§ 23 Understanding

§ 23 Understanding

So, with regard to both analysis and critique, we must follow Robert Brandom’s advice on what understanding something means and what it means to think (and write) clearly.1

Understanding something means having practical mastery over a set of concepts; it means that you can use them to think and communicate with, or indeed think and communicate about.

To understand something means being able to apply the concepts involved properly in any relevant situation and use them effectively to achieve some purpose. On top of that, it means to know the implications of what you have done, both in the application of the concepts in discourse as well as in the doings those concepts help to represent. We call this causal competence.

To understand the activity of hammering implicitly is to be able to use a hammer. That is, for your body to know how to hammer, and for you to know what to hammer, and when to refrain from hammering.

Here, the conceptualisation takes the form of specific doings with the right feel, leading to the right result.

To understand the activity of hammering explicitly is to be able to show that you can hammer to someone and to talk about hammering knowledgeably; it is to understand how the word ‘hammer’ and its conceptual meaning in the form of the properties hammers have in all sorts of different situations and what hammers are useful for in those different situations, and what you have to do to use them.

You have to know how the concept hammer works together with a wider set of other, related concepts, such as nails, planks, and sore thumbs, to allow inferences in such a way that people listening to you talking about hammering can begin to form an image, an understanding, of the activity and begin to imagine doing it themselves.

But doing something is not yet doing it well. How do we get to an idea about doing an activity well?

Here, the concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness start wanting to work in harmony with each other.

We know that a concept is used well when the skills needed to use it are present, and when the reasoning process involved in its use is effective for what it is used for, i.e., when we can describe things and situations accurately and sensibly, helping us make accurate predictions.

We know a concept is used well attitudinally when it is used with the right intention, according to the rules of whatever authority we hold dear and if it gives the right outcome relative to that intention.

I have been careful not to specify any attitude here. At the time of writing this philosophy, my faculty held clear attitudes regarding sustainability and inclusion. They will do.

So, Brandom’s rather wonderful description of what the act of understanding entails goes as follows:

With regard to thinking and writing clearly, it is a matter of knowing, for each claim you make:

  • What the claim you are making means conceptually, and in terms of other doings, and what evidence you have for ensuring it is a good claim.
  • What other claims have to be in place for you to make that claim and…
  • What else you are committing yourself to when making that claim. In other words, could you let me know the further implications of your claim or proposition?
  • What other ideas are compatible or incompatible with the claim?
  • What are you entitled to (say and do) in committing yourself to that claim?
  • What activities become necessary based on that claim? What does the claim warrant?
  • And lastly, what outcomes may be expected based on that claim? What guarantees can you give based on that claim?

© Jacob Voorthuis, 2025. Please cite Jacob Voorthuis as the author, The Theoria Project as the title and the page address as the location. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, under the following terms: No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

  1. A slightly older version of this paragraph was first published in Jacob Voorthuis, Theoria, use, intention & design, a philosophical reckoning; Analysis & Critique: Gardening in the metaphysics of the beautiful, the true, and the good, AHT, TU/e (2024) This paragraph rests heavily on the work of Robert Brandom, ‘How to write clearly’, Articulating Reasons, an introduction to Inferentialism, (Harvard 2001) ↩︎