Abstract
One can find in the literature two sets of views concerning the relationship between understanding and explanation: that one understands only if 1) one has knowledge of causes and 2) that knowledge is provided by an explanation. Taken together, these tenets characterize what I call the narrow knowledge account of understanding (narrow KAU). While the first tenet has recently come under severe attack, the second has been more resistant to change. I argue that we have good reasons to reject it on the basis of theoretical models that provide how-possibly explanations. These models, while they do not explain in the strict (narrow KAU) sense, afford understanding. In response, I propose an alternative epistemology of understanding, broad KAU, that takes cases of theoretical modelling into account.
Highlights
The epistemology of understanding has traditionally been related, if not reduced, to the epistemology of causal explanation
He indicates that grasping a correct explanation “requires grasping that the propositions expressing a relevant model’s explanatory content are true, or in other words, understanding that the states of affairs represented by those propositions obtain” (2013, 512)
In other words, understanding does not depend on causal explanation
Summary
The epistemology of understanding has traditionally been related, if not reduced, to the epistemology of causal explanation. A prominent view about scientific understanding (understanding hereafter) is that one understands a phenomenon if and only if one has knowledge of its cause(s). Pritchard (2014), from whom I borrow the terminology, calls this underlying epistemology of understanding the ‘knowledge account of understanding’. With the traditional requirement that only causal explanations can supply this knowledge, I characterize the combination of these two views as the narrow knowledge account of understanding (narrow KAU hereafter). Narrow KAU has two tenets: 1) causal knowledge is necessary for understanding and 2) only
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