ADRIANA NICOLETA SORA
Abstract
One of the most influential papers in the contemporary literature about explanation is Friedman’s paper Explanation and scientific understanding (1974), in which the author proposes a theory of explanation in terms of understanding. Following this way of exploration of explanation, we can notice a contemporary debate between theories of explanation which aim to define explanation in terms of understanding, so that a theory is explanatory if it gives understanding of the target phenomena and theories on which understanding is only a byproduct of a good scientific theory, their explanatory character being given by other criteria. In the following essay I will explore this relationship between explanation and understanding by comparing two points of view situated on different sides of this debate.
In this paper I attempt a comparison between Henk De Regt and Dennis Dieks’ (RD for short) paper A Contextual Approach to Understanding (2005) on explanation and understanding and Michael Strevens’ paper No Understanding without Explanation (2011) on the same topic. I will analyze understanding on three dimensions: 1. as theory of explanation on the form of understanding things; 2. as criterion of assessment of the value of theories and 3. as grasping a theory.
I will offer criticisms to RD’s view on all these three dimensions by arguing that we better have a theory of explanation instead of a theory of understanding and better keep the idea of truth as criterion for the value of a theory; more than that I will argue for a notion of understanding as a psychological counterpart of knowledge and of truth. In the last section I will distinguish between a subjective and an objective idea of understanding, considering that the term “understanding” is more suitable for the subjective one.