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3 results

  • 8 - What “Understanding” Means

  • David R. Olson, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Making Sense
    Published online:
    21 April 2022
    Print publication:
    05 May 2022, pp 81-95

  • Summary

    In Chapter 7, I argued that it was appropriate for us to ascribe understanding to young children and computers, as their behavior meets the criteria of correctness and intersubjectivity. What they cannot yet do, I argued, is ascribe understanding – that is, claim or attribute understanding – to themselves or others. Why does that matter?

  • 14 - Ascriptivism and Cognitive Development

  • David R. Olson, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Making Sense
    Published online:
    21 April 2022
    Print publication:
    05 May 2022, pp 159-180

  • Summary

    In the first chapter of this book, I contrasted the first-order subjective experience of understanding, the “A ha!” experience of making sense, with the objective valid ascription of understanding that had long been the concern of analytical philosophers. I sought to bring the first-person experience and the third-person ascription together into one account of understanding.

Making Sense
  • What It Means to Understand
  • David R. Olson
  • Published online:
    21 April 2022
    Print publication:
    05 May 2022
  • Understanding, as Descartes, Locke and Kant all insisted, is the primary 'faculty' of the mind; yet our modern sciences have been slow to advance a clear and testable account of what it means to understand, of children's acquisition of this concept and, in particular, how children come to ascribe understanding to themselves and others. By drawing together developmental and philosophical theories, this book provides a systematic account of children's concept of understanding and places understanding at the heart of children's 'theory of mind'. Children's subjective awareness of their own minds, of what they think, depends on learning a language for ascribing mental states to themselves and others. This book will appeal to researchers in developmental psychology, cognitive science, education and philosophy who are interested in the cognitive and emotional development of children and in the more basic question of what it means to have a mind.