Alexander Bird (Cambridge University): ‘To understand is to know’

Abstract: I articulate my version of the view that understanding is knowledge of explanatory relations.  In particular I defend this view against the argument that because understanding can be promoted by models that are strictly false, understanding, unlike knowledge, is consistent with falsity. Alleged examples either provide neither understanding nor knowledge (the fluid model of electricity, contra de Regt and Gijsbers) or do provide both understanding and knowledge (the ideal gas model, contra Elgin)

Alexander Bird is the Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, and a fellow of St John’s College.