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  1. Peter Achinstein (1971). Law and Explanation: An Essay in the Philosophy of Science. London,Oxford University Press.
  2. Eric Barnes (1992). Explanatory Unification and Scientific Understanding. PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992:3 - 12.
    The theory of explanatory unification was first proposed by Friedman (1974) and developed by Kitcher (1981, 1989). The primary motivation for this theory, it seems to me, is the argument that this account of explanation is the only account that correctly describes the genesis of scientific understanding. Despite the apparent plausibility of Friedman's argument to this effect, however, I argue here that the unificationist thesis of understanding is false. The theory of explanatory unification as articulated by Friedman and Kitcher thus (...)
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  3. Kelly Becker (2012). Basic Knowledge and Easy Understanding. Acta Analytica 27 (2):145-161.
    Reliabilism is a theory that countenances basic knowledge, that is, knowledge from a reliable source, without requiring that the agent knows the source is reliable. Critics (especially Cohen 2002 ) have argued that such theories generate all-too-easy, intuitively implausible cases of higher-order knowledge based on inference from basic knowledge. For present purposes, the criticism might be recast as claiming that reliabilism implausibly generates cases of understanding from brute, basic knowledge. I argue that the easy knowledge (or easy understanding) criticism rests (...)
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  4. Ruth Berger (1998). Understanding Science: Why Causes Are Not Enough. Philosophy of Science 65 (2):306-332.
    This paper is an empirical critique of causal accounts of scientific explanation. Drawing on explanations which rely on nonlinear dynamical modeling, I argue that the requirement of causal relevance is both too strong and too weak to be constitutive of scientific explanation. In addition, causal accounts obscure how the process of mathematical modeling produces explanatory information. I advance three arguments for the inadequacy of causal accounts. First, I argue that explanatorily relevant information is not always information about causes, even in (...)
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  5. Berit Brogaard, I Know. Therefore, I Understand.
    The so-called Meno problem is one of the recent trendy topics in epistemology.1 In a nutshell, the Meno problem is that of explaining why we value knowledge more than true belief. In his recent book The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding Jon Kvanvig argues quite convincingly that no existing account of knowledge can accommodate the intuition that the value of knowledge exceeds the value of true belief.
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  6. J. Adam Carter & Emma C. Gordon (forthcoming). On Pritchard, Objectual Understanding and the Value Problem. American Philosophical Quarterly.
    Duncan Pritchard (2008, 2009, 2010, forthcoming) has argued for an elegant solution to what have been called the value problems for knowledge at the forefront of recent literature on epistemic value. As Pritchard sees it, these problems dissolve once it is recognized that that it is understanding-why, not knowledge, that bears the distinctive epistemic value often (mistakenly) attributed to knowledge. A key element of Pritchard’s revisionist argument is the claim that understanding-why always involves what he calls strong cognitive achievement—viz., cognitive (...)
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  7. Neil Cooper (1995). The Epistemology of Understanding. Inquiry 38 (3):205 – 215.
    My principal aims are to question the conventional wisdom on two points. First, it argues that cognitive understanding is neither identical with nor reducible to knowledge?why, and that it is a multiform capacity which adds value to knowledge, true belief, and human creative activity. Essential to understanding is epistemic ascent, the rising above bare knowledge, to assess, appraise, compare, contrast, emphasize, connect and so on. Different modes of understanding are distinguished and an accompanying vocabulary of mode?indicators (expressing Fregean ?colour'). Second, (...)
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  8. James T. Cushing (1991). Quantum Theory and Explanatory Discourse: Endgame for Understanding? Philosophy of Science 58 (3):337-358.
    Empirical adequacy, formal explanation and understanding are distinct goals of science. While no a priori criterion for understanding should be laid down, there may be inherent limitations on the way we are able to understand explanations of physical phenomena. I examine several recent contributions to the exercise of fashioning an explanatory discourse to mold the formal explanation provided by quantum mechanics to our modes of understanding. The question is whether we are capable of truly understanding (or comprehending) quantum phenomena, as (...)
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  9. Henk W. de Regt (2009). The Epistemic Value of Understanding. Philosophy of Science 76 (5).
    This article analyzes the epistemic value of understanding and offers an account of the role of understanding in science. First, I discuss the objectivist view of the relation between explanation and understanding, defended by Carl Hempel and J. D. Trout. I challenge this view by arguing that pragmatic aspects of explanation are crucial for achieving the epistemic aims of science. Subsequently, I present an analysis of these pragmatic aspects in terms of ‘intelligibility’ and a contextual account of scientific understanding based (...)
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  10. Henk W. de Regt (2004). Discussion Note: Making Sense of Understanding. Philosophy of Science 71 (1):98-109.
    J.D. Trout (2002) presents a challenge to all theorists of scientific explanation who appeal to the notion of understanding. Trout denounces understanding as irrelevant, if not dangerous, from an epistemic perspective and he endorses a radically objectivist view of explanation instead. In this note I accept Trout's challenge. I criticize his argument and defend a non-objectivist, pragmatic conception of understanding that is epistemically relevant.
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  11. Henk W. de Regt (1999). Ludwig Boltzmann's Bildtheorie and Scientific Understanding. Synthese 119 (1-2):113-134.
    Boltzmann’s Bildtheorie, which asserts that scientific theories are ‘mental pictures’ having at best a partial similarity to reality, was a core element of his philosophy of science. The aim of this article is to draw attention to a neglected aspect of it, namely its significance for the issue of scientific explanation and understanding, regarded by Boltzmann as central goals of science. I argue that, in addition to being an epistemological view of the interpretation of scientific theories Boltzmann’s Bildtheorie has implications (...)
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  12. Dennis Dieks & Henk W. de Regt (1998). Reduction and Understanding. Foundations of Science 3 (1):45-59.
    Reductionism, in the sense of the doctrine that theories on different levels of reality should exhibit strict and general relations of deducibility, faces well-known difficulties. Nevertheless, the idea that deeper layers of reality are responsible for what happens at higher levels is well-entrenched in scientific practice. We argue that the intuition behind this idea is adequately captured by the notion of supervenience: the physical state of the fundamental physical layers fixes the states of the higher levels. Supervenience is weaker than (...)
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  13. Matti Eklund (2007). Meaning-Constitutivity. Inquiry 50 (6):559-574.
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  14. Catherine Elgin (2007). Understanding and the Facts. Philosophical Studies 132 (1):33 - 42.
    If understanding is factive, the propositions that express an understanding are true. I argue that a factive conception of understanding is unduly restrictive. It neither reflects our practices in ascribing understanding nor does justice to contemporary science. For science uses idealizations and models that do not mirror the facts. Strictly speaking, they are false. By appeal to exemplification, I devise a more generous, flexible conception of understanding that accommodates science, reflects our practices, and shows a sufficient but not slavish sensitivity (...)
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  15. Catherine Z. Elgin (1993). Understanding: Art and Science. Synthese 95 (1):196-208.
    The arts and the sciences perform many of the same cognitive functions, both serving to advance understanding. This paper explores some of the ways exemplification operates in the two fields. Both scientific experiments and works of art highlight, underscore, display, or convey some of their own features. They thereby focus attention on them, and make them available for examination and projection. Thus, the Michelson-Morley experiment exemplifies the constancy of the speed of light. Jackson Pollock'sNumber One exemplifies the viscosity of paint. (...)
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  16. Elizabeth Fricker (2003). Understanding and Knowledge of What is Said. In Alex Barber (ed.), Epistemology of Language. Oxford University Press.
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  17. Michael Friedman (1974). Explanation and Scientific Understanding. Journal of Philosophy 71 (1):5-19.
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  18. Emma C. Gordon, The Key Characteristics of Understanding and the Nature of its Value.
    I begin the analysis of understanding by considering the initially plausible claim that understanding is a species of knowledge. In order to do this, I investigate a variety of ways in which the two epistemic states might come apart, and see whether the notion that they often do so is plausible. I progress to examine a number of the most common and plausible hallmark features of understanding discussed in the current literature, and go on to try and clarify the different (...)
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  19. Stephen R. Grimm (2008). Explanatory Inquiry and the Need for Explanation. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (3):481-497.
    Explanatory inquiry characteristically begins with a certain puzzlement about the world. But why do certain situations elicit our puzzlement (or curiosity) while others leave us, in some epistemically relevant sense, cold? Moreover, what exactly is involved in the move from a state of puzzlement to a state where one's puzzlement is satisfied? In this paper I try to answer both of these questions. I also suggest ways in which our account of scientific rationality might benefit from having a better (...)
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  20. Stephen Grimm (forthcoming). Understanding. In D. Pritchard S. Berneker (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. Routledge.
    This entry offers a critical overview of the contemporary literature on understanding, especially in epistemology and the philosophy of science.
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  21. Stephen Grimm (2011). On Intellectualism in Epistemology. Mind 120 (479):705-733.
    According to ‘orthodox’ epistemology, it has recently been said, whether or not a true belief amounts to knowledge depends exclusively on truth-related factors: for example, on whether the true belief was formed in a reliable way, or was supported by good evidence, and so on. Jason Stanley refers to this as the ‘intellectualist’ component of orthodox epistemology, and Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath describe it as orthodox epistemology’s commitment to a ‘purely epistemic’ account of knowledge — that is, an account (...)
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  22. Stephen R. Grimm (2006). Is Understanding a Species of Knowledge? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (3):515-535.
    Among philosophers of science there seems to be a general consensus that understanding represents a species of knowledge, but virtually every major epistemologist who has thought seriously about understanding has come to deny this claim. Against this prevailing tide in epistemology, I argue that understanding is, in fact, a species of knowledge: just like knowledge, for example, understanding is not transparent and can be Gettiered. I then consider how the psychological act of "grasping" that seems to be characteristic of understanding (...)
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  23. Steven A. Gross (2005). Linguistic Understanding and Belief. Mind 114 (453):61-66.
    Comment on Dean Pettit, who replies in same issue.
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  24. Allan Hazlett, Limning Structure as an Epistemic Goal.
    I define a property of beliefs - that of being structure-limning, or of “carving nature at the joints” - and propose three epistemological applications: (i) that limning structure has pro tanto epistemic value, (ii) that a species of understanding can be defined by appeal to the notion of limning structure, and (iii) that a distinction between important and trivial truths can be articulated by appeal to the notion of limning structure.
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  25. C. A. Hooker (1980). Explanation, Generality and Understanding. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 58 (3):284 – 290.
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  26. David Hunter (1997). Understanding, Justification and the a Priori. Philosophical Studies 87 (2):119-141.
    What I wish to consider here is how understanding something is related to the justification of beliefs about what it means. Suppose, for instance, that S understands the name “Clinton” and has a justified belief that it names Clinton. How is S’s understanding related to that belief’s justification? Or suppose that S understands the sentence “Clinton is President”, or Jones’ assertive utterance of it, and has a justified belief that that sentence expresses the proposition that Clinton is President, or that (...)
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  27. K. Khalifa (2013). The Role of Explanation in Understanding. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (1):161-187.
    Peter Lipton has argued that understanding can exist in the absence of explanation. We argue that this does not denigrate explanation's importance to understanding. Specifically, we show that all of Lipton's examples are consistent with the idea that explanation is the ideal of understanding, i.e. other modes of understanding ought to be assessed by how well they replicate the understanding provided by a good and correct explanation. We defend this idea by showing that for all of Lipton's examples of non-explanatory (...)
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  28. Kareem Khalifa (2013). Understanding, Grasping, and Luck. Episteme 10 (1):1-17.
    Recently, it has been debated as to whether understanding is a species of explanatory knowledge. Those who deny this claim frequently argue that understanding, unlike knowledge, can be lucky. In this paper I argue that current arguments do not support this alleged compatibility between understanding and epistemic luck. First, I argue that understanding requires reliable explanatory evaluation, yet the putative examples of lucky understanding underspecify the extent to which subjects possess this ability. In the course of defending this claim, I (...)
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  29. Kareem Khalifa (2013). Is Understanding Explanatory or Objectual? Synthese 190 (6):1153-1171.
    Jonathan Kvanvig has argued that “objectual” understanding, i.e. the understanding we have of a large body of information, cannot be reduced to explanatory concepts. In this paper, I show that Kvanvig fails to establish this point, and then propose a framework for reducing objectual understanding to explanatory understanding.
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  30. Kareem Khalifa (2012). Inaugurating Understanding or Repackaging Explanation? Philosophy of Science 79 (1):15-37.
    Recently, several authors have argued that scientific understanding should be a new topic of philosophical research. In this article, I argue that the three most developed accounts of understanding--Grimm's, de Regt's, and de Regt and Dieks's--can be replaced by earlier accounts of scientific explanation without loss. Indeed, in some cases, such replacements have clear benefits.
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  31. Dirk Koppelberg (1993). Should We Replace Knowledge by Understanding? — A Comment on Elgin and Goodman's Reconception of Epistemology. Synthese 95 (1):119 - 128.
    Goodman and Elgin have recommended a reconception of philosophy. A central part of their recommendation is to replace knowledge by understanding. According to Elgin, some important internalist and externalist theories of knowledge favor a sort of undesirable cognitive minimalism. Against Elgin I try to show how the challenge of cognitive minimalism can be met. Goodman and Elgin claim that defeat and confusion are built into the concept of knowledge. They demand either its revision or its replacement or its supplement. I (...)
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  32. Peter Kosso (2007). Scientific Understanding. Foundations of Science 12 (2).
    Knowledge of many facts does not amount to understanding unless one also has a sense of how the facts fit together. This aspect of coherence among scientific observations and theories is usually overlooked in summaries of scientific method, since the emphasis is on justification and verification rather than on understanding. I argue that the inter-theoretic coherence, as the hallmark of understanding, is an essential and informative component of any accurate description of science.
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  33. Jonathan L. Kvanvig (2012). ``Curiosity and a Response-Dependent Account of the Value of Understanding&Quot. In Timothy Henning & David Schweikard (eds.), Epistemic Virtues.
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  34. Jonathan L. Kvanvig (2011). Millar on the Value of Knowledge. Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1):83-99.
    Alan Millar's paper (2011) involves two parts, which I address in order, first taking up the issues concerning the goal of inquiry, and then the issues surrounding the appeal to reflective knowledge. I argue that the upshot of the considerations Millar raises count in favour of a more important role in value-driven epistemology for the notion of understanding and for the notion of epistemic justification, rather than for the notions of knowledge and reflective knowledge.
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  35. Jonathan L. Kvanvig (2009). ``The Value of Understanding&Quot. In Pritchard, Haddock & Millar (eds.), Epistemic Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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  36. Jonathan L. Kvanvig (2003). The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding. Cambridge University Press.
    Epistemology has for a long time focused on the concept of knowledge and tried to answer questions such as whether knowledge is possible and how much of it there is. Missing from this inquiry, however, is a discussion on the value of knowledge. In The Pursuit of Knowledge and the Value of Understanding Jonathan Kvanvig argues that epistemology properly conceived cannot ignore the question of the value of knowledge. He also questions one of the most fundamental assumptions in epistemology, namely (...)
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  37. Peter Lipton, What Good Is an Explanation?
    We are addicted to explanation, constantly asking and answering why-questions. But what does an explanation give us? I will consider some of the possible goods, intrinsic and instrumental, that explanations provide. The name for the intrinsic good of explanation is `understanding', but what is this? In the first part of this paper I will canvass various conceptions of understanding, according to which explanations provide reasons for belief, make familiar, unify, show to be necessary, or give causes. Three general features of (...)
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  38. Guy Longworth (2009). A Plea for Understanding. In Sarah Sawyer (ed.), New Waves in the Philosophy of Language. Palgrave.
  39. Guy Longworth (2009). Some Models of Linguistic Understanding. The Baltic International Yearbook 5.
    I discuss the conjecture that understanding what is said in an utterance is to be modelled as knowing what is said in that utterance. My main aim is to present a number of alter- native models, as a prophylactic against premature acceptance of the conjecture as the only game in town. I also offer preliminary assessments of each of the models, including the propositional knowledge model, in part by considering their respective capacities to sub-serve the transmission of knowledge through testimony. (...)
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  40. Guy Longworth (2008). Comprehending Speech. Philosophical Perspectives 22 (1):339-373.
    What is the epistemological role of speech perception in comprehension? More precisely, what is its role in episodes or states of comprehension able to mediate the communication of knowledge? One answer, developed in recent work by Tyler Burge, has it that its role may be limited to triggering mobilizations of the understanding. I argue that, while there is much to be said for such a view, it should not be accepted. I present an alternative account, on which episodes of comprehension (...)
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  41. Guy Longworth (2008). Linguistic Understanding and Knowledge. Noûs 42 (1):50–79.
    Is linguistic understanding a form of knowledge? I clarify the question and then consider two natural forms a positive answer might take. I argue that, although some recent arguments fail to decide the issue, neither positive answer should be accepted. The aim is not yet to foreclose on the view that linguistic understanding is a form of knowledge, but to develop desiderata on a satisfactory successor to the two natural views rejected here.
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  42. Gurpreet Mahajan (1997). Explanation and Understanding in the Human Sciences. Oxford University Press.
    Which form of explanation is adequate for the humans sciences? Mahajan argues that social reality can be perceived in different ways--hermeneutic understanding, narrative, reason action and causal explanation--and each alters our perception of reality. A new chapter on poststructuralist and postmodern theories brings this important book up-to-date with current thinking.
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  43. Peter T. Manicas (2006). A Realist Philosophy of Social Science: Explanation and Understanding. Cambridge University Press.
    This introduction to the philosophy of social science provides an original conception of the task and nature of social inquiry. Peter Manicas discusses the role of causality seen in the physical sciences and offers a reassessment of the problem of explanation from a realist perspective. He argues that the fundamental goal of theory in both the natural and social sciences is not, contrary to widespread opinion, prediction and control, or the explanation of events (including behaviour). Instead, theory aims to provide (...)
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  44. Aidan McGlynn (2012). Justification as 'Would-Be' Knowledge. Episteme 9 (4):361-376.
    In light of the failure of attempts to analyse knowledge as a species of justified belief, a number of epistemologists have suggested that we should instead understand justification in terms of knowledge. This paper focuses on accounts of justification as a kind of knowledge. According to such accounts a belief is justified just in case any failure to know is due to uncooperative external circumstances. I argue against two recent accounts of this sort due to Alexander Bird and Martin Smith. (...)
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  45. Moti Mizrahi (2012). Idealizations and Scientific Understanding. Philosophical Studies 160 (2):237-252.
    In this paper, I propose that the debate in epistemology concerning the nature and value of understanding can shed light on the role of scientific idealizations in producing scientific understanding. In philosophy of science, the received view seems to be that understanding is a species of knowledge. On this view, understanding is factive just as knowledge is, i.e., if S knows that p, then p is true. Epistemologists, however, distinguish between different kinds of understanding. Among epistemologists, there are those who (...)
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  46. Kevin Morris (2012). A Defense of Lucky Understanding. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (2):357-371.
    It is plausible to think that the epistemic benefit of having an explanation is understanding. My focus in this article is on the extent to which explanatory understanding, perhaps unlike knowledge, is compatible with certain forms of luck—the extent to which one can understand why something is the case when one is lucky to truly believe an explanatorily relevant proposition. I argue, contra Stephen Grimm ([2006]) and Duncan Pritchard ([2008], [2009]), that understanding quite generally is compatible with luckily believing a (...)
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  47. Antigone M. Nounou (2010). Scientific Understanding and Colorful Quarks. Archives International d'Histoire des Sciences 60 (164):155-171.
    Scientific understanding comes in different kinds, and each kind comes in degrees. Two of these kinds are revealed by the examination of a recent episode from the history of physics: the making of the theory of strong interactions. The first of these kinds of understanding is associated with the realization that some mathematical formalism or theory may have a fruitful application to physical phenomena. This is what I call prior understanding. Yet another kind is associated with the development of the (...)
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  48. Andrés Páez, The Epistemic Value of Explanation.
    In this paper I defend the idea that there is a sense in which it is meaningful and useful to talk about objective understanding, and that to characterize that notion it is necessary to formulate an account of explanation that makes reference to the beliefs and epistemic goals of the participants in a cognitive enterprise. Using the framework for belief revision developed by Isaac Levi, I analyze the conditions that information must fulfill to be both potentially explanatory and epistemically (...)
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  49. Christopher Peacocke (2004). The Realm of Reason. Oxford University Press.
    The Realm of Reason develops a new, general theory of what it is for a thinker to be entitled to form a given belief. The theory locates entitlement in the nexus of relations between truth, content, and understanding. Peacocke formulates three principles of rationalism that articulate this conception. The principles imply that all entitlement has a component that is justificationally independent of experience. The resulting position is thus a form of rationalism, generalized to all kinds of content. To show how (...)
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  50. Roger Penrose (1997). On Understanding Understanding. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 11 (1):7 – 20.
    It is argued, by use of specific examples, that mathematical understanding is something which cannot be modelled in terms of entirely computational procedures. Our conception of a natural number (a non-negative integer: 0, 1, 2, 3,…) is something which goes beyond any formulation in terms of computational rules. Our ability to perceive the properties of natural numbers depends upon our awareness, and represents just one of the many ways in which awareness provides an essential ingredient to our ability to understand. (...)
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  51. Dean Pettit (2002). Why Knowledge is Unnecessary for Understanding Language. Mind 111 (443):519-550.
    It is a natural thought that understanding language consists in possessing knowledge—to understand a word is to know what it means. It is also natural to suppose that this knowledge is propositional knowledge—to know what a word means is to know that it means such-and-such. Thus it is prima facie plausible to suppose that understanding a bit of language consists in possessing propositional knowledge of its meaning. I refer to this as the epistemic view of understanding language. The theoretical appeal (...)
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  52. Angela Potochnik (2011). Explanation and Understanding. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 1 (1):29-38.
  53. Vincent G. Potter (1994). On Understanding Understanding: A Philosophy of Knowledge. Fordham University Press.
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  54. Duncan Pritchard (2010). The Nature and Value of Knowledge: Three Investigations. Oxford University Press.
    The value problem -- Unpacking the value problem -- The swamping problem -- fundamental and non-fundamental epistemic goods -- The relevance of epistemic value monism -- Responding to the swamping problem I : the practical response -- Responding to the swamping problem II : the monistic response -- Responding to the swamping problem III : the pluralist response -- Robust virtue epistemology -- Knowledge and achievement -- Interlude : is robust virtue epistemology a reductive theory of knowledge? -- Achievement without (...)
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  55. Henk W. De Regt & Dennis Dieks (2005). A Contextual Approach to Scientific Understanding. Synthese 144 (1):137 - 170.
    Achieving understanding of nature is one of the aims of science. In this paper we offer an analysis of the nature of scientific understanding that accords with actual scientific practice and accommodates the historical diversity of conceptions of understanding. Its core idea is a general criterion for the intelligibility of scientific theories that is essentially contextual: which theories conform to this criterion depends on contextual factors, and can change in the course of time. Our analysis provides a general account of (...)
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  56. Nicholas Rescher (2000). Nature and Understanding: The Metaphysics and Method of Science. Oxford University Press.
    Exploring the central ideas of traditional metaphysics--such as the simplicity of nature, its comprehensibility, or its systematic integrity--this book analyzes looking at such notions from a scientific point of view. It seeks to describe in a clear, accessible manner the metaphysical situation that characterizes the process of inquiry in natural science, aiming to shed light on reality by examining the modus operandi of natural science itself and focusing as much on its findings as on its conceptual and methodological presuppositions. Written (...)
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  57. Wayne Riggs, Insight, Open−Mindedness and Understanding.
    I am interested in epistemic virtues for reasons rather different than most. I do not offer a virtue theory of anything, I don't argue that we can solve various long−standing problems in epistemology by appeal to epistemic virtues, nor am I an opponent of any of these things (though I certainly find some of these projects more plausible than others.) Rather, my interest in the epistemic virtues stems from a long−standing commitment to epistemic value pluralism, and a belief that, until (...)
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  58. Wayne Riggs, Understanding, Knowledge, and the Meno Requirement Wayne D. Riggs.
    Jonathan Kvanvig's book, The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding (Kvanvig, 2003), is a wonderful example of doing epistemology in a style that Kvanvig himself has termed "value−driven epistemology." On this approach, one takes questions about epistemic value to be central to theoretical concerns, including the concern to provide an adequate account of knowledge. This approach yields the demand that theories of knowledge must provide, not just an adequate account of the nature of knowledge, but also an account (...)
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  59. Wayne D. Riggs (2003). ``Understanding `Virtue' and the Virtue of Understanding&Quot. In Michael DePaul & Linda Zagzebski (eds.), Intellectual Virtue: Persepectives From Ethics and Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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  60. Sarah Sawyer (ed.) (2009). New Waves in the Philosophy of Language. Palgrave.
  61. Jason Stanley (1999). Understanding, Context-Relativity, and the Description Theory. Analysis 59 (261):14–18.
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  62. Michael Strevens (forthcoming). No Understanding Without Explanation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A.
    Understanding without explanation? Impossible, or so I will argue – in the case of science, at least. More particularly, I defend in this paper a version of the following simple view concerning the connection between scientific explanation and understanding: scientific understanding is that state produced, and only produced, by grasping a correct explanation. The simple view, I will conclude, ought to be regarded as one part of a bigger picture, in which "understanding why", "understanding that", and "understanding with" are distinguished. (...)
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  63. Michael Strevens (2006). Scientific Explanation. In D. M. Borchert (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, second edition.
    The three cardinal aims of science are prediction, control, and explanation; but the greatest of these is explanation. Also the most inscrutable: prediction aims at truth, and control at happiness, and insofar as we have some independent grasp of these notions, we can evaluate science’s strategies of prediction and control from the outside. Explanation, by contrast, aims at scientific understanding, a good intrinsic to science and therefore something that it seems we can only look to science itself to explicate.
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  64. Charles Taylor (1981). Understanding and Explanation in the Geisteswissenschaften. In S. Holtzman & Christopher M. Leich (eds.), Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule. Routledge.
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  65. Charles Taylor (1980). Understanding in Human Science. The Review of Metaphysics 34 (1):25 - 38.
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  66. J. D. Trout (2007). The Psychology of Scientific Explanation. Philosophy Compass 2 (3):564–591.
    Philosophers agree that scientific explanations aim to produce understanding, and that good ones succeed in this aim. But few seriously consider what understanding is, or what the cues are when we have it. If it is a psychological state or process, describing its specific nature is the job of psychological theorizing. This article examines the role of understanding in scientific explanation. It warns that the seductive, phenomenological sense of understanding is often, but mistakenly, viewed as a cue of genuine understanding. (...)
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  67. J. D. Trout (2002). Scientific Explanation and the Sense of Understanding. Philosophy of Science 69 (2):212-233.
    Scientists and laypeople alike use the sense of understanding that an explanation conveys as a cue to good or correct explanation. Although the occurrence of this sense or feeling of understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient for good explanation, it does drive judgments of the plausibility and, ultimately, the acceptability, of an explanation. This paper presents evidence that the sense of understanding is in part the routine consequence of two well-documented biases in cognitive psychology: overconfidence and hindsight. In light of (...)
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  68. Peter K. Unger (1966). On Experience and the Development of the Understanding. American Philosophical Quarterly 3 (January):48-56.
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  69. G. H. von Wright (1971/2004). Explanation and Understanding. Cornell University Press.
    I Two Traditions. Scientific inquiry, seen in a very broad perspective, may be said to present two main aspects. One is the ascertaining and discovery of ...
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  70. Daniel Whiting (2012). Epistemic Value and Achievement. Ratio 25 (2):216-230.
    Knowledge seems to be a good thing, or at least better than epistemic states that fall short of it, such as true belief. Understanding too seems to be a good thing, perhaps better even than knowledge. In a number of recent publications, Duncan Pritchard tries to account for the value of understanding by claiming that understanding is a cognitive achievement and that achievements in general are valuable. In this paper, I argue that coming to understand something need not be an (...)
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  71. Steven Yalowitz (2002). Individualism, Normativity, and the Epistemology of Understanding. Philosophical Studies 102 (1):43-92.
  72. Linda Zagzebski (2001). Recovering Understanding. In M. Steup (ed.), Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue. Oxford University Press.
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