Understanding, Truth, and Epistemic Goals
Philosophy of Science 87 (5):944-956 (2020)
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.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1086/710545
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Citations of this work
Responsibility for Collective Epistemic Harms.Will Fleisher & Dunja Šešelja - forthcoming - Philosophy of Science:1-41.
Scientific Realism and Blocking Strategies.Raimund Pils - forthcoming - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science:1-17.
A Satisficing Theory of Epistemic Justification.Raimund Pils - forthcoming - Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
Non-epistemic values and scientific assessment: an adequacy-for-purpose view.Greg Lusk & Kevin C. Elliott - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (2):1-22.
The Uses of Truth: Is There Room for Reconciliation of Factivist and Non-Factivist Accounts of Scientific Understanding?Lilia Gurova - forthcoming - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science:1-11.
References found in this work
No understanding without explanation.Michael Strevens - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (3):510-515.
An inferential conception of scientific representation.Mauricio Suárez - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (5):767-779.
Understanding as representation manipulability.Daniel A. Wilkenfeld - 2013 - Synthese 190 (6):997-1016.
Idealizations and Understanding: Much Ado About Nothing?Emily Sullivan & Kareem Khalifa - 2019 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (4):673-689.
