2022

Philosophical Issues

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In making sense of the world, we typically cooperate, join forces, and draw on one another's competence and expertise. A group or community in which there is a well-functioning division of cognitive-epistemic labor can achieve levels of understanding that a single agent who relies exclusively on her own capacities would probably never achieve. However, is understanding also collective? I.e., is understanding something that can be possessed by a group or community rather than by individuals? In this paper, I develop an account of understanding phenomena according to which understanding a phenomenon requires reasonably endorsing an adequate and intelligible epistemic mediator that accounts for this phenomenon. I then show that understanding, conceived along these lines, can be attributed to collective entities. An important result of my arguments will be that a collective entity's understanding cannot (always) be reduced to the sum of the understandings of the individuals belonging to it. This is because a collective entity can sometimes be rightfully claimed to understand a phenomenon while none of its individual members understands it.

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“…19 Lynch (2019) thinks we should eschew talk of "grasping." 20 Additional questions I do not have space to discuss include the relationship between knowledge, understanding, and testimony (see Hills 2009;Sliwa 2015;Hills 2016;Boyd 2017;Malfatti 2019;Croce, forthcoming), as well as the transparency of understanding (see Zagzebski 2001;Trout 2002;Pritchard 2010;Hills 2016;Grimm 2017). 21 A few theorists have attempted to distinguish knowledge from understanding on the grounds that understanding, but not knowledge, comes in degrees.…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent Work in the Epistemology of Understanding

Hannon¹

2021

American Philosophical Quarterly

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The philosophical interest in the nature, value, and varieties of human understanding has swelled in recent years. This article will provide an overview of new research in the epistemology of understanding, with a particular focus on the following questions: What is understanding and why should we care about it? Is understanding reducible to knowledge? Does it require truth, belief, or justification? Can there be lucky understanding? Does it require 'grasping' or some kind of 'knowhow'? This cluster of questions has largely set the research agenda for the study of understanding in epistemology. This article will conclude by discussing some varieties of understanding and highlight directions for future research.Humans are naturally inquisitive creatures. As Aristotle observed, "All men by nature desire to know." But knowledge is not the only intellectual achievement at which humans aim, and it might not be the most valuable. As Albert Einstein once said, "Any fool can know; the point is to understand." 1 It is widely assumed that understanding is a valuable intellectual achievement; however, the cognitive state of understanding is itself poorly understood. What is understanding? Why is it valuable? And how do we achieve it? These questions are at the forefront of recent work in the epistemology of understanding. In this article, I will attempt to give a sense of the range and depth of this new research on the nature, value, and varieties of human understanding. I will also critically evaluate some of this work. 1 The Aristotle quote is from the opening line of his Metaphysics. The Einstein quote can be found in Christian (1990, p. 207).

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Can Testimony Generate Understanding?

Cited by 7 publications

References 32 publications

Helping Others to Understand: A Normative Account of the Speech Act of Explanation

Helping Others to Understand: A Normative Account of the Speech Act of Explanation

Understanding phenomena: From social to collective?

Recent Work in the Epistemology of Understanding

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