"Knowledge" or "Understanding": What does the Cognition Promise to Us?
JI Zhi-chuang · Journal of Henan University · 2013
Knowledge is considered as the identification of the aim and achievement of cognition and thus constitutes the subject of the traditional epistemology. However, the traditional epistemology which considered as its subject did not provide convinced illustration for its generation and confirmation. In addition, this concept has defects of conceptual fuzziness, narrowness and the deficiency of the involving in the practice and value, and thus shook and collapsed the validity of this position. Based on rethinking and criticizing the knowledge dilemma and the ontology, epistemology behind it, Goodman and Elgin suggest to use understanding which is more universal, applicable and fitful to the cognitive practice to replace knowledge. This not only reconstructs the cognition and its aim and achievement through the context of constructionism, but also starts the turn from knowledge to understanding of epistemology.