Don’t get it wrong! On understanding and its negative phenomena

Synthese 203 (48):1-33 (2024)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This paper studies the epistemic failures to reach understanding in relation to scientific explanations. We make a distinction between genuine understanding and its negative phenomena—lack of understanding and misunderstanding. We define explanatory understanding as inclusive as possible, as the epistemic success that depends on abilities, skills, and correct explanations. This success, we add, is often supplemented by specific positive phenomenology which plays a part in forming epistemic inclinations—tendencies to receive an insight from familiar types of explanations. We define lack of understanding as the epistemic failure that results from a lack of an explanation or from an incorrect one. This can occur due to insufficient abilities and skills, or to fallacious explanatory information. Finally, we characterize misunderstanding by cases where one’s epistemic inclinations do not align with an otherwise correct explanation. We suggest that it leads to potential debates about the explanatory power of different explanatory strategies. We further illustrate this idea with a short meta-philosophical study on the current debates about distinctively mathematical explanations.

Other Versions

No versions found

Similar books and articles

Analytics

Added to PP
2024-02-06

Downloads
285 (#96,656)

6 months
132 (#37,857)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Stefan Sashev Petkov
Beijing Normal University
Haomiao Yu
University of Guelph

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references