The Unity of Understanding
** Working Draft—December 2014 **
1. Practical Understanding versus Theoretical Understanding
Our lives are full of practical activities, both meaningful and mundane. At times, we navigate them perfectly well; we understand them (gardening, hammering, mentoring), or how to do them (how to use an elevator, how to throw a Frisbee). On other occasions, our understanding fails and we are left confused or frustrated, unable to proceed effectively—as when, for example, one eventually admits in the course of an effort at assembly, “I guess I don’t understand how to put the thingamajiggy together, after all.” In these ways, the phenomenon of practical understanding is not idle. Such understanding does not always show itself in action, as in a case where it goes unused (i.e., unexercised, unexpressed, or unmanifested). Yet its paradigm manifestation remains skillful activity, which is importantly different from reflexive or instinctual behaviors, mechanical mimicries, and spurts of raw talent or mere knack. This is not because skillful activity is more effective (it need not be), but rather because it is piloted by the agent’s grasp of the action in a way that understanding-less behavior—even when overtly indistinguishable from expert performance—is not.
But our lives are not just flurries of activity. We also seek to comprehend the world, to engage it intellectually and render it intelligible—sometimes simply for the sake of intelligibility and nothing more. This kind of theoretical understanding is perhaps paradigmatically exemplified by scientific achievements, which offer insight into causes, mechanisms, or unifying principles that illuminate the how or why of what was, is, and will be (how plants absorb nutrients from the soil, why encouragement is or is not an effective motivational device, how an elevator works, why a Frisbee flies). Yet it also has a clear place in the ordinary course of things, lending meaning and context to our lives and enabling us to acquire some perspective on our situation, whether through reflection on our own thoughts and desires, the relations between daily events, the inner workings of things in our environment, or the origin, structure, and purpose of the cosmos itself.
Such observations point to a familiar distinction, holding between the practical grasp of the “doer”, which is primed to guide activity but lies behind and is distinct from subsequent action, and the theoretical grasp of the “thinker”, which illuminates the how or why of things. These descriptions are meant to indicate what is meant by ‘practical understanding’ and ‘theoretical understanding’, respectively, without prejudging any substantive questions (e.g., about their nature or the relation between them).[1]
Why describe both as forms of understanding? It is fair to say that each is a standing state, distinct from its exercises or effects (e.g., subsequent actions), constituting an important kind of epistemic good, which is gradable insofar as it can be better or worse, involving something more objective than a mere feeling of competence or comprehension, more intelligent than mere knack or rote memorization, and more robust than simple knowledge of particular deeds or facts. Indeed, to attribute either one to an individual is not merely to credit them with some kind of success (though it is of course that), but arguably to pay them a compliment of a high order: to invoke Plato’s description of epistêmê in the Meno, it is to praise them as being, at least to some extent, and at least in that respect, “excellent”. (Hereafter, for brevity, we will refer to this cluster of features, which mark out understanding’s profile, as the ‘U-profile’; and we will call a state that satisfies this profile a ‘U-state’. We will leave the features in the U-profile at an intuitive level, since their basic substance and applicability in the present case is not controversial though their precise analysis is.[2])
Despite the significance we place individually on both forms of understanding, however, philosophical theorizing has tended to treat them as largely distinct topics or concerns. On the one hand, much contemporary work in epistemology and philosophy of science has focused on theoretical understanding, where (as noted above) scientific achievements typically serve as the paradigm manifestation. So understood, the resulting views tend to focus on explanation, and on-going debates concern, for instance, whether it is factive and how it interacts with various forms of epistemic luck.[3] On the other hand, another group of philosophers working primarily in philosophy of mind and action has explored practical understanding, where (as noted above) skillful activity typically serves as the paradigm manifestation. When understanding is taken in this way, the focus tends to be on physical behavior and abilities, and on-going debates concern, for instance, the role of habituation and extent of embodiment—in fact, according to Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962, 142), “it is the body that understands”.[4]
This division is rarely acknowledged, but when it is it is often with the implication that separate treatment is not merely a convenient division of labor, but a compulsory division of nature. For example, Martin Heidegger claimed in Being and Time that practical skill possesses “its own kind of sight”, involving a proprietary type of non-theoretical cognition, which Heidegger labeled “circumspection”.[5] Such a view is not specific to a particular period or tradition. For example, recent work in mainstream analytic philosophy of science has seen Peter Lipton (2009, 54) similarly emphasize a division between theoretical understanding and practical understanding, the latter of which Lipton describes as “sui generis”.[6] And Jonathan Kvanvig is unapologetic when he writes in his influential treatment of epistemic value, which defends the value of understanding over knowledge,
What gets left out, most significantly, is understanding how. That is as it should be, for such understanding is relevant more to practical purposes than to theoretical ones… (Kvanvig 2003, 190)
In the existing literature, then, we appear to be confronted with two very different things.[7] Perhaps they are tied together by some historical etymological connection, but philosophically they are not—or at least are widely regarded as not—of a piece.
In our view this bifurcation is both unfortunate and surprising, since it suggests that understanding is in an important sense heteronomous or disunified: perhaps like jade (which famously is either of two very disparate minerals, nephrite or jadeite), at bottom understanding is not one, but many. Such a view, we think, threatens to obscure our conception, not just of what understanding is, but of its value (recall Kvanvig), acquisition (recall Merleau-Ponty), and scope or extent (see Greco below), among other things. While we will touch on several of these topics in what follows, our primary aim is to oppose bifurcation. We will instead explore the possibility of bringing the practical and theoretical together so as to secure the unity of understanding. While we acknowledge that there are important differences between them, we will argue that both practical and theoretical understanding possess a common underlying nature, and we will seek to explain how this could be so.
§2 clarifies the relevant notion of unity. §3 critically examines what in our view are the chief obstacles to unification. In §§4-8, an argument for unification is given and an explanation of unification—what makes it true that understanding is one—is proposed. Subsequently, in §§9-11, several additional virtues of the proposal are discussed, foremost among which is its capacity to generalize appropriately—that is, to encompass all forms of understanding while nevertheless preserving their differences—and, hence, to account for understanding tout court.
2. The Notion of Unity
At the outset of the previous section, we introduced practical and theoretical understanding by describing stereotypical characteristics of each. The two forms of understanding are reasonably thought of as distinct, at least insofar as their paradigm manifestations (skillful activity and scientific achievement, respectively) diverge. We believe it is possible to describe both using locutions such as ┌x grasps j┐, ┌x gets j┐, ┌x comprehends j┐, and of course ┌x understands j┐.[8] At the same time, it is not clear that there are any particular forms of words in the English language that decisively mark practical understanding and theoretical understanding as such, or track the distinction between them, but nothing in what follows will turn on this issue.
To point to the existence of, and distinction between, practical understanding and theoretical understanding is not to endorse the claim that these two forms of understanding are fundamentally distinct: on the contrary, as explained below, the unity thesis we defend entails just the opposite. We also do not intend to suggest that the distinction between practical understanding and theoretical understanding is exhaustive: plausibly, there are some cases of understanding that do not fit neatly into one or the other category—for example, an ordinary mature adult’s understanding of the fact that eight eights makes sixty-four. Similarly, it is important to recognize that the distinction may not be sharp: plausibly, there are many borderline cases—for example, Obama’s understanding of campaign strategy. Pointing to such cases is not, however, sufficient to establish the unity of practical and theoretical understanding in the sense in which we intend it.
There are several different things one might mean by saying that understanding is “unified”, or that there is a “unity” of practical and theoretical understanding. For example, one might mean that one form of understanding cannot be present in the absence of the other. (Compare the ancient thesis labeled ‘unity of the virtues’, according to which possession of one virtue entails possession of all virtues.) Let us call this thesis copresence:
COPRESENCE One has practical understanding of j if and only if one has theoretical understanding of j.
There is some truth to this thesis, as many cases of understanding seem to involve a mixture of the two: practical and theoretical understanding are often mutually reliant and cannot cleanly be disentangled. As stated, however, we believe that COPRESENCE is open to counterexamples. To illustrate, an accomplished ballerina might have a practical understanding of ballet while lacking a theoretical understanding of ballet. Conversely, an unathletic expert in neuroanatomy and kinesthetics might have a theoretical understanding of ballet while lacking a practical understanding of ballet. There may be ways of tweaking COPRESENCE in order to handle such cases, but we will not attempt to do this. For we are not here invested in the idea that most or even all cases of understanding are mixed. COPRESENCE is not the unity thesis that we intend to pursue.
Another thing one might mean by saying that practical understanding and theoretical understanding are “unified” is that they are equally indispensable elements of a type of understanding that is, in some intuitive sense, full, adequate, best, or truest.[9] The basic idea is that both elements are needed to achieve such understanding, which thereby “unites” the practical and theoretical; in this sense, it is “unified”. Because practical and theoretical understanding are each viewed as enriching such understanding, let us call this thesis enrichment:
ENRICHMENT There is a type of understanding, U, such that one has U with respect to some j only if one has both practical understanding of j and theoretical understanding of j.
We are sympathetic to this thesis, but again it is not our primary target. Insofar as it does not address the U-profile, or what makes it the case that the U-profile is satisfied, when it is, ENRICHMENT does not speak to the question of what goes into, or makes up, practical and theoretical understanding. It simply helps itself to both phenomena, leaving wholly unanswered the question of what makes each a form of understanding: an objective, intelligent, robust, praiseworthy, epistemic good. So, although ENRICHMENT may in some sense unify practical and theoretical understanding, it does not find unity within them; it does not express what we mean by “unity”.
As we understand it, to say that practical understanding and theoretical understanding are “unified” is to say that it is one and the same thing that makes each a form of understanding—an objective, intelligent, robust, praiseworthy, epistemic good. In this sense, they share the same fundamental nature (or, if you prefer, essence, analysis, or definition), and it is this nature that in both cases makes it so that the features that compose the U-profile are present. The nature may thus be regarded as a common “underlying basis” for the “superficial” features that compose the U-profile, instanced in both practical and theoretical understanding. (Contrast jade, which is a paradigm example of disunity: the superficial features that compose the jade-profile, instanced by both jadeite and nephrite, are not grounded in one and the same underlying basis.[10]) Specifically, the state that one has when one practically understands and the state that one has when one theoretically understands are identical to or grounded in—hereafter, ‘are or involve’—one and the same relation, which is that in virtue of which the U-profile is satisfied, and in effect is distinctive of states of genuine understanding. Let us call this thesis fundamental:
FUNDAMENTAL There is some (non-disjunctive) relation R such that (i) practical understanding and theoretical understanding both are or involve R, and (ii) R potentially makes it the case that the U-profile is satisfied, when it is.[11]
In this way, the unity we propose to explore is fundamental unity.[12]
As should be clear, FUNDAMENTAL is not merely the claim that practical and theoretical understanding have something, even something important, in common. It does not say simply that they are species of the same genus, or determinates of the same determinable—for example, understanding or U-state, both of which fail to satisfy the condition of asymmetric metaphysical dependence in clause (ii). It is also not a claim about their sharing a set of necessary and sufficient conditions (not even a non-disjunctive set). This is not simply because the claim, in clause (i), about what each of practical and theoretical understanding is or involves is more discerning than any corresponding biconditional (even one that holds of metaphysical necessity): to modify an example due to Kit Fine (1994), it is not part of what is or is involved in being the man Socrates to be the sole member of the singleton {Socrates}, even though the man Socrates exists if and only if the singleton exists (as a matter of metaphysical necessity). It is also more resilient than any corresponding biconditional: for example, it is part of the nature of a promise (what that act-type is or involves) to obligate, not to obligate-when-undertaken-while-neither-under-duress-nor-unwittingly-incapacitated-nor-…; but if I promise under duress or am unwittingly incapacitated, then on that particular occasion I do not in fact incur an obligation—the duress or incapacity serve to ‘disable’ the promissory obligation on that occasion. (This example also clarifies the qualifier ‘potentially’ in clause (ii), which functions to make room for such cases, wherein natural potential goes unactualized due to the presence of a disabler.[13]) Third, clause (i) also requires something far more intimate than what is given by any biconditional: whereas a biconditional may be true by specifying conditions that merely accompany one’s target, to locate the nature of one’s target (again, what it is or involves) requires specifying what goes into, or makes up, that target. Finally, FUNDAMENTAL is more potent than a mere biconditional, since—this is the chief force of clause (ii)—it demands that R is potentially what makes it the case that the U-profile is satisfied, when it is: for practical and theoretical understanding alike, they are both objective, intelligent, robust, praiseworthy, epistemic goods because of R.