Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Essays on Intellectual Powers: Conception', 'Four Decades of Scientific Explanation' and 'Cantorian Abstraction: Recon. and Defence'

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2 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 2. Understanding
Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon]
     Full Idea: Understanding is an extremely vague concept.
     From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 4.3)
     A reaction: True, I suppose, but we usually recognise understanding when we encounter it, and everybody has a pretty clear notion of an 'increase' in understanding. I suspect that the concept is perfectly clear, but we lack any scale for measuring it.
It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon]
     Full Idea: Knowledge 'that' is descriptive, and knowledge 'why' is explanatory, and it is the latter that provides scientific understanding of our world.
     From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], Intro)
     A reaction: I agree, but of course, knowing 'why' may require a lot of knowing 'that'. People with extensive knowledge 'that' things are so tend to understand why something happens more readily than the rest of us ignoramuses.