Doyle, Yannick and Egan, Spencer and Graham, Noah and Kareem Khalifa, Kareem (2018) Non-Factive Understanding: A Statement and Defense. [Preprint]
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Abstract
In epistemology and philosophy of science, there has been substantial debate about truth’s relation to understanding. “Non-factivists” hold that radical departures from the truth are not always barriers to understanding; “quasi-factivists” demur. The most discussed example concerns scientists’ use of idealizations in certain derivations of the ideal gas law from statistical mechanics. Yet, these discussions have suffered from confusions about the relevant science, as well as conceptual confusions. To that end, we shall argue that the ideal gas law is best interpreted as favoring non-factivism about understanding, but only after delving a bit deeper into the statistical mechanics that has informed these arguments and stating more precisely what non-factivism entails. Along the way, we indicate where earlier discussions have gone astray, and highlight how a naturalistic approach furnishes more nuanced normative theses about the interaction of rationality, understanding, and epistemic value.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | |||||||||||||||
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| Additional Information: | Forthcoming in the special issue of Journal for General Philosophy of Science on Normative and Naturalistic Approaches to Understanding (edited by Henk de Regt and Jan Faye). | |||||||||||||||
| Keywords: | understanding, truth, idealization, statistical mechanics, ideal gas law | |||||||||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Explanation General Issues > Models and Idealization General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
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| Depositing User: | Dr. Kareem Khalifa | |||||||||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 29 Oct 2018 19:38 | |||||||||||||||
| Last Modified: | 29 Oct 2018 19:38 | |||||||||||||||
| Item ID: | 14632 | |||||||||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Explanation General Issues > Models and Idealization General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
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| Date: | 27 October 2018 | |||||||||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/14632 |
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