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LTT: Arnon Levy
March 1 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EST
Title: An Understanding-First view of Explanation
Abstract:
Jaegwon Kim wrote once that “the idea of explaining something is inseparable from the idea of making it intelligible; to seek an explanation of something is to seek to understand it, to render it intelligible. These are simple conceptual points, and I take them to be untendentious and uncontroversial.” (1994, 54). Many discussions of explanation accept something like the truism we find in Kim, but regard it primarily as a background, orienting idea. In this talk I will sketch a view of explanation that forefronts the explanation-understanding connection – an understanding-first view of explanation. Its overall thrust is that what makes some an explanation is that it has the potential to generate understanding.
I will draw on two previous versions of this idea. One found in older work by Peter Achinstein and another, more recent version, from Daniel Wilkenfled. The central part of my discussion aims to motivate the understanding-first framework, and to fend off some potential worries about it. I will argue that such a view can helps with a number of outstanding debates surrounding explanation, including the explanatory role of idealization, the place of noncausal explanations and relations between mechanistic and difference making explanations. I’ll close with a few comments about how the understanding-first view relates to the historical trajectory of work on scientific explanation, and to uses of explanation in philosophy – in contrast to science.
Can’t make it in-person? This talk will available online with the following Zoom link, found here: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/91729611528.
This talk will also be available live streamed on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.
Details
- Date:
- March 1
- Time:
-
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EST
- Event Categories:
- Lunchtime Talks, Lunchtime Talks 2023-24
Venue
- 1119 Cathedral of Learning