Defending Nonreductionism About Understanding

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 8 (3):222-231 (2019)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In this note I defend nonreductionism about understanding by arguing that knowledge is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding. To do so, I examine Paulina Sliwa’s recent (Sliwa 2015, 2017) defence of knowledge-based Reductionism (Reductionism for short). Sliwa claims that one understands why p if and only if one has a sufficient amount of knowledge why p. Sliwa also contends that Reductionism is supported by intuitive verdicts about our uses of ‘understanding why’ and ‘knowing why’. In reply, I first argue that Sliwa’s Reductionism leads to a vicious infinite regress. Secondly, I defuse the motivation in favour of Reductionism by showing how the linguistic data can be accommodated within a Nonreductionist framework.

Author's Profile

Michele Palmira
Complutense University of Madrid

Analytics

Added to PP
2019-06-03

Downloads
467 (#45,636)

6 months
106 (#59,679)

Historical graph of downloads since first upload
This graph includes both downloads from PhilArchive and clicks on external links on PhilPapers.
How can I increase my downloads?