This brief chapter considers what we mean by knowledge, explanation and understanding, aspects that have and remain areas of debate in the philosophy of science. Despite scientists referring to these aspects routinely in ways that suggest their meaning is clear, examples are given that suggest the terms can actually be used in various ways by different people. It is important to consider what is being claimed and why in a claimed explanation or a claim to understanding, because the terms carry different weights and subjectively mean different things. This can lead to confusion and errors of reasoning that can constrain a field.

This chapter looks at claims to understanding. It begins by looking at the system I have worked on, the lamprey spinal cord locomotor circuit, and claims that circuit function and behaviour can be understood in terms of the interactions of spinal cord nerve cells. I highlight that the claims to experimental confirmation actually reflect various assumptions and extrapolations and that the claimed understanding is lacking. I then look at the Nobel Prize winning work on the Aplysia gill withdrawal reflex, making the same conclusion as the lamprey, various assumptions and extrapolations are used to claim causal links, and in doing this commit various logical fallacies, including confusing correlation for causation and begging the question. I finish by looking at hippocampal long-term potentiation and claims it is the cellular basis of memory, again highlighting that the claimed links have not been made.

Stephen Engstrom argues that judgments that amount to knowledge constitute the end of the faculty of understanding. This implies that true judgments and false judgments are not on par in relation to the attainment of this end. False judgments are incomplete realizations of the understanding whose explanation requires reference to a factor that prevents it from attaining its end. Engstrom takes this to show that truth is essential to judgment (and belongs to its form) whereas falsity is not. This is reflected in our original, a priori understanding of judgment, according to which the capacity to judge is the capacity to know (rather than the capacity, say, to judge either truly or falsely). In an appendix, Engstrom relates this account to the notion of objective validity.

Janum Sethi investigates Kant’s application of hylomorphism to the theory of self-consciousness, as evident in the distinction he draws between transcendental and empirical apperception. According to Sethi, the standard reading of this distinction overlooks that it is drawn in terms of a distinction between transcendental and empirical unity of apperception, which can be traced to the distinct natures of the two faculties that produce these unities: whereas the former is brought about according to the rational laws of the understanding, the latter is a result of the psychological laws of the imagination. In light of this, Sethi argues that the two types of apperception amount to a subject’s awareness of two cognitively essential aspects of herself: namely, her spontaneity and her receptivity – that is, of her capacity to receive the material for cognition through the senses and of her capacity to impart a certain form to this material through the use of the understanding.

This chapter contrasts the theory of singular compositional abduction with Peter Lipton’s picture of inference to the best explanation. Where Lipton does intend his theory to apply to the scientific interpretation of experimental results, his approach does not involve extensive close reading of scientific experimental work. Moreover, where Lipton relies heavily on early work on contrastive explanation, this chapter argues that that account has limited applicability. It also indicates how his brief account of explanatory virtues have little to offer when it comes to abductive inferences from individual experimental results.

This chapter explains why cognition (Erkenntnis) is its own kind of cognitive good, apart from questions of justification. I argue against reducing the work of thought experiments to their epistemological results, such as their potential to provide prima facie justification. As an apparatus for cognition, a thought experiment enacts the three core elements of Ørsted’s Kantian account: (1) it is a tool for variation; (2) it proceeds from concepts, and (3) its goal is the genuine activation or reactivation of mental processes. Cognition has two components: givenness and thought. I will show in this chapter how givenness and thought are both achieved through thought experiments.

This chapter looks at Kant’s understanding of the relationship between laws of nature and those of freedom in order to further explain Kant’s grounding argument at 4:453. The two sets of laws constitute two systems, the first governing phenomenal nature and the second the intelligible world, that is, the systematic interrelation of rational wills. How the two sets of laws relate reveal one fundamental philosophical system that can be grasped correctly only from the standpoint of practical reason, namely, that of the agent making use of its intelligence in its practical activity. It is the same understanding and the very same transcendental subject who gives the law to nature, who also gives the law to itself, using the same set of concepts, only differently applied. Our law-giving function in both worlds grounds the primacy of our membership in the intelligible world. Different criteria of application of these concepts to noumenal and phenomenal worlds are discussed, and I show how Kant avoids objections to the idea of timeless agency. Kant espouses a modified Leibizianism through which the intelligible and sensible worlds are harmonized indirectly by the author of nature, who harmonizes the functions in us through which the two are constituted.

Kant ascribes two radically different kinds of language—symbolic or pictorial (qua intuitive) and discursive languages—to the ‘Oriental’ and ‘Occidental’ peoples, respectively. By his analysis, having a merely symbolic language suggests that the Orientals lack understanding – and hence the ability to form concepts and think in abstracto – as well as genius and spirit. Meanwhile, he establishes discursive language as a sine qua non of the continued progress of humanity. These points add up to an exclusionary view of progress according to which the Occidental whites alone are equipped with the requisite discursive skills and other talents (including genius and spirit) to accomplish advanced culture and pursue humanity’s (moral) destiny. The Orient, with its supposedly “childish language,” is consigned to the childhood of humanity. In holding this view, Kant has departed from some of his predecessors – such as Leibniz, whose vision of the future of humanity includes an East-West harmony facilitated by a “universal symbolism,” and Rousseau, who exalts a livelier connection with the world mediated by a pictorial language.

Planning for learning is essential for creating environments conducive to deep learning and to developing student understandings. Standard 3 of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) specifies the need for all graduate teachers to be able to ‘plan for and implement effective teaching and learning’. Quality planning involves the systematic use of feedback data to design activities that encourage the assimilation and synthesis of information, leading to the creation of new understandings. Student learning should always be the goal.

The sense of duty is a virtue of caring, not directly about the good, or even about justice, but about doing one’s duty. Insofar as doing what one takes to be one’s duty is in fact to do what is good, the sense of duty functions as a backup for the more direct virtues of caring – generosity, compassion, and truthfulness, as well as justice. Being a virtue of caring, the sense of duty can be expressed in emotions: a feeling of satisfaction in having done one’s duties or feelings of guilt or shame at having neglected them. The sense of duty can vary, emotionally, according to how one conceives the authoritative source of duty, on a spectrum from reverence, through respect, to resentful acceptance. Example of the extremes beyond the spectrum are some Hebrew psalmists’ delight in the law of God and the contempt of the utter moral cynic.

‘Truth’ refers to reality – what is, was, will be, and should be – and its aspects, in the context of representations thereof. A true something is the real thing, and a true proposition, belief, hypothesis, exemplar, and so forth is a successful representation of truth in the first sense. The virtue of truthfulness is the judicious love of truth in both senses. From love of reality and correct representations of it, the truthful person tends to tell others the truth as she sees it, but is not fanatical about telling it, because virtues like justice, compassion, and gentleness, which themselves are a kind of truth, can enjoin the withholding or even distortion of truths. Truths can be horrible, and it can take courage and humility to admit them.

Temperance is a condition of a person’s physical appetites (for food, drink, and sexual contact) in which those appetites themselves conform to a rational standard. Temperance is possible for human beings because of the sophistication with which we can conceptualize the objects of our appetites and because an appetite’s object is internal to the appetite’s identity. A salmon steak construed as poisoned appeals to our appetite (and thus affects the pleasure of satisfying it) differently than one construed as healthful. Temperance differs from self-control, which doesn’t involve a conformity of the appetites themselves, but imposes rational control on unmodified appetites. The rational standard for temperance is the human good, which is the object of the virtues of caring. Thus, the temperate person’s physical appetites are such that, without being controlled, they fit the person to participate in an order of peace.

How are virtues constituted psychologically? The virtues of caring or substantive virtues are dispositional concerns for the good in its various aspects: the well-being of people and other animals, the avoidance or relief of their suffering, the reconciliation of enemies, knowledge and truth, justice, proper formation of sensual desire and pleasure, and one’s duties. Generosity, compassion, forgivingness, justice, and the sense of duty are examples of virtues constituted by such caring. Because the caring is virtuous only if directed to real goods, the concerns need to be shaped by correct thought (understanding). The virtues of caring divide into direct (for example, generosity) and indirect (for example, justice). Another class of virtues – the enkratic – are powers, abilities, or skills of self-management. These, too, require understanding – of self and how to manage it in the various situations and influences of life. Examples are self-control, courage, patience, and perseverance.

Practical wisdom is caring understanding of the good in the situations of a human life. Our emotions are rational to the extent that we care about the real good and are truthful about the facts. The two main kinds of virtues – the virtues of caring and the enkratic virtues – embody different aspects of practical wisdom. On the one side, in compassion, generosity, justice, and sense of duty, we care about and understand our good in its varieties and aspects. On the other side, we know about and know our practical way around ourselves, our shortcomings and the ways they may be mitigated and repaired by use of courage, patience, perseverance, and self-control. The virtues of caring form a coherent ensemble and overall picture of the good, a practical wisdom by which we see our situations in the perspective of a whole life.

A distinction between types of methods (understanding and explanation) that generate different kinds of evidence relevant to the psychiatric assessment is characterised. The distinction is animated with both non-clinical and clinical examples and exercises. Scepticism about the distinction is addressed, and three influential systems of psychiatric knowledge which collapse understanding and explanation in different ways are discussed. The argument is made that the distinction (analogous to the romantic/classic distinction) resurfaces and is compelling. However, another challenge becomes important – holism in psychiatric assessment – which the understanding/explanation distinction leaves in an unsatisfactory state.