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Inaugurating Understanding or Repackaging Explanation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Kareem Khalifa
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Abstract

Recently, several authors have argued that scientific understanding should be a new topic of philosophical research. In this article, I argue that the three most developed accounts of understanding—Grimm's, de Regt's, and de Regt and Dieks's—can be replaced by earlier ideas about scientific explanation without loss. Indeed, in some cases, such replacements have clear benefits.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 15 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

This article was written at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Philosophy of Science during a sabbatical funded by Middlebury College. I thank both institutions for their support. This article has also benefited from conversations with Pierluigi Barrotta, Jim Bogen, Henk de Regt, Heather Douglas, Benny Goldberg, Hylarie Kochiras, Bert Leuridan, P. D. Magnus, Ken Manders, Sandy Mitchell, John Norton, Richard Samuels, Samuel Schindler, Susan Sterrett, J. D. Trout, Peter Vickers, Ioannis Votsis, and Jim Woodward.

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