Abstract
This paper focuses on two questions: (1) Is understanding intimately bound up with accurately representing the world? (2) Is understanding intimately bound up with downstream abilities? We will argue that the answer to both these questions is “yes”, and for the same reason-both accuracy and ability are important elements of orthogonal evaluative criteria along which understanding can be assessed. More precisely, we will argue that representational-accuracy (of which we assume truth is one kind) and intelligibility (which we will define so as to entail abilities) are good-making features of a state of understanding. Interestingly, both evaluative claims have been defended by philosophers in the literature on understanding as the criterion of evaluation. We argue that proponents of both approaches have important insights and that, drawing on both their own observations and a few novel arguments, we can construct a more complete picture of understanding evaluation. We thus posit the theory of there being Multiple Understanding Dimensions. The main thing to note about our dualism regarding the evaluative criteria of understanding is that it accounts for the intuitions about cases underlying both previously held positions.
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Notes
By “downstream” abilities we mean that which one can do with the understanding, contrasted with that by which one comes to possess it.
Hempel defends this most explicitly in (1965, pp. 248–249).
For our purposes, we do not need a theory of what it means for something to be close to being true. See Oddie (2014) for a discussion of some interesting possibilities.
This terminology is sub-optimal in at least two respects. First, where de Regt defines intelligibility as a property of theories, we treat it as a property of the understanding those theories lead to; this is motivated entirely by the absence of a good word for the property of being ability-conferring-understanding. Our usage is also not to be confused with that of Waskan et al. (2014), who treat intelligibility as a property of explanations that cause understanding.
We suspect that some other putative virtues of understanding—such as mechanism or fecundity—can be captured in terms of the two discussed here, but are certainly open to the possibility that there are others.
In other words, we are positing a one-to-many function between contexts and ordered tuples of values to be placed on each dimension of understanding evaluation, of which we have identified two.
It is less clear how our criticisms apply to de Regt (2009b) than to de Regt (forthcoming). In the former, he does at points seem to suggest that accuracy is at least generally a good thing; if that is right, we take the current section to be a plea to return to an earlier position. That he has jettisoned accuracy entirely is also suggested by de Regt and Gijsbers (forthcoming).
The terms are actually quoted by de Regt from Knuuttila (2009), but we take them to capture his ultimate position.
The development of Copernican astronomy and its relation to simplicity is a complex issue. Kuhn (1957, p. 169) famously argues that the system’s apparent simplicity is an illusion (see also Palter 1970). However, even assuming it is simpler, that does not entail that it is more intelligible. Typical arguments regarding its simplicity (e.g., Wilson 2012) mainly address its metaphysical or mathematical simplicity, which is distinct from its intelligibility and ease of use, particularly by early adherents.
By this we just mean those who produce or believe in hepatoscopy. Perhaps fortunately, there does not seem to be an existent word for this.
We thank an anonymous reviewer for stressing the importance of establishing this point.
For a thorough discussion of the structure of scientific theories, see Winther (2015). Our goal in outlining the features of hepatoscopy theory in our imagined world was to make sure it satisfied the conditions of all of the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic accounts of what makes something a theory.
We again thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out that it is consistent with our view that hepatoscopists in such a world contain some minimal understanding.
As that work has not yet been published, much of what we say here might prove off the mark—however, we do think it can be a useful guide to at least the kind of maneuvers open to de Regt, and what we would say about them.
Of course, if our current theories also are representationally inaccurate, that would be a mark against our current understanding as well. We think that this is a feature of our view, rather than a bug—it would be mere temporal chauvinism to assume that our understanding is unimpeachable. If one imagines a future where we discover that our present theories were inaccurate, we anticipate that we would take this as a mark against our present understanding to precisely the degree of the inaccuracy. To soften this conclusion, notice that our current theories can still have some representational accuracy even if they are not completely true, so they might still score reasonably well along both dimensions of evaluation, even if they do not achieve maximal scores.
A scenario where it is better if one teammate does not score does occur periodically, for example near the end of Super Bowl XLVI.
At least, post-acquisition abilities cannot be a direct measure. They could correlate with abilities involved in understanding acquisition, but they will not on these views directly contribute to understanding’s value. We thank Kareem Khalifa for this point.
For those who are curious, the rules (as stated in Roach et al. 2013, p. 42) are:
-
(1)
Walk randomly until you encounter a grain.
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(2)
If you have a grain, drop it.
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(3)
If you do not have a grain, pick one up.
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(4)
Repeat.
-
(1)
In principle, one could perhaps also make the same move for the super lucky hepatoscopist, for whom it is the case that not only are her predictions correct, but she happens to be situated in a neighborhood of possible worlds where predictions made in nearby worlds would be correct as well. We think the present example, where the link between the representation and the correctness of its predictions is not entirely accidental, is more persuasive.
Khalifa treats de Regt’s “skill condition” and “intelligibility condition” separately; however, as intelligibility is defined at least in large part by what one can do with a theory, we take the latter (at least in our expanded formulation) to be an instance of the former.
At least, the earlier work we have reviewed here. Space requires us to gloss over several other pieces e.g. Khalifa (2011), and the various subtleties they entail. Since our end point will be a general sympathy for his latest formulation, our difficulties with all earlier formulations are less critical to our project.
Moreover, we would argue that Newton’s explanation was actually better than phlogiston-theorists’ along both axes of evaluation since, given how relatively flat nearby space is and how relatively slow nearby objects move, it in many respects still paints a reasonable representational picture of the universe (note that representational accuracy can obtain even in the absence of strict truth). Deciding this contentious point however is well beyond the scope of this paper. For one discussion of what is at issue, see Couvalis (1997, Chap. 4), or de Regt and Gijsbers (forthcoming).
Note that even the constructive empiricism of Van Fraassen (1980)—which says that scientific theories aim at empirical adequacy rather than truth—still places importance on representational accuracy. While posits of theoretical unobservables might not need be accurate in the traditional sense, the goodness of claims about observable phenomena will still require representational accuracy.
Actually there might be such a link, per Barański et al. (2014), but it seems safe to say that most people who assume organic food is healthier are not staying up-to-date on the cutting edge of the debate.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Henk de Regt for comments on this draft, Tania Lombrozo for her continued support, Kareem Khalifa for clarification regarding his views and comments on a draft, Don Hubin for a particularly poignant question regarding Copernican astronomers, Soazig Le Bihan for invaluable conversation, helpful referee comments, and the John Templeton Foundation Varieties of Understanding grant and its administrators for funding the present research.
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Wilkenfeld, D.A. MUDdy understanding. Synthese 194, 1273–1293 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0992-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0992-x