Understanding without Justification or Belief

Dellsén, Finnur

doi:10.1111/rati.12134

Cited by 43 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…understanding and belief often go together (because we tend to believe what we accept, and vice versa), there are both intuitive and theoretical reasons to resist any essential involvement of belief in understanding. First, as argued by both Dellsén (2016b) and Wilkenfeld (2016), there are intuitively convincing counterexamples to such a claim. Consider, for example, a particle physicist who (for whatever reason) cannot bring herself to believe that matter really is composed of discrete, submicroscopic entities (i.e.…”

Section: Understanding and Noetic Acceptancementioning

confidence: 99%

Deductive Cogency, understanding, and acceptance

Dellsén

2017

Synthese

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Deductive Cogency holds that the set of propositions towards which one has, or is prepared to have, a given type of propositional attitude should be consistent and closed under logical consequence. While there are many propositional attitudes that are not subject to this requirement, e.g. hoping and imagining, it is at least prima facie plausible that Deductive Cogency applies to the doxastic attitude involved in propositional knowledge, viz. (outright) belief. However, this thought is undermined by the well-known preface paradox, leading a number of philosophers to conclude that Deductive Cogency has at best a very limited role to play in our epistemic lives. I argue here that Deductive Cogency is still an important epistemic requirement, albeit not as a requirement on belief. Instead, building on a distinction between belief and acceptance introduced by Jonathan Cohen and recent developments in the epistemology of understanding, I propose that Deductive Cogency applies to the attitude of treating propositions as given in the context of attempting to understand a given phenomenon. I then argue that this simultaneously accounts for the plausibility of the considerations in favor of Deductive Cogency and avoids the problematic consequences of the preface paradox.

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Section: Understanding and Noetic Acceptancementioning

confidence: 99%

Deductive Cogency, understanding, and acceptance

Dellsén

2017

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“…Bird () takes understanding to be species of knowledge—knowledge of causes—and argues that the epistemic account can thus accommodate the idea that increasing understanding provides an especially powerful way in which science can progress (see also Bangu, ). Although Bird's view about the connection between understanding and knowledge is shared by some who have written on understanding specifically (e.g., Grimm, ; Sliwa, ), there are several arguments for disassociating knowledge and understanding (e.g., Dellsén, ; Hills, ; Kvanvig, ; Wilkenfeld, ).…”

Section: Progress and Understandingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific progress: Four accounts

Dellsén

2018

Philosophy Compass

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Scientists are constantly making observations, carrying out experiments, and analyzing empirical data. Meanwhile, scientific theories are routinely being adopted, revised, discarded, and replaced. But when are such changes to the content of science improvements on what came before? This is the question of scientific progress. One answer is that progress occurs when scientific theories "get closer to the truth," i.e., increase their degree of truthlikeness. A second answer is that progress consists in increasing theories' effectiveness for solving scientific problems. A third answer is that progress occurs when the stock of scientific knowledge accumulates. A fourth and final answer is that scientific progress consists in increasing scientific understanding, i.e., the capacity to correctly explain and reliably predict relevant phenomena. This paper compares and contrasts these four accounts of scientific progress, considers some of the most prominent arguments for and against each account, and briefly explores connections to different forms of scientific realism.

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“…Finnur Dellsén (2016a) proposes an original alternative approach to scientific progress which he calls the noetic approach. 1 According to the noetic approach, scientific progress consists in increasing understanding.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dellsén (2016a) objects that increasing knowledge is neither necessary nor sufficient for scientific progress, and argues that scientific progress rather consists in increasing understanding. Dellsén also contends that unlike Bird's view, his view can account for the scientific practices of using idealizations and of choosing simple theories over complex ones.…”

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confidence: 99%

Does Scientific Progress Consist in Increasing Knowledge or Understanding?

Park

2017

J Gen Philos Sci

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Bird (2007) argues that scientific progress consists in increasing knowledge. Dellsén (2016a) objects that increasing knowledge is neither necessary nor sufficient for scientific progress, and argues that scientific progress rather consists in increasing understanding. Dellsén also contends that unlike Bird's view, his view can account for the scientific practices of using idealizations and of choosing simple theories over complex ones. I argue that Dellsén's criticisms against Bird's view fail, and that increasing understanding cannot account for scientific progress, if acceptance, as opposed to belief, is required for scientific understanding.

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Understanding without Justification or Belief

Abstract: In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest among epistemologists in the nature of understanding, with some authors arguing that understanding

Cited by 43 publications

References 22 publications

Deductive Cogency, understanding, and acceptance

Deductive Cogency, understanding, and acceptance

Scientific progress: Four accounts

Does Scientific Progress Consist in Increasing Knowledge or Understanding?

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