From Knowledge To Understanding

‘The value problem’ of knowledge,together with the nature problem of knowledge and the skepticism drive the development of contemporary epistemology.Considering‘the value problem’,epistemologists need to explain why knowledge is more valuable than other state falling short of knowledge but implicating true belief.Process reliabilism argues that knowledge is more valuable because it is produced by reliable belief-forming process.However,for process reliabilists,the so-called ‘swamping argument’ constitutes a serious challenge to their theory,which aims to show that the value of the reliable process is swamped by the value of true belief itself.To respond to this argument,process reliabilists provide two solutions: the first is the conditional probability approach,according to which,beliefs produced by reliable process will be more probable to be true than those beliefs which are not produced by the same process.The other is the value autonomization approach which holds that reliable belief-forming process owns independent value.But these two do not work well.Virtue reliabilism argues that knowledge is intellectual achievement then owns more value that other epistemic state.But it also faces two problems:One is the sufficiency problem which shows that in some cases,although some enquirers display their intellectual virtues,they still lacks of knowledge.The other is the necessity problem which shows that shows some enquirers have knowledge without displaying their intellectual virtues.Not only process reliabilism but also virtue reliabilism both focus on the analysis of knowledge,they can’t abandon the belief-first view so they fail to answer the value problem.Belief aims at truth and truth is the only fundamental epistemic value so belief’s other properties can’t add more value to true belief which is the dilemma for epistemic value T-monism.In this paper,I shall argue for the following three thesis:firstly,truth is not the only fundamental epistemic goal;secondly,understanding as a distinct epistemic standing,understanding can successfully respond to value problem;thirdly,the transfer from knowledge to understanding can not only respond to the value problem of knowledge but also answer epistemic luck problem.