How Much Do We Really Know?
We have the experience of the senses, and with rationality , including a priori reason. We have a mixture of empirical science and the understanding based on interpretation of experiences. On one hand, we have so much knowledge available in the information age, but how much do we really know? This is partly a matter of depth of knowledge and how we make sense of all the history of knowledge. Are we the ones with ultimate knowledge; or are we left with the uncertainty, which Wittgenstein described?
I would add that we have the information available through the internet. But, we could question how the person can understand this. How does quantity of information correspond to quality of knowledge, especially in the nature of understanding? What is understanding and, what is insight, as aspects which transcend mere accumulation of information and knowledge? What are the limits of our thinking and understanding, psychologically, and philosophically?
I would add that we have the information available through the internet. But, we could question how the person can understand this. How does quantity of information correspond to quality of knowledge, especially in the nature of understanding? What is understanding and, what is insight, as aspects which transcend mere accumulation of information and knowledge? What are the limits of our thinking and understanding, psychologically, and philosophically?
Comments (67)
1. You have written a post.
2. In English.
3. That appears superficially to make sense.
4. We know how to read and write English.
I wonder if there is a difference between 'what we know' and 'what we really know'? What work is the extra word doing?
Your reply is interesting because I am questioning what we think we know and what we 'really' know, which casts some doubt on apparent knowledge. This is partly my intention because I am coming from the angle in which human beings think that with scientific sense they know so much, and I am wondering how much we really know of 'truth', despite the bombardment of information and 'knowledge'.
If "absolute and indubitable certainty" is what you mean by 'really know' then we know nothing, including whether or not there is a 'we'. But that is an abuse of language, because actually we use the word 'know' in a different way - I could be wrong about this, but as it happens I am not, so I know...
I know that some people have suggested that Socrates claimed to 'know nothing', and I am inclined to think that he knew far more than the average person. However, I think that we have moved into an era of which some speak with uncertainty, but others herald the ideas of science. I am trying to balance all of this because we are in an age of information, but I am sure that there are limitations of our current knowledge.
If that its your project, you have started poorly. Start with the idea that we really do know some things, and then see how far you can extend these things. I think I am quite certain that the world is not flat. Some people believe otherwise, but they are in error.
I am sorry that I have started poorly, and it may be that my thread will not work at all. My point is probably that many think we have such great knowledge in our grasp. I am not denying that, but I think that it is possible to become inflated and not recognize the limitations. We don't even have the knowledge to cope with the problems of our time, such as climate change and the future of needing petroleum, so my own thread is about remarking on limitations. But, it is likely that many on this site will only see the strengths of human rationality, rather than wishing to look at deficits.
I hold a different view and don't think that knowledge features prominently in people's lives. I think most people are content to know that which is helpful in sustaining a livelihood and pursuing some interests or hobbies. The rest of human knowledge is for those who need to use it or care to learn it. I certainly sympathize with this view. (The mistake, as Jack London's Wolf Larsen bemoans, is in ever opening the books) The enlightenment view that everything can be known and that a person can become a Renaissance man with the right reading and tuition is surely gone, except in certain subcultures.
Jack, I wasn't sure if your question was about epistemology - your use of 'we' referring to human beings - or if you meant 'we' as in people generally.
I tend to think of knowledge as being like a hardware store - there are tools and materials crammed in every aisle and I will never need or use more than 1% of what's there.
My initial thinking was about epistemology and how much we really know, but with the implications in people's lives and a veneer of knowledge based on science.
I tend to hold a view that knowledge is tentative and fallibilistic and changing. Some knowledge can be used to create and predict things. As a time limited human being with a job and obligations, attempting to understand the ultimate nature of reality is unnecessary to my experience of life.
I agree with you that in many ways knowledge is about what is useful. I am probably stepping into the realms of the extraordinary because my life experience is really leading me to question the foundation of knowledge as we know it. In some ways, I think that knowledge is socially constructed and is not absolute.
I'm curious as to what you think it would be to "really know" something; how would it differ from what is generally considered to be knowing something?
It's hard to answer that question without getting into semantics of what it means to "know" or to "have knowledge". I'll bypass all these sometimes sophisticated and often cumbersome arguments to say that whatever knowledge is, is gradational.
That is, we know some things "more" or "less", depending on our information on the subject matter, our position in life, our experiences and all these other factors that are extremely difficult to enumerate, because there are so many.
Having said this, I think there is good historical evidence and indeed some simple questions one can ask to find out how much we know. I'll keep coming to physics, not because it is the most important subject - I don't think there is such a thing, - but because our knowledge of it is the best tested knowledge we have. All other knowledge we have in other areas of life pale in comparison to the quality of evidence we have in physics.
So ask a simple question: "what is gravity?", "what is a particle?", "what is magnetism?". The answers given are only the effects we can perceive of the phenomena. As to what these things are, we don't know.
Now go up in complexity to chemistry, biology all the way up to psychology. We multiply particles by billions. Minds enter the fray as do complex emotions. This complexity, if you stop and think about it, is truly mind-boggling. As the saying goes, if our knowledge is limited - as it is - our ignorance is infinite.
Isn't all of human knowledge derived from human perspectives and experience? So I'm not sure how it can be anything but tentative, constructed and far from absolute. I'm not even sure what absolute knowledge would mean - can you provide an example? Are you heading towards transcendence and such? Glimmerings of higher consciousness? You'd need to establish that belief in such a thing is warranted.
Yes, we approach and try to surround these events thanks to science.
Quantum gravity remains elusive because it is a universal effect and so it cannot be renormalized such as was done with the electromagnetic in QED.
The electric and the magnetic transition one into the other and back, and so forth, as a self-generating wave. An elementary particle is known to be the certain stable energy quanta of its quantum field.
We know in general that more and more complexity emerges from the simpler and simpler from past to future.
Without science I can approach and try to surround these events too. So can my dog.
My cat decided that a static discharge was a pain and so growled at the person who did it ever since.
But what if the vague notion of the 'absolute' is one more social construction? It sounds like God, and perhaps the vague idea of knowledge-beyond-utility or knowledge-beyond-social-construction serves the same purpose. A cynic might call it a philosopher's self-flattery. It's tinged with unworldliness. Those who build and run the machines of the world don't 'really' know anything. But (they might answer, if they could find the time and cared to join in a questionable game) it seems that philosophers don't 'really' know what it means to 'really' know something.
I agree with a point I think you are trying to make, but still: what kind of knowledge beyond the usual, practical stuff do you (or others) have in mind in the first place? What form would an acceptable answer have?
"[G]ravity, also called gravitation, in mechanics, the universal force of attraction acting between all matter." https://www.britannica.com/science/gravity-physics
So then we can ask what 'force' means and so on. What anchors this network of words if not our work in the world? Is there a vague longing for something more than 'knowing' how to build a bridge, set a broken bone, etc.?
Gravity is not an inertial force like electromagnetism or the color and hypercolor charge. It is the varying metric of 4D spacetime. Maybe the three mentioned forces are associated with a varying metric too (of a curled up space) but this is questionable. The associated gauge particles are spin 1 particles, contrary to spin 2 gravitons taking care of the varying metric of large 4D spacetime. The effect of the three base forces is what is actually felt as force. Gravity alone not.
It would be interesting to be able to have knowledge of the actual thing or phenomena that produces these effects in us, that is, what grounds the effects that we perceive as laws of nature or even ordinary perception.
There was a time in which this was the aim of science, roughly Descartes' time up until Newton. The Universe was comprehended as a universal machine - like a giant clock - if you can build it, you can understand it. It appears to be our innate way of understanding our given common sense world.
But Newton, to his own astonishment and disappointment, proved the world does not work mechanically.
Thus science was forced to reduce it aims: from understanding the world to understanding theories of the world. That type of knowledge Descartes and others wanted, would be nice to be able to access. But is beyond our comprehension. Chomsky and E.A. Burtt speak about this in interesting ways.
Yes. And it many ways, it's counterintuitive. The most familiar things to us, say an ordinary tree or a slug or a flower are immediate percepts. Yet our knowledge of them - what we can say about them in depth - is very, very little.
Yet when we go "down" to the uber-microscopic level, we have all these fancy theories, which are very hard and only a few people can comprehend them.
I think you are missing my point. Consider my question: what kind of knowledge beyond the usual, practical stuff do you (or others) have in mind in the first place? What form would an acceptable answer have?
I ask because the talk of 'really' knowing gestures toward something vague and unworldly. The best way that I can see to figure out what we are talking about is to look at what we do while we are talking as we talk. For instance, certainty is manifest in (or simply 'is'?) carefree, confident action. Knowledge is manifest in (or 'is') the control and prediction of one's environment. So what is the 'real' gravity or magnetism 'under' our current successful application? Maybe the 'thing' isn't 'under' the phenomena like a blanket but more like a useful pattern we find in them (and which allows us to see them in a certain light to begin with.)
I confess that I find the idea of the 'actual thing' problematic.
Quoting Manuel
In the above I find (correctly or not) two different ideas. First there's the 'actual thing' (which I can't make sense of, ultimately) and then there's 'you can understand it iff you can build it' (which I agree with.) The first idea expresses the metaphysical itch. The second is more pragmatic. Do you not find some tension between these ideas?
Quoting Manuel
How about the 'reduced' aim of better technology? And perhaps it's only 'beyond our comprehension' in the sense that we don't know what we are even looking for (or, really, I'd say it's a feeling that folks are looking for in metaphysics.)
295 Exabytes = 295 billion gigabytes = 295,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes = [math]2.95 \times 10^{20} bytes[/math]
[quote=BBC]
Mankind's capacity to store the colossal amount of information in the world has been measured by scientists.
The study, published in the journal Science, calculates the amount of data stored in the world by 2007 as 295 exabytes.
That is the equivalent of 1.2 billion average hard drives.
The researchers calculated the figure by estimating the amount of data held on 60 technologies from PCs and and DVDs to paper adverts and books.
"If we were to take all that information and store it in books, we could cover the entire area of the US or China in 13 layers of books," Dr Martin Hilbert of the University of Southern California told the BBC's Science in Action.[/quote]
Mind if I pick your brain on,
1. What is understanding?
2. What's the difference between information and knowledge?
1. Understanding denotes conceptual reflection (i.e. metacognition) by which knowing is distinguished from, and contextualized by, not knowing.
2. Knowledge denotes (A) proven proficiency, (B) accurate description, (C) well-tested explanation or (D) a combination of two or three of kinds of knowing. And information is merely the contents (i.e. disambiguated / aggregated data) of which descriptions consist. In other words, oversimply put, knowledge is form and information is (descriptive) content.
(My "picked brain's" usages, Fool, which might not be dictionary standard.)
My own thinking on knowledge is that it is different from information in the sense of it being about a connection with the information and ideas in some kind of meaningful way. I believe that it is connected with understanding, because it involves being able to make use of what one has learned. Understanding may be something which we think we have, but I am not sure that it is that simple because it is about whether we are able to make use of what we consider to be our knowledge, and apply to the experiences which test our capabilities. In a way, my own view of understanding is related to the concept of insight. I think that it is a kind of deeper level of knowledge based on being able to reflect on the ideas which we have and take them on board to live in a greater conscious and responsible way. I am not sure that I am fully able to live with insightful awareness, but I am seeking to be able to do so. It probably also comes down to various levels of meaning and analysis, ranging from the personal context to thinking in larger, systemic ways.
I think that we probably do have 'stone age brains' in many ways, but I think that the experiences we have, as well as our own philosophical searches, can probably stretch our perception and potential. I do believe that reading and thinking are very valuable but I think that it is our experiences, and probably the hardest ones, which will lead us to develop the greatest knowledge. This does go beyond epistemological reasoning, and it is probably about the inner process of synthesizing the knowledge and reflective self-awareness.
To me, understanding means to become aware of the key elements/components of a(n) subject/issue/problem. As an example, take the debate on abortion. Understanding it, in my opinion, involve a number of related ideas - personhood, religion, feminism, secular ethics, medicine, politics, to name a few - on which the controversy is centered. Recognizing these as key to the question of whether or not to allow termination of pregnancy amounts to understanding in my humble opinion.
I reckon it takes both talent and practice to master this skill and despite a decade as a member of this forum, I still fail to put this into practice - most of the time, I haven't the foggiest idea what's going on.
Quoting 180 Proof
I concur. Knowledge is about form which I take to be pattern; the particulars, information, flow out of it as naturally as water from a working faucet.
Quoting 180 Proof
Your versions are better than the dictionary ones. :up:
Knowledge, sticking to the justified true belief definition, is about entailment between given propositions and others; understanding, though includes knowledge, also requires us to see the broader issues at stake. Information is simply propositional and is neither inferential nor general in the sense we take pains to tease out the fundamental ideas at play.
I don't find a tension in these ideas. But I do have a "metaphysical itch", so that may be why. I could imagine a different intelligent species from us being able to cognize the world in a deeper manner, perhaps perceiving more than we could, in some respects. So I don't see a problem with this idea in principle
Descartes and his contemporaries knew what they were looking for, in that they sought a mechanical explanation for things. It just happens that the world doesn't work like this.
The search for a "deeper truth" is surely an artefact of the human brain and not something that actually exists in the universe. Did the discovery of quantum physics satisfy our need for deeper knowledge? It seems not and yet it is the deepest thinking that we seem to have currently. Neither does it tell us who will win the next election or how long we will live or whether our children will be happy and content in life.
I was just reading your comments and, yes, my question does involve the semantics of what we mean by the idea of 'knowing'. I believe that Kant thought that there were limitations of how much we can really know about metaphysics, apart from by means of intuition and a priori logic. Jung made his famous television broadcast, saying that he did not believe in God, but rather , 'I know', based on the direct experience of God in dreams and other personal experiences. However, I am sure that many people would challenge his use of the idea of such knowledge as reliable.
One aspect which I think about is how science gives us findings which are used to build theories, but the theories are interpretations, which may be modified at some point. But, most of all theories are only models, and, thereby, only partial pictures of reality or 'truth'.
I find the discovery of unknown unknowns as being very interesting and that is probably why I am interested in reading and thinking about philosophy. There is also psychology exploring and the question of how well we even know ourselves, let alone know other people, including those close to us.
Jung may know God like I know about the numinous. The phrase is fine and in ordinary conversation is not terribly complicated to speak like this. After all, we have to speak with each other in this world. But when you begin questioning what does knowing God consist of, complications arise very quickly.
It's a bit different when you say I know my favorite colour or my favorite song. That's ok. It involves in essence recognizing that such a phenomena or qualia are the ones you are most attracted to. What does this amount to? I'm not sure.
I agree, our grasp on reality is tenuous and constantly subject to revision of one kind or another. We are blessed that we are able to have theories at all. There's no obvious reason why any creature should have the capacity for explicit knowledge, much less theories about the world.
Kant proposed that our minds impose empirical limits a priori on our concepts and therefore that non-empirical speculations (i.e. metaphysical ideas) cannot be known by us but only believed as matters of faith (e.g. "God, freedom, immortality"). Read Kant's Prolegomena of Any Future Metaphysics.
I find Kant a bit heavy to read. I went through a period of reading his writings when I was a teenager. I read some of writing by him a year ago but I found it a bit of a struggle and, generally, find it easier to read what others have written about him, but I guess that it is probably best to go to the original texts, and, perhaps, it would be worth me reading his, 'Prolegomena of Any Future Metaphysics'.
Really, it is amazing just how much people do know. We are especially lucky being in the information age and having so much available for us, ranging from the internet and e-books. We are also able to look back on the ideas of so many different eras and cultures. But, of course, each of us has our limitations and we have to be selective. There is only so much one can read. I often think that there is so much importance literature and philosophy that it would almost require a few lifetimes to read it all. I guess that most people specialize and this does mean that certain areas are focused upon and others left out almost entirely.
I think for Kant, contra Spinoza, intuition is not a source of knowledge, and a priori logic tells us only about what must be the case regarding human experience.
So, he would also reject any claim to know there is a God on the basis of "direct experience of God in dreams and other personal experiences". Remember that Kant's central project was to establish the limits of (pure) reason to make way for faith.
I agree with you that scientific theories are models. As they say 'the map is not the territory'.
Descartes already complained about it back in his time, that no one would be able to finish reading all the books being published. If you strained yourself or were gifted, you could read most important work in science (including psychology, sociology, medicine), etc. This probably stopped being true by the mid 19th century.
Perhaps Russell was that last person able to master most topics and try to form a synthesis. I think Chomsky, may be the last one, though even he isn't as gifted as Russell was in terms of mathematics, not in terms of anything else.
In any case, yeah. The best one can do is to find a field or two you love or something like that. I like to read experts on specific fields, saving myself the work of several lifetimes by reading, say, 20-30 books as opposed to thousands. Whatever works for you.
And much knowledge is innate, in ways we cannot comprehend. This is a crucial aspect in knowledge, not emphasized nearly enough.
For me the issue is: why would the other species be seeing 'deeper' into reality? Maybe they have another sense organ, a bigger brain. I grant that they'll have a more adaptive/complex understanding. If that's all deeper means, then I withdraw my objection. For me the issue is the 'really' in the 'really know.' Or we don't 'really' know what X is despite being able to deal with X. I'm saying that this vague, hidden surplus is suspicious to me, as if it's feeling masquerading as thought.
Hmm. It's a subtle distinction you're making, I think. I mostly have in mind the first option, that of another creature having a more complex or maybe even comprehensive understanding of some aspects of reality such that we'd have no issues.
However, a part of it is quasi-Kantian, in the sense of dealing with X without knowing what X encompasses in its totality. Perhaps the things-in-themselves/phenomenon distinction would be formulated differently: instead of saying we know nothing about things-in-themselves, I'd say we know extremely little about it.
Another creature would perhaps know a bit more.
But I'm attracted to the idea that there is a grounding of the effects in nature that are non-representational in nature, which we can't access. A bit like trying to understand how the brain works by thinking about it.
So I entirely concede that I may be masquerading here, at least in part.
I like the idea (which I can also make more sense of) that reality may just be too complex for us to model, that there are complicated patterns we'll miss.
What you mention above reminds me of the blindspot on the retina. Or the guy who can't find the glasses he's wearing.
QM constitutes a theory. 'Many-worlds' or 'hidden variables' or 'collapse of the wavefunction by observation' are interpretations of QM. In other words: a theory (science) is a good explanation from which unique predictions can be made and tested; an interpretation (philosophy), on the other hand, derives from a theory what it presupposes about reality or the conditions which make some theory possible. (Read K. Popper or P. Feyerabend or D. Deutsch.)
Oh I agree Kant's main works are a tedious slog at best. I recommend the Prolegomena ... because it's an uncharacteristically readable summary of the Critique of Pure Reason which he wrote in order to sell the CPR to philosophers and students who were put off by Kant's dry prolix obscure style. No doubt Hegel would be even more opaque decades later.
That would be the idea. And maybe nature works this way.
Or maybe nature is too sophisticated for us as you say, which would make us agree on the main point if differing in our specific formulations.
I am definitely not opposed to theories and we need to develop them as working knowledge; but I it is all about different competing descriptions, ranging from the scientific accounts to metaphorical ways of viewing. I have downloaded a book by Popper, so I will try to read it.
But, one aspect of the development of knowledge is fitting all the different ideas together. Many of the well known philosophers sought to do this within the development of their own unique systematic perspectives. I also wonder about systems views because it may be that we are in the position of needing to juggle all the various specialist disciplines, ranging from quantum physics, neuroscience and the social sciences. I believe that we are in the position of needing to juggle all the different, multidisciplinary aspects of knowledge together in a synthetic way, with the logic and analytical scope offered through philosophical methods and ways of thinking critically.
I think that Russell did a great job and we should follow his example. I think that it is a delicate balance between focusing on the specifics of specialised knowledge and seeing the larger perspective. It is about seeing from more than one angle, the details and from a much wider perspective. It is a task in itself, but, of course, it involves our own subjective experiences and reading and thinking with a view to more objective frames of reference.
I think that the use of intuition alongside rationality is complex in the mapping of the widest perspective of our knowledge. In building of our models, I am inclined to believe that what is most important is incorporating the widest possible perspective rather focusing on specific facts, in order to build up a picture which is intricate and not based on the specific focus in a way which involves a narrowing of vision, or tunnel perspective. It may involve zooming in and out of specific ways of thinking and being able to juxtapose various ways of framing questions and answers.
I think that you make an important point about blindspots. One model which I am aware of is Johari' s model , which involves various aspects of which we may be conscious of certain aspects about ourselves, and how feedback can increase our own knowledge about ourselves . I think self knowledge and awareness are an important aspect as a starting point for further and deeper knowledge of everything else. Indeed, our own blindspots, and understanding of them, may be an essential part of finding greater depth of knowledge.
Yes. I mean, biology alone and I mean a specific subfield of it, would take a lifetime. Similar to many disciplines by now. So if we do want to speculate reasonably well, we must attempt to find sources which we think are reliable.
And risk ridicule. Or one can take philosophy as a matter of specializing in X or Y's thought on issues. Notice that today, there are very few figures (if any) which are considered giants in the field. Maybe people like Quine, Strawson and Kripke could be considered important.
But I don't think they had the breadth of the classical pragmatists, who lived only a few decades before these.
It's a bit depressing.
I try not to get depressed by all that we could strive to know. We live in the context of some appearing as 'experts'. Even within philosophy there are hierarchies, ranging from popular views and those who are ranked as being important. It seems to me to be a complex mixture of what we need to know to live meaningfully and, also, about the best and most accurate knowledge required to forward the human race in the complex circumstances of our times.
Quoting Manuel
:up:
I am sorry if I have lost you, and, sometimes, I think that I lose myself, trying to make sense of so much information and translating it into knowledge. I am aware that there is a thread on what is fact, which is probably considered to be far better than my own thread.
However, I come from the perspective of thinking about building systems of knowledge, but, perhaps, such a way of thinking is not relevant in philosophy any longer, or only on a personal level. Perhaps, philosophy of the future will only be concerned with outer reality and, the inner aspects of experience will just be seen as aspects of psychology and, outside the scope of philosophy entirely.
Well, as Freddy says ...
[quote=Twilight of the Idols]I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.[/quote]
To my mind, as I've said before elsewhere, philosophy is not theoretical, does not produce knowledge but instead reasons towards more probative questions and inquiries, proposes only 'interpretations of knowledge' rather than knowledge itself (pace Kant et al) and contemplates speculative ideas (i.e. creates thought-experiments) while exposing, even dis-solving, grammatical / semantic confusions which block discourse or derail dialectics. Philosophy is performative, like e.g. music or theatre or martial arts, not propositional in the way histories or sciences are propositional.
That said, why are you avoiding my questions here –?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/591539 :chin:
Do you think they are relevant (as correctives?) to the thread topic? If not, Jack, why not?
I will try not to avoid your questions, and I will have a look at your link, but, I really don't believe that philosophy can ever be entirely theoretical, because it is so tied up with the real questions of knowledge which impinge on our own sense of meaning directly.
I have just looked at your link and it is to my own thread. I am sure that the thread which I have created has great weaknesses, and I started it with a view to looking at the best scope of knowledge. I am aware that we have a history of thinking about knowledge going back to writers from Plato, Hume and Russell. Obviously, the scientific methods have brought us into a different perspective, with physics and many other aspects of discovery. I am certainly not opposed to science, or the thread on facts on this site, but thinking more of looking at knowledge on a panoramic scale, and how we can integrate it in the best possible way.
Yeah, I agree with all of this. If you want self-knowledge, talk to lots of other people. Even the meaning of the words we use doesn't belong to us. The boundary between us and others is a legal fiction, one might say. The boundary between self and world is a useful evolving convention, and so on.
You seem to be referring to the role of intuition or imagination on the genesis of theories. I have no argument with that, Science is also a creative activity that involves what Peirce referred to as abductive reasoning. I think intuition is closely allied with imagination; we imagine possibilities and we have an intuitive feel for the plausibility of those imagined possibilities. In science we then try to figure out what we would observe if what we feel are the more plausible possibilities we have imagined were in accordance with how things are. When it comes to metaphysical imaginings such prediction and observation is not possible.
I would as well say that our narcicism ensures that we can't handle information well even if it is easily available.
In the metaphysics section I suggested that mind rather destroys information (or realities in a kind of multiverse) than create truth. (see: "Münchhausen's infinity as evidence for immortality")
Thanks for your reply and I do believe that you may be right that mind destroys information. There are so many complex questions which involve aspects of metaphysics. Personally, my own experience is one which ranges from thinking about in all different fields, ranging from anthropology to parapsychology. I believe that we know so much, but there is so much which we do not know fully.
I think that your reply about talking to others is interesting because it raises the question of how much is about self knowledge, and how much is about negotiating meanings of shared knowledge. We could ask how do we work out the basis for working out the most objective and ultimately 'true' basis of knowledge within the subjective and cultural contexts., This is probably is a complex mixture of hermeneutics and epistemology, and lies at the crux of developing accurate and meaningful philosophy perspectives. I do believe that it does involve imagination, rather than simply the understanding of causes within theoretical ways of seeing knowledge.
I definitely believe that intuition has an important role in our construction of knowledge, as well as the widest scope of imagination for being able to explore the basis for what is central for human exploration, including the values central to our whole framework of empirical investigations and interpretation of the findings. I have read some writing by Pierce, which shows that the pragmatic basis of understanding is central in the way we understand and develop specific aspects, and I found his thoughts on religious aspects of knowledge particularly interesting. I think that there are so many possibilities...