Title: Understanding as an Intellectual Virtue
Lecturer: Stephen Grimm (Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University)
Chairperson: XU Zhu (Associate Professor of Philosophy, East China Normal University)
Date: 10 am, May 22nd, 2017 (Monday)
Venue: Room 5303, Building of School of Humanities, Minhang Campus, ECNU
Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU
Abstract of the Lecture:
There are various ways in which understanding can be seen as an excellence of the mind or intellectual virtue. An “understanding person” means not a person who understands a number of things about the natural world, but a person who steers clear of things like judgmentalism in her evaluation of other people, and thus is better able to take up different perspectives and view them with a sympathetic eye. Being an understanding person also seems to be a virtue particularly needed in our age of deep political division, where it is commonly said that failures of mutual understanding are partly to blame for this problem.
Brief Introduction of the Lecturer:
Stephen Grimm is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University in New York and a visiting fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He specializes in epistemology and philosophy of science. His works on understanding have been widely cited and discussed. He was the leader of the Varieties of Understanding Project supported by Henry Luce Foundation and John Templeton Foundation. He also served as a Proposal Referee for National Science Foundation (2014) and an evaluator for Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2011; 2015).