Brian Brost

This work explores the nature of the knowledge that humans exhibit in their mastery of natural languages. One view, that linguistic knowledge is centrally knowledge of linguistic rules, emerges from the work of linguists like Noam Chomsky and philosophers like Donald Davidson and James Higgenbotham. However, significant disanalogies with unproblematic cases of knowledge constitute strong prima facie evidence against this view, and defenders of it have failed to give compelling grounds for disregarding the conflicting evidence. Meanwhile, others, like Gilbert Harman, have defended the view that linguistic knowledge is just a sophisticated form of know-how. While it seems likely that linguistic mastery does not consist of knowledge of facts about language, it does not appear that it is entirely like other paradigmatic forms of know-how, like knowing how to swim, for example. Instead, I argue that the skill constitutive of knowing a language is best characterized as the ability to understand what is said in that language. ;I go on to provide an analysis of what it is to understand what is said. While it is clear that understanding entails knowledge of meaning, it is also clear that something more is required. I argue that what is further required is a particular causal connection between the utterance and the hearer. It is not enough that you know the meaning of what is said; in order to understand, the etiology of this knowledge must be proper. Then I draw out the consequences of the theory of understanding. Understanding is closely related to discriminating or distinguishing, so it resembles a perceptual capacity. It is possible that there are multiple ways of realizing the capacity for understanding what is said. Knowledge of linguistic rules and principles is one way the capacity could be realized, for example. However, from what I concluded earlier it appears doubtful that this is the way humans in fact succeed at understanding