The research project, “Understanding: Between Contents and Phenomena”, is funded by the University of Zürich until to December 2025 and by an SNSF Starting Grant from January 2026.

This project aims to offer a novel and unified approach to the relationship between our understanding of linguistic representations and our understanding of non-linguistic phenomena, as mediated by representations. One of the project’s main objectives is to show that the manner in which representations, such as explanations, must be grasped to achieve understanding hinges on the nature of the phenomena that these representations purport to depict. Specifically, the nature of the cognitive engagement with representations required to understand empirical phenomena differs significantly from that required to understand normative phenomena, such as moral phenomena.