The Difference between Knowledge and Understanding
Sherrilyn Roush · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2017
I characterize Gettier cases as failures of understanding, and give a theory of what it is to understand why proposition p is true. This view is based on the concept of probabilistic relevance matching, having one’s dispositions to believe p mirror the probabilistic relations that p has to all other matters. Based in probability, the view yields a clear relationship, and also distinction, between the concept of understanding and the concept of knowledge defined in terms of probabilistic tracking. With these tools we are able to see that gettierization avoidance has a value independent of the value of knowledge, viz. understanding, but that it is also in the nature of tracking-type knowledge to discourage gettierization quite specifically. The concept of understanding here captures several key features of this phenomenon, such as breadth, depth, and appreciation of connections, and allows us to see understanding as simulation.