Switch to: Citations

References in:

Partial truth versus felicitous falsehoods

Synthese 198 (6):5415-5436 (2019)

Add references

You must login to add references.
  1. Understanding as compression.Daniel A. Wilkenfeld - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (10):2807-2831.
    What is understanding? My goal in this paper is to lay out a new approach to this question and clarify how that approach deals with certain issues. The claim is that understanding is a matter of compressing information about the understood so that it can be mentally useful. On this account, understanding amounts to having a representational kernel and the ability to use it to generate the information one needs regarding the target phenomenon. I argue that this ambitious new account (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • Idealization and the Aims of Science.Angela Potochnik - 2017 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    Science is the study of our world, as it is in its messy reality. Nonetheless, science requires idealization to function—if we are to attempt to understand the world, we have to find ways to reduce its complexity. Idealization and the Aims of Science shows just how crucial idealization is to science and why it matters. Beginning with the acknowledgment of our status as limited human agents trying to make sense of an exceedingly complex world, Angela Potochnik moves on to explain (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   151 citations  
  • (2 other versions)A Virtue Epistemology.Ernest Sosa - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 143 (3):427-440.
    In my remarks, I discuss Sosa's attempt to deal with the sceptical threat posed by dreaming. Sosa explores two replies to the problem of dreaming scepticism. First, he argues that, on the imagination model of dreaming, dreaming does not threaten the safety of our beliefs. Second, he argues that knowledge does not require safety, but a weaker condition which is not threatened by dreaming skepticism. I raise questions about both elements of his reply.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   280 citations  
  • (2 other versions)A virtue epistemology: Apt belief and reflective knowledge, volume I * by Ernest Sosa. [REVIEW]Ernest Sosa - 2007 - Analysis 69 (2):382-385.
    Ernest Sosa's A Virtue Epistemology, Vol. I is arguably the single-most important monograph to be published in analytic epistemology in the last ten years. Sosa, the first in the field to employ the notion of intellectual virtue – in his ground-breaking ‘The Raft and the Pyramid’– is the leading proponent of reliabilist versions of virtue epistemology. In A Virtue Epistemology, he deftly defends an externalist account of animal knowledge as apt belief, argues for a distinction between animal and reflective knowledge, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   444 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Knowledge and Its Limits.R. Foley - 2002 - Mind 111 (443):718-726.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   159 citations  
  • Understanding Why.Alison Hills - 2015 - Noûs 49 (2):661-688.
    I argue that understanding why p involves a kind of intellectual know how and differsfrom both knowledge that p and knowledge why p (as they are standardly understood).I argue that understanding, in this sense, is valuable.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   191 citations  
  • Explaining Understanding: New Perspectives From Epistemology and Philosophy of Science.Stephen Robert Grimm, Christoph Baumberger & Sabine Ammon (eds.) - 2016 - London: Routledge.
    What does it mean to understand something? What types of understanding can be distinguished? Is understanding always provided by explanations? And how is it related to knowledge? Such questions have attracted considerable interest in epistemology recently. These discussions, however, have not yet engaged insights about explanations and theories developed in philosophy of science. Conversely, philosophers of science have debated the nature of explanations and theories, while dismissing understanding as a psychological by-product. In this book, epistemologists and philosophers of science together (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • A Contextual Approach to Scientific Understanding.Henk W. de Regt & Dennis Dieks - 2005 - Synthese 144 (1):137-170.
    Achieving understanding of nature is one of the aims of science. In this paper we offer an analysis of the nature of scientific understanding that accords with actual scientific practice and accommodates the historical diversity of conceptions of understanding. Its core idea is a general criterion for the intelligibility of scientific theories that is essentially contextual: which theories conform to this criterion depends on contextual factors, and can change in the course of time. Our analysis provides a general account of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   208 citations  
  • The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding.Jonathan L. Kvanvig - 2003 - Cambridge University Press.
    Epistemology has for a long time focused on the concept of knowledge and tried to answer questions such as whether knowledge is possible and how much of it there is. Often missing from this inquiry, however, is a discussion on the value of knowledge. In The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding Jonathan Kvanvig argues that epistemology properly conceived cannot ignore the question of the value of knowledge. He also questions one of the most fundamental assumptions in epistemology, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   476 citations  
  • Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 2008 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    Bas C. van Fraassen presents an original exploration of how we represent the world.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   295 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  
  • From knowledge to understanding.Catherine Z. Elgin - 2006 - In Stephen Cade Hetherington (ed.), Epistemology futures. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 199--215.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   58 citations  
  • Bayesianism I: Introduction and Arguments in Favor.Kenny Easwaran - 2011 - Philosophy Compass 6 (5):312-320.
    Bayesianism is a collection of positions in several related fields, centered on the interpretation of probability as something like degree of belief, as contrasted with relative frequency, or objective chance. However, Bayesianism is far from a unified movement. Bayesians are divided about the nature of the probability functions they discuss; about the normative force of this probability function for ordinary and scientific reasoning and decision making; and about what relation (if any) holds between Bayesian and non-Bayesian concepts.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   40 citations  
  • The Measure of Knowledge.Nick Treanor - 2012 - Noûs 47 (3):577-601.
    What is it to know more? By what metric should the quantity of one's knowledge be measured? I start by examining and arguing against a very natural approach to the measure of knowledge, one on which how much is a matter of how many. I then turn to the quasi-spatial notion of counterfactual distance and show how a model that appeals to distance avoids the problems that plague appeals to cardinality. But such a model faces fatal problems of its own. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  • Idealizations and scientific understanding.Moti Mizrahi - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 160 (2):237-252.
    In this paper, I propose that the debate in epistemology concerning the nature and value of understanding can shed light on the role of scientific idealizations in producing scientific understanding. In philosophy of science, the received view seems to be that understanding is a species of knowledge. On this view, understanding is factive just as knowledge is, i.e., if S knows that p, then p is true. Epistemologists, however, distinguish between different kinds of understanding. Among epistemologists, there are those who (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   73 citations  
  • ``Is Understanding Factive?".Catherine Z. Elgin - 2009 - In ``Is Understanding Factive?". Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 322--30.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   119 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  
  • Knowledge and its limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Knowledge and its Limits presents a systematic new conception of knowledge as a kind of mental stage sensitive to the knower's environment. It makes a major contribution to the debate between externalist and internalist philosophies of mind, and breaks radically with the epistemological tradition of analyzing knowledge in terms of true belief. The theory casts new light on such philosophical problems as scepticism, evidence, probability and assertion, realism and anti-realism, and the limits of what can be known. The arguments are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1886 citations  
  • Is understanding a species of knowledge?Stephen R. Grimm - 2006 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (3):515-535.
    Among philosophers of science there seems to be a general consensus that understanding represents a species of knowledge, but virtually every major epistemologist who has thought seriously about understanding has come to deny this claim. Against this prevailing tide in epistemology, I argue that understanding is, in fact, a species of knowledge: just like knowledge, for example, understanding is not transparent and can be Gettiered. I then consider how the psychological act of "grasping" that seems to be characteristic of understanding (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   236 citations  
  • Review. [REVIEW]Barry Gower - 1997 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (1):555-559.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   272 citations  
  • On thought experiments: Is there more to the argument?John D. Norton - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (5):1139-1151.
    Thought experiments in science are merely picturesque argumentation. I support this view in various ways, including the claim that it follows from the fact that thought experiments can err but can still be used reliably. The view is defended against alternatives proposed by my cosymposiasts.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   63 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  
  • Understanding and the facts.Catherine Elgin - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 132 (1):33 - 42.
    If understanding is factive, the propositions that express an understanding are true. I argue that a factive conception of understanding is unduly restrictive. It neither reflects our practices in ascribing understanding nor does justice to contemporary science. For science uses idealizations and models that do not mirror the facts. Strictly speaking, they are false. By appeal to exemplification, I devise a more generous, flexible conception of understanding that accommodates science, reflects our practices, and shows a sufficient but not slavish sensitivity (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   199 citations  
  • Scientific reasoning: the Bayesian approach.Peter Urbach & Colin Howson - 1993 - Chicago: Open Court. Edited by Peter Urbach.
    Scientific reasoning is—and ought to be—conducted in accordance with the axioms of probability. This Bayesian view—so called because of the central role it accords to a theorem first proved by Thomas Bayes in the late eighteenth ...
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   569 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  
  • (1 other version)Science and Partial Truth: A Unitary Approach to Models and Scientific Reasoning.Newton C. A. Da Costa & Steven French - 2003 - New York, US: Oup Usa.
    Da Costa and French explore the consequences of adopting a 'pragmatic' notion of truth in the philosophy of science. Their framework sheds new light on issues to do with belief, theory acceptance, and the realism-antirealism debate, as well as the nature of scientific models and their heuristic development.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   125 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (2):452-458.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1265 citations  
  • The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding.Michael Huemer - 2004 - Mind 113 (452):763-766.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   278 citations  
  • Enlightening falsehoods: a modal view of scientific understanding.Soazig Le Bihan - 2017 - In Stephen Grimm Christoph Baumberger & Sabine Ammon (eds.), Explaining Understanding: New Perspectives from Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Routledge. pp. 111-136.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Telling Instances.Catherine Z. Elgin - 2012 - Enrahonar: Quaderns de Filosofía 49:69.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2003 - Philosophical Quarterly 53 (210):105-116.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1497 citations  
  • Exemplification, idealization, and scientific understanding.Catherine Elgin - 2008 - In Mauricio Suárez (ed.), Fictions in Science: Philosophical Essays on Modeling and Idealization. New York: Routledge. pp. 77-90.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   20 citations  
  • Modeling without Mathematics.Martin Thomson-Jones - 2012 - Philosophy of Science 79 (5):761-772.
    Inquiries into the nature of scientific modeling have tended to focus their attention on mathematical models and, relatedly, to think of nonconcrete models as mathematical structures. The arguments of this article are arguments for rethinking both tendencies. Nonmathematical models play an important role in the sciences, and our account of scientific modeling must accommodate that fact. One key to making such accommodations, moreover, is to recognize that one kind of thing we use the term ‘model’ to refer to is a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective.B. C. van Fraassen - 2010 - Analysis 70 (3):511-514.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   272 citations