Knowledge Tree
understanding
Also known as: Understanding AI
Facts (47)
Sources
Virtue Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jul 9, 1999 7 facts
perspectiveVirtue epistemologists argue that understanding is a special status that arises from acts of intellectual virtue, rather than just the communication of causal knowledge.
claimDuncan Pritchard (2016b) argues that understanding arises from 'seeing it for oneself,' which manifests the virtue of intellectual autonomy.
claimLinda Zagzebski defines understanding as 'the state of comprehension of nonpropositional structures of reality,' noting that it pertains to patterns or systems rather than discrete propositions and is tied to the mastery of an art or skill.
claimVirtue Epistemology facilitates the recovery of interest in and the analysis of understanding and wisdom.
claimAlternative virtue epistemology (VE) focuses on topics such as deliberation, inquiry, understanding, wisdom, profiles of individual virtues and vices, relations among distinct virtues and vices, and the social, ethical, and political dimensions of cognition involved in misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda, while shunning definitions and ignoring the radical skeptic.
claimKareem Khalifa and Michael Gadomski argued that understanding is a form of explanatory knowledge, using Bjorken scaling as a case study, in their 2013 article published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A.
claimA complete epistemology likely requires both faculty-virtues, which account for knowledge of the past and the world, and trait-virtues, which are necessary for deeper intellectual achievements like understanding and wisdom.
Virtue Epistemology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jul 9, 1999 7 facts
claimStephen Grimm argues that understanding is a special kind of knowledge that arises from “grasping”, which is a distinctive psychological act that manifests intellectual virtue.
referenceJohn Turri authored the article 'Understanding and the Norm of Explanation', published in the journal Philosophia in 2015.
claimLinda Zagzebski conjectures that understanding can be defined analogously to knowledge, but whereas knowledge derives from virtues that aim at truth, understanding derives at least partly from different, special virtues that have been hitherto unanalyzed or unrecognized.
referenceMichael P. Lynch explored the impact of big data on knowledge and understanding in his 2016 book 'The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data'.
referenceS.R. Grimm published 'Ernest Sosa, Knowledge and Understanding' in Philosophical Studies in 2001, which analyzes the work of Ernest Sosa regarding knowledge and understanding.
referenceIn the philosophy of science, explanations provide understanding by communicating knowledge of causes, as supported by Lipton (1991), Salmon (1984), Khalifa & Gadomski (2013), and Turri (2015b).
referenceStephen R. Grimm published 'Is understanding a species of knowledge?' in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science in 2006.
Understanding LLM Understanding skywritingspress.ca Jun 14, 2024 6 facts
referenceHolger Lyre authored the paper '“Understanding AI”: Semantic Grounding in Large Language Models', published as an arXiv preprint in 2024.
claimThe question of what constitutes "understanding" has gained urgency due to recent capability leaps in generative artificial intelligence, specifically large language models.
referenceAguera y Arcas, B. (2022) published 'Do large language models understand us?' on Medium.
claimIt is difficult to determine if large language models possess an underlying notion of understanding based solely on observing their behavior.
perspectiveSome researchers argue that reasoning, understanding, and other human-like capacities may be emergent properties of large language models.
referencevan Dijk, B. M. A., Kouwenhoven, T., Spruit, M. R., & van Duijn, M. J. (2023) published 'Large Language Models: The Need for Nuance in Current Debates and a Pragmatic Perspective on Understanding' in arXiv (arXiv:2310.19671).
Social Epistemology - Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science oecs.mit.edu Jul 24, 2024 5 facts
claimUnderstanding is often conceptualized as 'knowledge+', with two prominent accounts holding that understanding is knowledge of causes or knowledge of difference makers (Sartorio, 2005).
claimTwo prominent accounts hold that understanding is knowledge of causes or knowledge of difference makers, meaning one is in a position to say what would need to change for the situation to be different.
claimUnderstanding is typically conceptualized as 'knowledge+', with theorists debating the additional requirements needed to transform knowledge into understanding.
claimKnowledge is associated with the speech act of testifying or asserting, whereas understanding is associated with the speech act of explaining.
claimCore epistemic attitudes, in addition to knowledge, include understanding, wisdom, and ignorance.
Epistemology - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 4 facts
claimStephen R. Grimm authored the chapter "Understanding" for The Routledge Companion to Epistemology in 2011.
claimUnderstanding is a holistic notion requiring awareness of connections and reasons behind subjects, distinct from memorized facts.
perspectiveSome epistemologists argue that understanding is a unique epistemic good that is always intrinsically valuable, unlike propositional knowledge.
claimEpistemology primarily focuses on propositional knowledge, though some theorists prioritize understanding.
AI Sessions #9: The Case Against AI Consciousness (with Anil Seth) conspicuouscognition.com Feb 17, 2026 3 facts
perspectiveAnil Seth posits that consciousness and understanding might be separable, noting that while he previously assumed understanding required conscious apprehension, he is now uncertain if AI models can 'grok' or understand information without consciousness.
perspectiveAnil Seth suggests that language models, particularly those embodied in a world and trained while embodied, could potentially be described as 'understanding' things, even if they lack consciousness.
perspectiveAnil Seth believes that the criteria for a language model to achieve true understanding are more achievable through current technological trajectories than the criteria for achieving consciousness.
Virtue Epistemology | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu 3 facts
claimLinda Zagzebski categorizes intellectual ends into ultimate or final ends, such as truth and understanding, and proximate or immediate ends.
claimVirtue responsibilists focus on traits such as being reflective, fair-minded, perseverant, intellectually careful, and thorough, which increase the likelihood of achieving truth and understanding.
claimVirtue reliabilists focus on cognitive qualities that serve as effective means to achieving epistemic values such as truth and understanding.
Virtue epistemology - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 2 facts
perspectiveJonathan Kvanvig believes that epistemology should focus on 'understanding,' which he maintains is of more value than knowledge or justified true belief.
claimIn Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski's model of virtue epistemology, the "characteristic motivation" of an intellectual virtue is the desire for truth, understanding, and other forms of cognitive contact with reality.
Virtue epistemology - Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy rep.routledge.com 1 fact
perspectiveProponents of virtue epistemology claim that it offers advantages such as bypassing disputes between foundationalists and coherentists regarding cognitive structure, avoiding skeptical worries, avoiding the impasse between internalism and externalism, and broadening the range of epistemological inquiry to include values like understanding and wisdom.
Rationalism Vs. Empiricism 101: Which One is Right? - TheCollector thecollector.com Nov 9, 2023 1 fact
claimImmanuel Kant posits that human cognition relies on two essential powers: perceiving (sensibility) and understanding (reasoning), and that knowledge is impossible without both faculties.
Epistemological Problems of Testimony plato.stanford.edu Apr 1, 2021 1 fact
referenceChristoph Jäger authored the article "Epistemic Authority, Preemptive Reasons, and Understanding," published in the 2016 issue of "Episteme."
Life, Intelligence, and Consciousness: A Functional Perspective longnow.org Aug 27, 2025 1 fact
perspectiveMany members of the European and American intelligentsia argue that terms such as 'intelligence,' 'learning,' 'understanding,' 'agency,' and 'consciousness' should not be applied to artificial neural networks without qualification.
A survey on augmenting knowledge graphs (KGs) with large ... link.springer.com Nov 4, 2024 1 fact
claimIn a synergized framework, Large Language Models use structured knowledge from Knowledge Graphs to improve reasoning and understanding, while Knowledge Graphs utilize the language production and contextual capabilities of Large Language Models.
The function(s) of consciousness: an evolutionary perspective frontiersin.org Nov 25, 2024 1 fact
referenceJohnson (2017) argues that human bodies give rise to understanding, meaning, and reason in the context of the embodied mind.
Not Minds, but Signs: Reframing LLMs through Semiotics - arXiv arxiv.org Jul 1, 2025 1 fact
referenceMitchell and Krakauer's 2023 paper 'The debate over understanding in ai’s large language models' addresses the controversy surrounding whether large language models truly 'understand' information.
Self-Consciousness - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jul 13, 2017 1 fact
claimChristopher Peacocke explored the concept of understanding in his 2008 book 'Truly Understood'.
Sources of Knowledge: Rationalism, Empiricism, and the Kantian ... press.rebus.community 1 fact
quoteImmanuel Kant stated in his 'Critique of Pure Reason': 'Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to find out something about them a priori through concepts that would extend our cognition have, on this presupposition, come to nothing. Hence let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the requested possibility of an a priori cognition of them, which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us. This would be just like the first thoughts of Copernicus, who, when he did not make good progress in the explanation of the celestial motions if he assumed that the entire celestial host revolves around the observer, tried to see if he might not have greater success if he made the observer revolve and left the stars at rest. Now in metaphysics we can try in a similar way regarding the intuition of objects. If intuition has to conform to the constitution of the objects, then I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori; but if the object (as an object of the senses) conforms to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, then I can very well represent this possibility to myself. Yet because I cannot stop with these intuitions, if they are to become cognitions, but must refer them as representations to something as their object and determine this object through them, I can assume either that the concepts through which I bring about this determination also conform to the objects, and then I am once again in the same difficulty about how I could know anything about them a priori, or else I assume that the objects, or what is the same thing, the experience in which alone they can be cognized (as given objects) conforms to those concepts, in which case I immediately see an easier way out of the difficulty, since experience itself is a kind of cognition requiring the understanding, whose rule I have to presuppose in myself before any object is given to me, hence a priori, which rule is expressed in concepts a priori, to which all objects of experience must therefore necessarily conform, and with which they must agree.'
Something Rich and Strange: Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941 ... smuralis.wordpress.com Apr 16, 2012 1 fact
perspectiveRabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo desired to build a world where harmony and understanding reigned over hatred and hostility.