A summary of Understanding as a species of knowledge

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In the paper “Is Understanding A Species Of Knowledge?” Grimm claims understanding is a species of knowledge citing philosopher of science Peter Lipton who claims understanding is not a super knowledge but simply more knowledge, knowledge of causes. Zagzebski opposes this claiming “that understanding is transparent whereas knowledge is not”. Transparent understanding entails how information or concepts relate to one another; connections being made among them and seeing how they go together. This results in an internalist view as the object of understanding comes through the seeing of connection which is internal as we cannot grasp or see things that are not open to our mental view. An internalist holds that mental phenomenon such as justification has an internal rather than external basis.

Grimm is willing to grant when one believes to be in understanding they can explain what it is in virtue of which they understood, which requires apprehension of the understood. Furthermore, there are some forms of understanding that allow for the transparency Zagzebski seeks, such as concepts. Having granted this Grimm does not claim that understanding in general is transparent as some components of understanding being transparent cannot be generalized to understanding in general.  Grimm focuses particularly on the lack of transparency in the understanding of natural phenomena, which is needed for a model of understanding, using an example of use of a refrigerator to demonstrate this. If one were to open a fridge and see that the light has gone off and is warm inside, they would look around the fridge for an explanation and in this case while doing so notice that the fridge is unplugged. From this they deduce that the fridge has stopped working as it is unplugged.  However, this is not necessarily the reason that the fridge is not working, it may be the case that the fridge would still not work even if it were to be plugged in and in this case, this is in fact so. In such a case although one thinks they understand why the fridge is not working they do not. 

This is a problem for Zagzebski’s account of understanding as natural phenomena seems factive, meaning we are trying to grasp how things are in the world and there is no reason to think that how things are in the world is consciously transparent to us. Grimm anticipates a possible objection to this position by the fact that although there was a failure to fit with the world with the fridge example, nonetheless there is understanding in the fact that there is a recognition that all unplugged refrigerator don’t work. Grimm sees this generalization of how things stand in the world as describing physical reality which contains dependencies, there being no reason to think one has transparent access to whether these dependencies obtain.

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