19261
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Understanding is seeing coherent relationships in the relevant information [Kvanvig]
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Full Idea:
What is distinctive about understanding (after truth is satisfied) is the internal seeing or appreciating of explanatory and other coherence-inducing relationships in a body of information that is crucial for understanding.
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From:
Jonathan Kvanvig (The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding [2003], 198), quoted by Anand Vaidya - Understanding and Essence 'Distinction'
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A reaction:
For me this ticks exactly the right boxes. Coherent explanations are what we want. The hardest part is the ensure their truth. Kvanvig claims this is internal, so we can understand even if, Gettier-style, our external connections are lucky.
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7667
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There are two sides to men - the pleasantly social, and the violent and creative [Diderot, by Berlin]
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Full Idea:
Diderot is among the first to preach that there are two men: the artificial man, who belongs in society and seeks to please, and the violent, bold, criminal instinct of a man who wishes to break out (and, if controlled, is responsible for works of genius.
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From:
report of Denis Diderot (works [1769], Ch.3) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism
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A reaction:
This has an obvious ancestor in Plato's picture (esp. in 'Phaedrus') of the two conflicting sides to the psuché, which seem to be reason and emotion. In Diderot, though, the suppressed man has virtues, which Plato would deny.
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