Abstract

The Explanatory Model of Scientific Understanding is a deflationary thesis recently advocated by Kareem Khalifa. EMU is committed to two key ideas: all understanding-relevant knowledge is propositional in nature; and the abilities we use to generate understanding are merely our usual logical reasoning skills. In this paper I provide an argument against both ideas, suggesting that scientific understanding requires a significant amount of non-propositional knowledge not captured by logical relations. I use the Inferential Model of Scientific Understanding to reveal how we can better represent what constitutes understanding a scientific event. In particular, this model accounts for not only logical and probabilistic inferences, but also those conceptual associations and categorizations we must make to comprehend an explanation.