Abstract
In debates about the nature of scientific explanation, one theme repeatedly arises: that explanation is about providing understanding. However, the concept of understanding has only recently been explored in any depth, and this paper attempts to introduce a useful concept of understanding to that literature and explore it. Understanding is a higher level cognition, the recognition of connections between various pieces of knowledge. This conception can be brought to bear on the conceptual issues that have thus far been unclear in the literature. Though this notion of understanding is broad, explaining various concepts of explanation, it is robust enough to underwrite an objective and useful notion of explanation.
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Notes
Though I think that understanding is a type of knowledge, the definition of understanding I offer does not depend on that status, and most conclusions reached in this paper could be adapted without detriment if understanding were not a form of knowledge but a distinct, knowledge-like, epistemological achievement.
Truth as a necessary condition for scientific explanation seems to be implicitly or explicitly shared by many authors writing on scientific explanation.
In this paper, I have maintained a neutral position with regards to the nature of knowledge itself. For the most part, I have treated knowledge as propositional knowledge, but I think that this view of understanding is compatible with alternative non-propositional theories of knowledge. Indeed, some philosophers have argued that understanding is non-propositional (see Zagzebski (2001)). I do not think this distinguishes understanding from knowledge, it just highlights the possible distinction between propositional and non-propositional knowledge, which involves a separate debate, but one which does not directly affect the argument presented here.
See Gopnik (1998, p. 102), who argues that “explanation is to cognition as orgasm is to reproduction.” What motivates children and scientists to “experiment” and expend energy to develop and reorganize theories is the payoff, not in terms of long term goals of survival, but the “distinctive phenomenology of explanation.” The search for explanation is prompted by the “hmm” and the success rewarded by the “aha”.
I do not want to challenge Lipton’s intuitions here, but I could imagine equally well-considered intuitions on the other side—e.g., that the thought experiment is explanatory. And I suspect there is a small but meaningful slippage in language from understanding the necessity of the phenomenon to explaining the phenomenon itself. If those are made consistent, the discrepancy might disappear. I do not think this is any easy question to answer, since it depends a great deal on intuitions about what is and is not an explanation and understanding.
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Van Camp, W. Explaining understanding (or understanding explanation). Euro Jnl Phil Sci 4, 95–114 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-013-0077-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-013-0077-y