Semantic Delegation: Understanding Concepts with a Little Help from our Friends

Even if concepts are the basic building blocks of private thoughts, not only do most of our mental representations areacquired from others, but we also routinely rely on experts in many knowledge domains. Evidence suggests that in many ofthese situations people believe they know what in fact is known by someone else instead. In this contribution, we explore howtrust and delegation of semantic expertise influence the way in which concepts are represented and ask whether it is possibleto actually ground one’s understanding via the understanding of others. We conclude by deriving some implications for thedebate over understanding in contemporary AI systems.