Abstract

Understanding involves the grasping of networks of ideas, which itself involves seeing connections and arriving at further conclusions and interrelations. To understand people, then, is to synthesize information in ways that allow a comprehensive and systematic vision of what is going on in someone else’s life. Instead of allowing for ignorance, understanding requires an open-mindedness that considers multiple ways of interpreting experiences and that defends views using reasons that others can accept. It also requires placing knowers in social situations, taking into account the relations of epistemic agents acting in the world. In the end, understanding involves learning to adopt different perspectives so that one can clearly see what it is like for others to live in the world around them.