Switch to: Citations

Add references

You must login to add references.
  1. Articulating the World: Conceptual Understanding and the Scientific Image.Joseph Rouse - 2015 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    Naturalism as a guiding philosophy for modern science both disavows any appeal to the supernatural or anything else transcendent to nature, and repudiates any philosophical or religious authority over the workings and conclusions of the sciences. A longstanding paradox within naturalism, however, has been the status of scientific knowledge itself, which seems, at first glance, to be something that transcends and is therefore impossible to conceptualize within scientific naturalism itself. In Articulating the World, Joseph Rouse argues that the most pressing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   47 citations  
  • Explicating Objectual Understanding: Taking Degrees Seriously.Christoph Baumberger - 2019 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 50 (3):367-388.
    The paper argues that an account of understanding should take the form of a Carnapian explication and acknowledge that understanding comes in degrees. An explication of objectual understanding is defended, which helps to make sense of the cognitive achievements and goals of science. The explication combines a necessary condition with three evaluative dimensions: an epistemic agent understands a subject matter by means of a theory only if the agent commits herself sufficiently to the theory of the subject matter, and to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  • Understanding Scientific Understanding.Henk W. de Regt - 2017 - New York: Oup Usa.
    Understanding is a central aim of science and highly important in present-day society. But what precisely is scientific understanding and how can it be achieved? This book answers these questions, through philosophical analysis and historical case studies, and presents a philosophical theory of scientific understanding that highlights its contextual nature.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   93 citations  
  • Understanding, Explanation, and Scientific Knowledge.Kareem Khalifa - 2017 - Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
    From antiquity to the end of the twentieth century, philosophical discussions of understanding remained undeveloped, guided by a 'received view' that takes understanding to be nothing more than knowledge of an explanation. More recently, however, this received view has been criticized, and bold new philosophical proposals about understanding have emerged in its place. In this book, Kareem Khalifa argues that the received view should be revised but not abandoned. In doing so, he clarifies and answers the most central questions in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   61 citations  
  • Is Water H2O? Evidence, Realism and Pluralism.Hasok Chang - 2012 - Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science.
    This book exhibits deep philosophical quandaries and intricacies of the historical development of science lying behind a simple and fundamental item of common sense in modern science, namely the composition of water as H2O. Three main phases of development are critically re-examined, covering the historical period from the 1760s to the 1860s: the Chemical Revolution, early electrochemistry, and early atomic chemistry. In each case, the author concludes that the empirical evidence available at the time was not decisive in settling the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   212 citations  
  • "Understanding and Transparency".Stephen R. Grimm - 2017 - In Stephen Grimm Christoph Baumberger & Sabine Ammon (eds.), Explaining Understanding: New Perspectives from Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Routledge.
    I explore the extent to which the epistemic state of understanding is transparent to the one who understands. Against several contemporary epistemologists, I argue that it is not transparent in the way that many have claimed, drawing on results from developmental psychology, animal cognition, and other fields.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   30 citations  
  • (1 other version)Four Decades of Scientific Explanation.Wesley C. Salmon & Anne Fagot-Largeault - 1989 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 16 (2):355.
    As Aristotle stated, scientific explanation is based on deductive argument--yet, Wesley C. Salmon points out, not all deductive arguments are qualified explanations. The validity of the explanation must itself be examined. _Four Decades of Scientific Explanation_ provides a comprehensive account of the developments in scientific explanation that transpired in the last four decades of the twentieth century. It continues to stand as the most comprehensive treatment of the writings on the subject during these years. Building on the historic 1948 essay (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   514 citations  
  • Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science.Carl Gustav Hempel - 1965 - New York: The Free Press.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   687 citations  
  • Explanatory unification and the causal structure of the world.Philip Kitcher - 1962 - In Philip Kitcher & Wesley C. Salmon (eds.), Scientific Explanation. Univ of Minnesota Pr. pp. 410-505.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   518 citations  
  • Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation.Michael Strevens - 2008 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
    Approaches to explanation -- Causal and explanatory relevance -- The kairetic account of /D making -- The kairetic account of explanation -- Extending the kairetic account -- Event explanation and causal claims -- Regularity explanation -- Abstraction in regularity explanation -- Approaches to probabilistic explanation -- Kairetic explanation of frequencies -- Kairetic explanation of single outcomes -- Looking outward -- Looking inward.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   479 citations  
  • (1 other version)Explaining the brain: mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience.Carl F. Craver - 2007 - New York : Oxford University Press,: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press.
    Carl Craver investigates what we are doing when we sue neuroscience to explain what's going on in the brain.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   624 citations  
  • How the laws of physics lie.Nancy Cartwright - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    In this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, the author argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe regularities that exist in nature. Cartwright draws from many real-life examples to propound a novel distinction: that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1200 citations  
  • (6 other versions)The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Ian Hacking.
    Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4756 citations  
  • Normative naturalism.Larry Laudan - 1990 - Philosophy of Science 57 (1):44-59.
    Normative naturalism is a view about the status of epistemology and philosophy of science; it is a meta-epistemology. It maintains that epistemology can both discharge its traditional normative role and nonetheless claim a sensitivity to empirical evidence. The first sections of this essay set out the central tenets of normative naturalism, both in its epistemic and its axiological dimensions; later sections respond to criticisms of that species of naturalism from Gerald Doppelt, Jarrett Leplin and Alex Rosenberg.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   127 citations  
  • True enough.Catherine Z. Elgin - 2004 - Philosophical Issues 14 (1):113–131.
    Truth is standardly considered a requirement on epistemic acceptability. But science and philosophy deploy models, idealizations and thought experiments that prescind from truth to achieve other cognitive ends. I argue that such felicitous falsehoods function as cognitively useful fictions. They are cognitively useful because they exemplify and afford epistemic access to features they share with the relevant facts. They are falsehoods in that they diverge from the facts. Nonetheless, they are true enough to serve their epistemic purposes. Theories that contain (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   327 citations  
  • (3 other versions)Scientific Explanation.P. Kitcher & W. C. Salmon - 1992 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (1):85-98.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   246 citations  
  • The Hidden History of Phlogiston: How Philosophical Failure Can Generate Historiographical Refinement.Hasok Chang - 2010 - Hyle 16 (2):47 - 79.
    Historians often feel that standard philosophical doctrines about the nature and development of science are not adequate for representing the real history of science. However, when philosophers of science fail to make sense of certain historical events, it is also possible that there is something wrong with the standard historical descriptions of those events, precluding any sensible explanation. If so, philosophical failure can be useful as a guide for improving historiography, and this constitutes a significant mode of productive interaction between (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  • Science without laws.Ronald N. Giere - 1999 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    Debate over the nature of science has recently moved from the halls of academia into the public sphere, where it has taken shape as the "science wars." At issue is the question of whether scientific knowledge is objective and universal or socially mediated, whether scientific truths are independent of human values and beliefs. Ronald Giere is a philosopher of science who has been at the forefront of this debate from its inception, and Science without Laws offers a much-needed mediating perspective (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   258 citations  
  • Interpreting theories without a spacetime.Sebastian De Haro & Henk W. de Regt - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (3):631-670.
    In this paper we have two aims: first, to draw attention to the close connexion between interpretation and scientific understanding; second, to give a detailed account of how theories without a spacetime can be interpreted, and so of how they can be understood. In order to do so, we of course need an account of what is meant by a theory ‘without a spacetime’: which we also provide in this paper. We describe three tools, used by physicists, aimed at constructing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • True Enough.Catherine Z. Elgin - 2017 - Cambridge: MIT Press.
    Science relies on models and idealizations that are known not to be true. Even so, science is epistemically reputable. To accommodate science, epistemology should focus on understanding rather than knowledge and should recognize that the understanding of a topic need not be factive. This requires reconfiguring the norms of epistemic acceptability. If epistemology has the resources to accommodate science, it will also have the resources to show that art too advances understanding.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   201 citations  
  • Naturalism.Davidn D. Papineau - 2007 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The term ‘naturalism’ has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed ‘naturalists’ from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. These philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science. They urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing ‘supernatural’, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   143 citations  
  • Science without Laws.Mauricio Suárez - 2002 - Mind 111 (441):111-114.
    1Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TB, UKScience Without Laws Ronald Giere Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press 1999 x + 285 Hardback£17.50.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   137 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Values in science.Ernan McMullin - 2012 - Zygon 47 (4):686-709.
    In this essay, which was his presidential address to the Philosophy of Science Association, Ernan McMullin argued that the watershed between “classic” philosophy of science and the “new” philosophy of science can best be understood by analyzing the change in our perception of the role played by values in science. He begins with some general remarks about the nature of value, goes on to explore some of the historical sources for the claim that judgement in science is value‐laden, and concludes (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   124 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Values in Science.Ernan McMullin - 1982 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1982 (4):3-28.
    This paper argues that the appraisal of theory is in important respects closer in structure to value-judgement than it is to the rule-governed inference that the classical tradition in philosophy of science took for granted.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   155 citations  
  • Alien Reasoning: Is a Major Change in Scientific Research Underway?Thomas Nickles - 2020 - Topoi 39 (4):901-914.
    Are we entering a major new phase of modern science, one in which our standard, human modes of reasoning and understanding, including heuristics, have decreasing value? The new methods challenge human intelligibility. The digital revolution inspires such claims, but they are not new. During several historical periods, scientific progress has challenged traditional concepts of reasoning and rationality, intelligence and intelligibility, explanation and knowledge. The increasing intelligence of machine learning and networking is a deliberately sought, somewhat alien intelligence. As such, it (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Visualization as a Tool for Understanding.Henk W. de Regt - 2014 - Perspectives on Science 22 (3):377-396.
    The act of understanding is at the heart of all scientific activity; without it any ostensibly scientific activity is as sterile as that of a high school student substituting numbers into a formula. Ordinary language often uses visual metaphors in connection with understanding. When we finally understand what someone is trying to point out to us, we exclaim: “I see!” When someone really understands a subject matter, we say that she has “insight”. There appears to be a link between visualization (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • Interpreting theories without a spacetime.Henk Regt & Sebastian Haro - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (3):631-670.
    In this paper we have two aims: first, to draw attention to the close connexion between interpretation and scientific understanding; second, to give a detailed account of how theories without a spacetime can be interpreted, and so of how they can be understood. In order to do so, we of course need an account of what is meant by a theory ‘without a spacetime’: which we also provide in this paper. We describe three tools, used by physicists, aimed at constructing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Towards a Knowledge-Based Account of Understanding.Christoph9 Kelp - 2016 - In Stephen Robert Grimm, Christoph Baumberger & Sabine Ammon (eds.), Explaining Understanding: New Perspectives From Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. London: Routledge.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  • Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. Carl G. Hempel. [REVIEW]Henry Veatch - 1970 - Philosophy of Science 37 (2):312-314.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   106 citations  
  • Science and the Enlightenment.Thomas L. Hankins - 1986 - Journal of the History of Biology 19 (2):321-322.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations