Is Truth Necessary? A Pragmatic and Deflationary Notion of Understanding
Abstract The notion of understanding has been subjected to intense analysis within studies devoted to the philosophy of science. In recent years, two major accounts have emerged. The first, called veritism, has employed the traditional epistemological concepts of truth and knowledge to analyze the basic characteristics of understanding. By contrast, the second account has dissociated truth from understanding highlighting its pragmatic and contextual components. The aim of the paper will be to argue in favor of the latter account. For this purpose, one of the main pragmatic alternatives that have been proposed in recent years, the theory of Henk de Regt, will be evaluated. It will be shown that this position faces three fundamental difficulties that need to be addressed in order to justify the pragmatic position. In order to address them, an alternative and innovative notion of understanding will be articulated.
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Ankeny, Rachel y Leonelli, Sabina (2020). Model Organisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baumberger, Christoph (2019). Explicating Objectual Understanding: Taking Degrees Seriously. Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 50, 367-388.
Bertolaso, Marta (2016). Philosophy of Cancer. A Dynamic and Relational View. Springer.
Brandom, Robert (1994/2005). Hacerlo explícito. Razonamiento, representación y compromiso discursivo. Barcelona: Herder.
Brandom, Robert (2009). Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Brandom, Robert (2011). Perspectives on Pragmatism. Classical, Recent & Contemporary. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Craver, Carl (2007). Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neurosciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
De Regt, Henk (2009). Understanding and Scientific Explanation. En Henk de Regt, Sabina Leonelli y Kai Eigner (Eds.), Scientific Understanding. Philosophical Perspectives (pp. 21-43). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
De Regt, Henk (2017). Understanding Scientific Understanding. New York: Oxford University Press.
De Regt, Henk y Dieks, Dennis (2005). A Contextual Approach to Scientific Understanding. Synthese, 144, 137-170.
De Regt, Henk y Gijsbers, Victor (2016). How False Theories can Yield Genuine Understanding. En Stephen Grimm, Christoph Baumberger y Sabine Ammon (Eds.), Explaining Understanding. New Perspectives From Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (pp. 50-75). New York: Routledge.
De Regt, Henk y Baumberger Christoph (2019). What is scientific understanding and how can it be achieved? En Kevin McKain y Kostas Kampourakis (Eds.), What is Scientific Knowledge? An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology of Science (pp. 66-81). New York: Routledge.
Durán, Juan y Formanek, Nico (2018). Grounds for Trust: Essential Epistemic Opacity and Computational Reliabilism. Minds and Machines, 28(4), 645-666.
Elgin, Catherine (2017). True Enough. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Elgin, Mehmet y Sober, Elliott (2002). Cartwright on explanation and idealization. Erkenntnis, 57, 441-450
Frigg, Roman, Thompson, Erica y Wendl, Charlotte (2015a). Philosophy of Climate Science Part I: Observing Climate Change. Philosophy Compass, 10(12), 953-964.
Frigg, Roman, Thompson, Erica y Wendl, Charlotte (2015b). Philosophy of Climate Science Part II: Modelling Climate Change. Philosophy Compass, 10(12), 965-977.
Frigg, Roman y Nguyen, James (2019). Mirrors without warnings. Synthese.
Giere, Ronald (2006). Scientific Perspectivism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Greco, John (2014). Episteme: Knowledge and Understanding. En Kevin Timpe y Craig Boyd (Eds.), Virtues and Their Vices (pp. 285-303). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Grimm, Stephen (2006). Is Understanding a Species of Knowledge? Brit. J. Phil. Sci., 57(3), 515-535.
Grimm, Stephen (2008). Explanatory inquiry and the need for explanation. Br. J. Philos. Sci., 59(3), 481-497.
Grimm, Stephen (2012). The value of understanding. Philosophy Compass, 7(2), 103-117.
Hacking, Ian (1983). Representing and Intervening. Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Humphreys, Paul (2004). Extending Ourselves. Computational Science, Empiricism, and Scientific Method. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jones, Martin y Cartwright, Nancy (Eds.) (2005). Idealization XII: Correcting the Model. Idealization and Abstraction in the Sciences. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Kelp, Christoph (2015). Understanding Phenomena. Synthese, 192, 3799-3816.
Kelp, Christoph (2017). Towards a knowledge-based account of understanding. En Stephen Grimm, Christoph Baumberger y Sabine Ammon (Eds.), Explaining Understanding: New Perspectives from Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (pp. 251-271). New York: Routledge.
Kelp, Christoph (2021). Inquiry, Knowledge and Understanding. Synthese, 198, 1583-1593. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1803-y
Khalifa, Kareem (2017). Understanding, Explanation, and Scientific Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kuorikoski, Jaakko y Ylikoski, Petri (2015). External representations and scientific understanding. Synthese, 192, 3817-3837.
Kvanvig Jonathan (2003). The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kvanvig Jonathan (2009). Responses to Critics. En Adrian Hadock, Alan Millar y Duncan Pritchard (Eds.), Epistemic Value (pp. 339-353). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lange, Marc (2017). Because Without Cause. Non-Causal Explanations in Science and Mathematics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lenhard, Johannes (2013). The Great Deluge. Simulation Modeling and Scientific Understanding. En Henk de Regt, Sabina Leonelli y Kai Eigner (Eds.), Scientific Understanding. Philosophical Perspectives (pp. 169-189). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Lenhard, Johannes (2019). Calculated Surprises. A Philosophy of Computer Simulation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lenhard, Johannes y Winsberg, Eric (2010). Holism, Entrenchment, and the Future of Climate Model Pluralism. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B, 41(3), 253-262.
Leonelli, Sabina (2013). Understanding in biology: The impure nature of biological knowledge. En Henk de Regt, Sabina Leonelli y Kai Eigner (Eds.), Scientific Understanding. Philosophical Perspectives (pp. 189-210). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Lipton, Peter (2013). Understanding without Explanation. En Henk de Regt, Sabina Leonelli y Kai Eigner (Eds.), Scientific Understanding. Philosophical Perspectives (pp. 169-189). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Longino, Helen (2002). The Fate of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Massimi, Michaela y McCoy, Casey (eds.) (2020). Understanding Perspectivism. Scientific Challenges and Methodological Prospects. New York: Routledge.
Morgan, Mary y Morrison, Margaret (eds.) (1999). Models as Mediators. Perspectives on Natural and Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morrison, Margaret (2011). One Phenomenon, Many Models: Inconsistency and Complementarity. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 42(2), 342-351.
Morrison, Margaret (2015). Reconstructing Reality: Models, Mathematics, and Simulations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Parker, Wendy (2006). Understanding Pluralism in Climate Modeling. Foundations of Science, 11, 349-368.
Parker, Wendy (2014). Values and uncertainties in climate prediction, revisited. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 46, 24-30.
Parker, Wendy (2020a). Model Evaluation: An Adequacy-for-Purpose View. Philosophy of Science, 87, 457-477.
Potochnik, Angela (2017). Idealization and the Aims of Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Price, Huw (2011). Naturalism without mirrors. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pritchard, Duncan (2009). ‘Knowledge, Understanding and Epistemic Value’. En A. O’Hear (Ed.), Epistemology (Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures) (pp. 19-43). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pritchard, Duncan (2010). Knowledge and Understanding. En Alan Millar y Adrian Haddock (Eds.), The Nature and Value of Knowledge: Three Investigations (pp. 1-88). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reutlinger, Alexander y Saatsi, Juha (Eds.) (2018). Explanation Beyond Causation: Philosophical Perspectives on Non-Causal Explanations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rice, Collin (2015). Factive Scientific Understanding without Accurate Representation. Biology & Philosophy, 31, 81-102.
Rice, Collin (2017). Idealized models, holistic distortions, and universality. Synthese, 195, 2795-2819.
Rice, Collin (2021). Leveraging Distortions. Explanation, Idealization and Universality in Science. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Rouse, Joseph (2015). Articulating the World: Conceptual Understanding and the Scientific Image. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Sellars, Wilfrid (1956/1997). Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Simon, Herbert (1996). The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Sosa, Ernest (2007). A Virtue Epistemology. Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strevens, Michael (2008). Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Strevens, Michael (2013). No understanding without explanation. Stud. Hist. Philos. Sci., 44, 510-515.
Suárez, Mauricio (2010). Scientific Representation. Philosophy Compass, 5(1), 91-101.
Suárez, Mauricio (Ed.) (2015). Fictions in Science. Philosophical Essays on Modeling and Idealization. New York: Routledge.
Trout, J. D. (2007). The Psychology of Scientific Explanation. Philosophy Compass, 2(3), 564-591.
Van Bowel, Jeroen (2013). Understanding in Political Science: The Plurality of Epistemic Interests. En Henk de Regt, Sabina Leonelli y Kai Eigner (Eds.), Scientific Understanding. Philosophical Perspectives (pp. 298-314). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Van Fraassen, Bas (1980). The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Weisberg, Michael (2013). Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Winsberg, Eric (2006). Models of success versus the success of models: reliability without truth. Synthese, 152, 1-19.
Winsberg, Eric (2018). Philosophy and Climate Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Winsberg, Eric (2019). Computer Simulations in Science. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (Ed.). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simulations-science/
Winther, Rasmus (2020). When Maps become the World. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2015). Los cuadernos azul y marrón. Madrid: Tecnos.
Woodward, James (2003). Making Things Happen. A Theory of Causal Explanation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Baumberger, Christoph (2019). Explicating Objectual Understanding: Taking Degrees Seriously. Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 50, 367-388.
Bertolaso, Marta (2016). Philosophy of Cancer. A Dynamic and Relational View. Springer.
Brandom, Robert (1994/2005). Hacerlo explícito. Razonamiento, representación y compromiso discursivo. Barcelona: Herder.
Brandom, Robert (2009). Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Brandom, Robert (2011). Perspectives on Pragmatism. Classical, Recent & Contemporary. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Craver, Carl (2007). Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neurosciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
De Regt, Henk (2009). Understanding and Scientific Explanation. En Henk de Regt, Sabina Leonelli y Kai Eigner (Eds.), Scientific Understanding. Philosophical Perspectives (pp. 21-43). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
De Regt, Henk (2017). Understanding Scientific Understanding. New York: Oxford University Press.
De Regt, Henk y Dieks, Dennis (2005). A Contextual Approach to Scientific Understanding. Synthese, 144, 137-170.
De Regt, Henk y Gijsbers, Victor (2016). How False Theories can Yield Genuine Understanding. En Stephen Grimm, Christoph Baumberger y Sabine Ammon (Eds.), Explaining Understanding. New Perspectives From Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (pp. 50-75). New York: Routledge.
De Regt, Henk y Baumberger Christoph (2019). What is scientific understanding and how can it be achieved? En Kevin McKain y Kostas Kampourakis (Eds.), What is Scientific Knowledge? An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology of Science (pp. 66-81). New York: Routledge.
Durán, Juan y Formanek, Nico (2018). Grounds for Trust: Essential Epistemic Opacity and Computational Reliabilism. Minds and Machines, 28(4), 645-666.
Elgin, Catherine (2017). True Enough. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Elgin, Mehmet y Sober, Elliott (2002). Cartwright on explanation and idealization. Erkenntnis, 57, 441-450
Frigg, Roman, Thompson, Erica y Wendl, Charlotte (2015a). Philosophy of Climate Science Part I: Observing Climate Change. Philosophy Compass, 10(12), 953-964.
Frigg, Roman, Thompson, Erica y Wendl, Charlotte (2015b). Philosophy of Climate Science Part II: Modelling Climate Change. Philosophy Compass, 10(12), 965-977.
Frigg, Roman y Nguyen, James (2019). Mirrors without warnings. Synthese.
Giere, Ronald (2006). Scientific Perspectivism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Greco, John (2014). Episteme: Knowledge and Understanding. En Kevin Timpe y Craig Boyd (Eds.), Virtues and Their Vices (pp. 285-303). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Grimm, Stephen (2006). Is Understanding a Species of Knowledge? Brit. J. Phil. Sci., 57(3), 515-535.
Grimm, Stephen (2008). Explanatory inquiry and the need for explanation. Br. J. Philos. Sci., 59(3), 481-497.
Grimm, Stephen (2012). The value of understanding. Philosophy Compass, 7(2), 103-117.
Hacking, Ian (1983). Representing and Intervening. Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Humphreys, Paul (2004). Extending Ourselves. Computational Science, Empiricism, and Scientific Method. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jones, Martin y Cartwright, Nancy (Eds.) (2005). Idealization XII: Correcting the Model. Idealization and Abstraction in the Sciences. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Kelp, Christoph (2015). Understanding Phenomena. Synthese, 192, 3799-3816.
Kelp, Christoph (2017). Towards a knowledge-based account of understanding. En Stephen Grimm, Christoph Baumberger y Sabine Ammon (Eds.), Explaining Understanding: New Perspectives from Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (pp. 251-271). New York: Routledge.
Kelp, Christoph (2021). Inquiry, Knowledge and Understanding. Synthese, 198, 1583-1593. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1803-y
Khalifa, Kareem (2017). Understanding, Explanation, and Scientific Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kuorikoski, Jaakko y Ylikoski, Petri (2015). External representations and scientific understanding. Synthese, 192, 3817-3837.
Kvanvig Jonathan (2003). The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kvanvig Jonathan (2009). Responses to Critics. En Adrian Hadock, Alan Millar y Duncan Pritchard (Eds.), Epistemic Value (pp. 339-353). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lange, Marc (2017). Because Without Cause. Non-Causal Explanations in Science and Mathematics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lenhard, Johannes (2013). The Great Deluge. Simulation Modeling and Scientific Understanding. En Henk de Regt, Sabina Leonelli y Kai Eigner (Eds.), Scientific Understanding. Philosophical Perspectives (pp. 169-189). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Lenhard, Johannes (2019). Calculated Surprises. A Philosophy of Computer Simulation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lenhard, Johannes y Winsberg, Eric (2010). Holism, Entrenchment, and the Future of Climate Model Pluralism. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B, 41(3), 253-262.
Leonelli, Sabina (2013). Understanding in biology: The impure nature of biological knowledge. En Henk de Regt, Sabina Leonelli y Kai Eigner (Eds.), Scientific Understanding. Philosophical Perspectives (pp. 189-210). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Lipton, Peter (2013). Understanding without Explanation. En Henk de Regt, Sabina Leonelli y Kai Eigner (Eds.), Scientific Understanding. Philosophical Perspectives (pp. 169-189). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Longino, Helen (2002). The Fate of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Massimi, Michaela y McCoy, Casey (eds.) (2020). Understanding Perspectivism. Scientific Challenges and Methodological Prospects. New York: Routledge.
Morgan, Mary y Morrison, Margaret (eds.) (1999). Models as Mediators. Perspectives on Natural and Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morrison, Margaret (2011). One Phenomenon, Many Models: Inconsistency and Complementarity. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 42(2), 342-351.
Morrison, Margaret (2015). Reconstructing Reality: Models, Mathematics, and Simulations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Parker, Wendy (2006). Understanding Pluralism in Climate Modeling. Foundations of Science, 11, 349-368.
Parker, Wendy (2014). Values and uncertainties in climate prediction, revisited. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 46, 24-30.
Parker, Wendy (2020a). Model Evaluation: An Adequacy-for-Purpose View. Philosophy of Science, 87, 457-477.
Potochnik, Angela (2017). Idealization and the Aims of Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Price, Huw (2011). Naturalism without mirrors. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pritchard, Duncan (2009). ‘Knowledge, Understanding and Epistemic Value’. En A. O’Hear (Ed.), Epistemology (Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures) (pp. 19-43). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pritchard, Duncan (2010). Knowledge and Understanding. En Alan Millar y Adrian Haddock (Eds.), The Nature and Value of Knowledge: Three Investigations (pp. 1-88). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reutlinger, Alexander y Saatsi, Juha (Eds.) (2018). Explanation Beyond Causation: Philosophical Perspectives on Non-Causal Explanations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rice, Collin (2015). Factive Scientific Understanding without Accurate Representation. Biology & Philosophy, 31, 81-102.
Rice, Collin (2017). Idealized models, holistic distortions, and universality. Synthese, 195, 2795-2819.
Rice, Collin (2021). Leveraging Distortions. Explanation, Idealization and Universality in Science. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Rouse, Joseph (2015). Articulating the World: Conceptual Understanding and the Scientific Image. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Sellars, Wilfrid (1956/1997). Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Simon, Herbert (1996). The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Sosa, Ernest (2007). A Virtue Epistemology. Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strevens, Michael (2008). Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Strevens, Michael (2013). No understanding without explanation. Stud. Hist. Philos. Sci., 44, 510-515.
Suárez, Mauricio (2010). Scientific Representation. Philosophy Compass, 5(1), 91-101.
Suárez, Mauricio (Ed.) (2015). Fictions in Science. Philosophical Essays on Modeling and Idealization. New York: Routledge.
Trout, J. D. (2007). The Psychology of Scientific Explanation. Philosophy Compass, 2(3), 564-591.
Van Bowel, Jeroen (2013). Understanding in Political Science: The Plurality of Epistemic Interests. En Henk de Regt, Sabina Leonelli y Kai Eigner (Eds.), Scientific Understanding. Philosophical Perspectives (pp. 298-314). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Van Fraassen, Bas (1980). The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Weisberg, Michael (2013). Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Winsberg, Eric (2006). Models of success versus the success of models: reliability without truth. Synthese, 152, 1-19.
Winsberg, Eric (2018). Philosophy and Climate Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Winsberg, Eric (2019). Computer Simulations in Science. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (Ed.). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/simulations-science/
Winther, Rasmus (2020). When Maps become the World. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2015). Los cuadernos azul y marrón. Madrid: Tecnos.
Woodward, James (2003). Making Things Happen. A Theory of Causal Explanation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Martín-Villuendas, M. (2021). Is Truth Necessary? A Pragmatic and Deflationary Notion of Understanding. ArtefaCToS. Revista De Estudios Sobre La Ciencia Y La tecnología, 10(2), 175–201. https://doi.org/10.14201/art2021102175201
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