The Role of Explanation in Understanding

TLDR

Peter Lipton argues that understanding can exist without explanation. The authors contend that explanation remains essential to understanding and propose evaluating other modes of understanding by how well they replicate the understanding provided by a correct explanation. They defend the claim by demonstrating that for each of Lipton’s non‑explanatory examples, a correct explanation exists that would yield greater understanding. The article provides a comprehensive table of contents outlining Lipton’s framework, explanatory idealism, and modal‑understanding examples.

Abstract

Peter Lipton has argued that understanding can exist in the absence of explanation. We argue that this does not denigrate explanation's importance to understanding. Specifically, we show that all of Lipton's examples are consistent with the idea that explanation is the ideal of understanding, i.e. other modes of understanding ought to be assessed by how well they replicate the understanding provided by a good and correct explanation. We defend this idea by showing that for all of Lipton's examples of non-explanatory understanding of why p, there exists a correct and reasonably good explanation that would provide greater understanding of p. 1 Lipton's Framework 2 Clarifying Lipton's Framework 3 Explanatory Idealism 3.1 Misunderstanding without explanation 3.2 How to interpret Lipton's examples 4 Examples of Modal Understanding 5. 5.2 Unification and explanatory idealism 6.1 Explanatory unification 6.2 Unification and explanatory idealism 7 Tacit Understanding of Causes 7.1 Semantic knowledge 7.2 Tacit explanations 8 Conclusion