Reductionism about Understanding Why

Lawler, Insa

doi:10.1093/arisoc/aow007

Cited by 14 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Again, Sliwa (2015) demurs. For discussion, see Lawler (2016). 32 Hills also suggests that understanding why is valuable for non-instrumental reasons (pp.…”

Section: Department Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding What It's Like To Be (Dis)Privileged

Wiltsher

2021

Pacific Philosophical Qtr

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Can a person privileged in some respect understand what it is like to be disprivileged in that respect? Some say yes; some say no. I argue that both positions are correct, because ‘understand what it is like to be disprivileged’ is ambiguous. Sometimes, it means grasp of the character of particular experiences of disprivileged people. Privileged people can achieve this. Sometimes, it means grasp of the general character shared by experiences of disprivileged people. Privileged people cannot achieve this. However, there is a general kind of understanding that they can achieve: understanding of why individual experiences have their character, in relation to privilege and disprivilege. This understanding is a skill, not knowledge. It is difficult and discomforting for the privileged to acquire and is easily conflated with knowledge of general experiential character. Distinguishing and characterizing these kinds of understanding clarifies whether, and how, the privileged might understand what it is like to be disprivileged.

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“…Again, Sliwa (2015) demurs. For discussion, see Lawler (2016). 32 Hills also suggests that understanding why is valuable for non-instrumental reasons (pp.…”

Section: Department Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding What It's Like To Be (Dis)Privileged

Wiltsher

2021

Pacific Philosophical Qtr

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“…Some have argued or assumed that understanding should be taken to entail epistemic justification or even knowledge (e.g., Sliwa 2015, Khalifa 2017. In my view, this is a mistake (Hills 2016;Dellsén 2017Dellsén , 2018a; see also Lawler 2016). Hence, in contrast to Bangu (2015), I take it that the most plausible version of an understanding-based account does not require justification for progress.…”

Section: Scientific Progress and Epistemic Justificationmentioning

confidence: 83%

Scientific Progress without Justification

Dellsén¹

2022

Scientific Understanding and Representation

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According to some prominent accounts of scientific progress, e.g. Bird's epistemic account, accepting new theories is progressive only if the theories are justified in the sense required for knowledge. This paper argues that epistemic justification requirements of this sort should be rejected because they misclassify many paradigmatic instances of scientific progress as non-progressive. In particular, scientific progress would be implausibly rare in cases where (a) scientists are aware that most or all previous theories in some domain have turned out to be false, or (b) the new theory was a result of subsuming and/or logically strengthening previous theories, or (c) scientists are aware of significant peer disagreement about which theory is correct.A second clarification concerns the term 'constitutes'. It is a truism that there are many ways for science to progress -even cognitively, i.e. with respect to its theories (representations). For example, there is surely a sense in which scientists make progress as they collect more evidence or develop new formalisms. These are all forms of progress… in a sense. But I say that we should distinguish these from the type of progress that occurred, for example, when J.J. Thomson's plum pudding model of the atom was replaced with Ernest Rutherford's nuclear model. The difference is that the former type of progress (e.g. collecting evidence) is progress because and in so far as it helps to achieve the latter type (e.g. improving atomic models).By contrast, the latter type of progress counts as progress regardless of whether it leads to some other instances of progress. To mark this distinction, I say (following Bird 2008, 280) that some improvements promote progress, whereas others constitute progress. It is the latter that accounts of scientific progress are accounts of.A final clarification. In the question above, I use the term 'improvement' instead of 'progress' to emphasize two related points about our topic. The first is that accounts of scientific progress are not attempts to analyze the term 'scientific progress' as it is used either in common parlance or scientific practice. Even if there was no such

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“…Since Hempel, understanding has been continuously linked to explanation g (Cf. Kvanvig, 2003;Grimm, 2006Grimm, , 2014Kelp, 2014;Lawler, 2016Lawler, , 2018Sliwa, 2015). The most salient cases of scientific understanding are those that involve the previous acquisition of explanatory knowledge about the phenomenon that will be later understood.…”

Section: The Conflicts Between Understanding and Big Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific understanding through big data: From ignorance to insights to understanding

Martínez-Ordaz

2023

Possibility Studies & Society

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Here I argue that scientists can achieve some understanding of both the products of big data implementation as well as of the target phenomenon to which they are expected to refer—even when these products were obtained through essentially epistemically opaque processes. The general aim of the paper is to provide a road map for how this is done; going from the use of big data to epistemic opacity (Sec. 2), from epistemic opacity to ignorance (Sec. 3), from ignorance to insights (Sec. 4), and finally, from insights to understanding (Sec. 5, 6)

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Reductionism about Understanding Why

Cited by 14 publications

References 16 publications

Understanding What It's Like To Be (Dis)Privileged

Understanding What It's Like To Be (Dis)Privileged

Scientific Progress without Justification

Scientific understanding through big data: From ignorance to insights to understanding

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