Abstract
In this paper, we will explore one way in which understanding can—and, we will argue, should—be valuable. We will do this by drawing on what has been said (primarily in Pritchard et al.: The nature and value of knowledge: Three investigations, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010) about the different ways knowledge can be valuable. Our main contribution will be to identify one heretofore undiscussed way knowledge could be valuable, but isn’t—specifically, having value to someone other than the understander. We suggest that it is a desideratum on an account of understanding that understanding have the specified type of value; our basis for this claim will come from recent work in cognitive psychology. This desideratum can then be used to measure the success of various accounts of understanding. We argue that accounts of understanding that have a particular structure will predict (and perhaps explain) why understanding has that sort of value. For good measure, we then engage in a bit of a literature review, investigating which extant accounts of understanding satisfy this desideratum (spoiler: some do and some don’t).
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Notes
By combining insights from cognitive psychology regarding what sort of value understanding should be expected to have with analyses of how different accounts of understanding might explain that sort of value, we explore the link between naturalistic and theoretical explorations of understanding (in line with the theme of the present issue).
The superscript star is supposed to indicate that we mean the concept and not the state.
More technically, the question is why knowledge is more valuable than anything that falls short of knowledge, but as it is pretty straightforward to explain why a belief’s being false or unjustified would be problematic, we take the more interesting question to be why knowledge exceeds the value of justified true belief.
It should also be noted that while this value for individuals might rightfully be considered instrumental, we intentionally avoid objective/subjective language. Our contention is that both Pritchard’s et al. conception of final value and the value for individuals that we will spell out momentarily are both kinds of objective value. Objective value on this reading is value that does not require any particular attitude of valuing by an individual, while subjective value requires that individuals actually value the good at issue. On our view, a good can be valuable for an individual even if that individual in no way values the good, as is often considered to be the case with, for instance, healthy foods.
It should be noted that this conception of “useful” does not require that individuals actually put the state to use. Rather, “useful” is meant to be an objection notion, pointing out the use that one could put the state to.
Note also that it is straightforward how I could gain acquisitional value from what starts as your knowledge, as at least under some circumstances I can make that very knowledge my own on the basis of testimony. As we’ll see, things are a bit more muddled for understanding, where it is not clear I can ever make your understanding mine rather than forming my own (see the discussion of Hills below). This would make the for-hire value of understanding especially important, as for many third parties it will speak to the only benefit they can hope to get from my understanding.
Given the naturalistic approach to the understanding, the only way we can really get a handle on it is via exploration of our concept understanding*. However, having made the point that the expectation of for-hire value arises from our concept deployment, we focus on the type of value understanding itself must have in order to best satisfy the constraints placed on it by the concept.
More specifically, that speaks well of such accounts as accounts of understanding because they best accord with our deployment of understanding*. For the remainder of the paper we assume that accounts of understanding do better to the extent that they are good accounts of understanding*, and vice-versa, and suppress further qualifiers regarding the link between concept and state.
One might worry that this strategy proves far too much. For surely it would imbue understanding with a special sort of value if, whenever one understands something, one is immediately given $1,000,000; however, we would not want to say that we should favor an account according to which one understands when one is in a state such that one is given $1,000,000. Our response to this objection is that for-hire value is not just an arbitrary sort of value one might expect understanding to possess, but that there is empirical reason to suspect that people do think understanding possesses it. As already noted, Wilkenfeld et al. (2016) find that people do expect understanders to be better able to help solve problems.
Note that even if understanding/knowledge qua achievements logically entail that there must have been some ability to achieve present at some point in the past, that ability is not a constitutive feature of the state itself. As a simple analogy, acquiring any mental state presumably requires the ability to breathe (at least for humans), but we would not generally take that to entail that breathing is a useful aspect of forming an epistemic state.
It would be more accurate to call such views “not-backwards-looking”, since they might only require doing things at the moment one has the understanding. We stick with “forward-looking” for expository purposes.
A second reason to focus on understanding’s value to others is that understanding also seems to be an achievement, which will imbue it with value for the understander qua achievement. Focus on the value for others allows us to control for this other type of value that is not distinctively value of understanding qua understanding.
As we will see, most extant accounts fail to be purely forward-looking in a way that would rule out a belief failing to constitute understanding for reasons other than a lack of usefulness, but many are fairly close.
Of course they might not have more total all-things-considered value, but that could never have been the requirement in the first place—it would be no mark against the value of knowledge to note that it is not as all-things-considered valuable as a state of ecstatic delirium.
More specifically, we present this as a response how usefulness makes understanding different in kind from states that fall short of understanding. States that fall short of understanding in other ways—for example by being massively deceptive—could clearly be less valuable as a matter of kind than understanding. The interesting case is the one where the state falls short along the relatively controversial dimension—etiology for knowledge and usefulness for understanding. See also fn. 2.
One might worry that the condition in de Regt’s account that the understood phenomenon be the end of an explanation provides another way one could fail to understand while still having useful beliefs, thus undermining its status as a solution to the quaternary value problem. However, when one actually tries to spell out how this would work, it is not clear how the objection can get off the ground. An intelligible theory by itself, which cannot explain a phenomenon, does not yield understanding of anything. There needs to be some sort of glue tying the intelligible/useful theory to the understanding, and explanation is as good a candidate as any. If it turns out that requiring explanation involves too much, we can instead imagine de Regt**, who is like de Regt* except insofar as he proposes a bind between useful theory and phenomenon that is weaker than explanation.
On the other hand, if representation itself is characterized primarily in terms of what one can do with it, then this worry evaporates (cf. Suárez 2010).
The “in virtue” clause is meant to rule out cases where I would hire someone because their understanding either logically entailed that they were more useful. Picking up on an earlier analogy (fn. 9), I would perhaps prefer hiring employees who could breathe, but the fact that possessing knowledge requires the ability to breathe is not a reason to hire someone who possesses knowledge.
Since we will be questioning the sufficiency of the explanation-paradigm rather than the requirement that the belief be justified, we need not concern ourselves with the thorny question of what justification is, and in particular whether it has internalist or externalist constraints.
This is intended to be a knowledge-free variant of Friedman’s (1974) unificationist account.
One could object that a proper belief in causes at the right level of idealization would necessarily be useful. That seems right, but characterizing “right level” in this case would seem to involve reference to what one will do with the belief.
If we require that understanding requires being able to do certain things with the explanation—such as convey it—then our account starts to look a great deal like Hills (discussed below) or perhaps Le Bihan (discussed above).
This is a bit of hyperbole, as having any beliefs might require one to be able to make certain inferential moves, as in Stich (1983). In any event, beliefs do not enable one to do all that one would want done in a prospective employee. See Wilkenfeld and Hellmann (2014) for more on the relative impotence of inferential connections to do the work we want understanding to do.
Though Khalifa (2017) tries to minimize the actual theoretical work done by “grasping” talk.
Of course, one could construct cases where for extrinsic reasons one would not want to hire understanders, as when one fears an underling could usurp one’s position. Nevertheless, we would argue that even in such cases understanding is a good-making feature of an employee.
In fact, Khalifa takes it as a virtue of his view of gradable understanding that low-level understanding is not for-hire but high-level understanding is, thus rejecting a presupposition of the teritiary value problem that all understanding is more valuable as a matter of kind (personal correspondence).
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Kareem Khalifa and Henk de Regt for their assistance, the Center for Philosophy of Science, and the journal referees.
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Wilkenfeld, D.A., Johnson, C.M. Understanding for Hire. J Gen Philos Sci 50, 389–405 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-019-09475-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-019-09475-5