Understanding is the intellectual virtue that enables one to grasp first principles and basic reality. The modern emphasis on critical reasoning, argumentation, and logic is basically a modern notion of the intellectual virtue of science. While the virtue of science is genuinely important, it relies on the previous virtue of understanding – one’s reasoning will be faulty or useless if one’s perception of reality is wrong. It is not by the virtue of science that we know this, but by the virtue of understanding. Failures in the virtue of understanding cannot be solved by the exercise of the virtue of science, we must address this different and more fundamental error.

Source: New York Times January 16, 2024 14:28 UTC