Special issue Topic: Understanding and Knowledge in Science, Fiction and Arts"
Publisher: Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Print ISSN: 1313-888X Online-ISSN: 2367-5438
Language: English Pages: 1-2
Language: English Pages: 3-17 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/bjp20261811 Keywords: chatbots; LLM’s; attitude ascription; concepts; phenomenal concepts; understanding; inference to the best explanation Abstract: With the recent rise of LLM technology, many researchers as well as the general public have been puzzled by the question whether the chatbots that run on that technology understand the language they produce and receive from users. Is imputing an understanding of language to chatbots legitimate, intelligible, a convenient metaphor, or just a useful fiction? Understanding is a cognitive notion, whence assessing whether something understands language turns on what kinds of psychological states we can justifiably ascribe to it. Accordingly, we here start with a delineation of the main kinds of mental state found in our own species - namely the cognitive, conative, affective, and experiential- and then argue that these four kinds need not come bundled together. That raises the question whether we might be justified in literally ascribing some such states (like cognitive and conative) to sufficiently sophisticated machines while refraining from ascribing others to them. We then provide reasons for an affirmative answer to that question, supporting the thesis that chatbots understand some of the language they produce and receive. We close by considering challenges to attitude ascription in this arena coming from (i) what we call the “attitude of one’s own” objection and (ii) the embodied cognition tradition, and show they may be neutralized.
Language: English Pages: 18-31 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/bjp20261812 Keywords: Representational realism; mimesis; “myth of the given”; “the innocent eye”; conventions and perception, surrealist eye Abstract: In his famous "Manifeste du Surréalisme" André Breton proposes the exercise of creative freedom through detachment from the objective external world. But what prevents us from playfully freeing ourselves from the external world, from the first-instance reality, in order to pass into super-reality? The organ that keeps us fixed in the captivity of so-called objectivity,in the so-called "iron cage"; of a rationality that wants to capture the world independent of our minds, is the eye. Therefore, in order to pass from looking outward, from the perception that puts us in contact with the object, to looking inward, to the introspective plunge, the biological eye must be annihilated in favor of the inner eye, not only introspective, but also oneiric and occult.This aesthetic program is based epistemologically on a critique of representational realism and the rejection of the so-called “myth of the given”, the effect of belief in an “innocent eye”. My goal in this paper is to identify the epistemological assumptions that underpinned traditional theories in art, primarily pictorial representational art, and to identify the change at this level that led to new trends in 20th-century art, especially those that made the surrealist movement possible. Considering Victor Brauner as a relevant case, I propose to understand the surrealist eye in three artistically and aesthetically relevant ways, namely, the "suppressed eye", the "autonomous eye" and the "sublimated eye".
Language: English Pages: 32-49 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/bjp20261813 Keywords: understanding; knowledge; scientific models; fiction; representation; epistemology Abstract: This paper examines the epistemic status of understanding and argues that it cannot be adequately reduced to propositional knowledge or to justified true belief. The analysis challenges strictly truth-centered accounts of cognition and defends a conception of understanding grounded in structured interpretive engagement with representational systems. Drawing on recent debates in epistemology and philosophy of science that distinguish understanding from knowledge (e.g.,Kvanvig 2003; Grimm 2006; de Regt 2017), the paper situates understanding as a distinct epistemic achievement with its own normative profile, irreducible to belief or information possession. It is argued that scientific models, literary fictions, and contemporary AI-mediated representations systematically rely on idealized or non-literal structures that nonetheless yield genuine epistemic gains. The central claim is that understanding arises through norm-governed practices of interpretation and use, rather than through the mere accumulation of accurate propositions. Scientific models contribute to understanding by isolating explanatory dependencies, fictional narratives afford experiential, perspectival, and meaning-structuring insight, and AI systems support human understanding by facilitating linguistically mediated exploratory and interpretive activities. In each case, departures from literal truth function as epistemically productive constraints rather than as defects. By articulating a unified framework that accounts for these practices, the paper clarifies the relationship between understanding and knowledge and defends the legitimacy of fictional and idealized representations as indispensable components of human sense-making and cognition.
Language: English Pages: 50-65 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/bjp20261814 Keywords: subjective understanding; scientific understanding; concept of self; Daniel Dennett; Jenann Ismael; world models; cognitive background corpus Abstract: Where is understanding located? However this question is answered, it is widely assumed that ultimately individual minds do the understanding. But cognitive science has cast significant doubt on the idea of an individual mind, so how can this work? This paper uses the responses of Ismael (2007, 2016) and Hofstaedter (2007) to these cognitive-science challenges a sa basis for developing a conception of individual understanding. It then also suggests that the same conception can trace both objective understanding (of the natural and social worlds) and subjective understanding (of persons, values, reflections on values in art and literature) to a common source in the individual mind’s capability of allocating attention to investment in its mental life. In both cases, understanding is seen to be an extended process, requiring persistent attention, not an isolated event.
Language: English Pages: 66-85 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/bjp20261815 Keywords: explanatory understanding; misunderstanding; epistemology of science; disputes in science and philosophy Abstract: When developing theories of understanding, philosophers have tried to provide a full package by offering criteria both for the epistemic success of understanding and for various related epistemic failures. One of those failures is misunderstanding. Currently, there are only two theories of misunderstanding. The first one, from Yu and Petkov, analyzes the unique epistemic conditions for misunderstanding. The other one, by Rice and Khalifa, studies the process of correcting misunderstanding. In this paper, I show that both theories have shortcomings. I argue that Rice and Khalifa’s theory is too broad and permissive. It effectively blurs existing distinctions between proto-understanding or understanding based on falsified theories. The reverse holds for Yu and Petkov’s theory. It is too narrow and thus fails to capture broad issues related to clearing misunderstanding. I conclude by suggesting that Yu and Petkov’s theory describes misunderstanding more plausibly, whilst Rice and Khalifa’s theory can capture the correction of misunderstanding.
Language: English Pages: 86-98 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/bjp20261816 Keywords: animal models; psychiatric conditions; analogical reasoning; scientific realism; model validity Abstract: Researchers and practitioners rarely take on a realist attitude about animal models in psychiatry. Why does this happen? I will argue that even the best among current models fail to satisfy two requirements that demand care in balancing them one against the other: the psychological construct requirement and the mechanistic requirement. Failure to satisfy them explains why researchers do not believe in them. I conclude by arguing that, if one were to be a realist about animal models in psychiatry, interventionist and representational aspects of that attitude would be inextricably mixed.
Language: English Pages: 99-115 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/bjp20261817 Keywords: epistemic imagination; embodied cognition; fictional modeling; aesthetic cognitivism; hybrid epistemology Abstract: This article argues that water marbling affords genuine, non-propositional understanding - tacit, affective, and embodied - thereby strengthening aesthetic cognitivism. Marbling - floating pigments on water, manipulating them into patterns, and transferring them onto paper - renders visible the dynamics of fluid motion, resistance, and emergence. Drawing on philosophical accounts of fictional modeling and aesthetic cognitivism, the article uses select ideas from model-based science (idealization, parameter variation, counterfactual exploration) heuristically to illuminate how marbling fosters understanding through embodied simulation, imagination, and material engagement - without claiming that marbling is scientific modeling or serves scientific aims. Techniques such as ebru and suminagashi are not merely decorative; they foreground analogical, dynamic exploration of complex material behavior. By enabling counterfactual reasoning, perceptual insight, and tactile grasp of uncertainty, marbling exemplifies a “marbled epistemology” - a fluid mode of knowing that softens the perceived art–science divide by clarifying how artistic practice yields understanding. By “divide” here I mean a difference in aims and norms (truth-tracking explanation versus aesthetic, experiential insight), not an ontological wall between domains.
Language: English Pages: 116-136 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/bjp20261818 Keywords: Cavendish; materialism; occasional causation; compositional motion Abstract: This paper discusses a pressing problem that arises within Margaret Cavendish’s natural philosophy. Cavendish’s conceptions of matter and causation give rise to the problem in question. Inanimate matter is devoid of self-motion and can only be moved by animate matter. Simultaneously, all caused motion is supposed to be occasioned self-motion. Consequently, it appears that the principal conceptions of Cavendish’s natural philosophy give rise to an inconsistency. I survey several options for resolving the problem that rely on amendments to Cavendish’s conceptions of matter or causation and find them to be unsuccessful. I then propose a solution that makes use of Alison Peterman’s interpretation of Cavendish as endorsing compositional motion, and discuss its virtues and implications.
Language: English Pages: 137-146 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/bjp20261819 Keywords: art; understanding; symbol; Schelling; metaphysics; Platonism Abstract: The text inquires about a lack in Schelling’s thought – a lack that appears as a result of his peculiar use of metaphysical jargon in an otherwise characteristically modern thought. In particular, it reasons through his understanding of the connection between art and understanding in order to illuminate the issues with his approach to ontological ground (Grund). The inquiry juxtaposes Schelling’s views to those of the classical metaphysics of antiquity in the context of the theurgic forms within the Platonic tradition.
