Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T15:44:33.256Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Understanding, Truth, and Epistemic Goals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Kareem Khalifa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Several argue that truth cannot be science’s sole epistemic goal, for it would fail to do justice to several scientific practices that advance understanding. I challenge these arguments but only after making a small concession: science’s sole epistemic goal is not truth as such; rather, its goal is finding true answers to relevant questions. Using examples from the natural and social sciences, I then show that scientific understanding’s epistemically valuable features are either true answers to relevant questions or a means thereof.

Type
Understanding and Imagination
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 87 , Issue 5: PSA 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II Symposia Papers , December 2020 , pp. 944 - 956
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I would like to thank audiences at the 2018 meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association and 2019 Scientific Understanding and Representation workshop. Angela Potochnik and Mark Risjord deserve special thanks for feedback on earlier drafts; Kate Elgin and Jared Millson, for several helpful conversations.

References

Bobo, Lawrence, and Zubrinsky, Camille L. 1996. “Attitudes on Residential Integration: Perceived Status Differences, Mere In-Group Preference, or Racial Prejudice?” Social Forces 74 (3): 883–909.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chakravartty, Anjan. 2017. Scientific Ontology: Integrating Naturalized Metaphysics and Voluntarist Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Regt, Henk W. 2017. Understanding Scientific Understanding. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doyle, Yannick, Egan, Spencer, Graham, Noah, and Khalifa, Kareem. 2019. “Non-factive Understanding: A Statement and Defense.” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 50 (3):345–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elgin, Catherine Z. 2017. True Enough. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalifa, Kareem. 2017. Understanding, Explanation, and Scientific Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalifa, Kareem, and Millson, Jared. 2020. “Perspectives, Questions, and Epistemic Value.” In Knowledge from a Human Point of View, ed. Creţu, Ana-Maria and Massimi, Michela, 87–106. Cham: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, Philip. 2002. “The Third Way: Reflections on Helen Longino’s The Fate of Knowledge.” Philosophy of Science 69 (4): 549–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koralus, Philipp. 2014. “The Erotetic Theory of Attention: Questions, Focus and Distraction.” Mind and Language 29 (1): 26–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, Mark. 2012. “An Inferential Model of Scientific Understanding.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 26 (1): 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Potochnik, Angela. 2017. Idealization and the Aims of Science. Chicago: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowbottom, Darrell P. 2019. The Instrument of Science: Scientific Anti-realism Revitalized. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schelling, Thomas C. 1971. “Dynamic Models of Segregation.” Journal of Mathematical Sociology 1 (2): 143–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strevens, Michael. 2008. Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Strevens, Michael. 2013. “No Understanding without Explanation.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A 44 (3): 510–15.Google Scholar
Suárez, Mauricio. 2004. “An Inferential Conception of Scientific Representation.” Philosophy of Science 71 (5): 767–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, Emily, and Khalifa, Kareem. 2019. “Idealizations and Understanding: Much Ado about Nothing?” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (4): 673–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas C. 1980. The Scientific Image. New York: Clarendon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas C. 2002. The Empirical Stance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Wilkenfeld, Daniel A. 2013. “Understanding as Representation Manipulability.” Synthese 190 (6): 997–1016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar