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Durham E-Theses Durham E-Theses Understanding, normativity, and scientic practice LEWENDON-EVANS, HARRY,EDWARD How to cite: LEWENDON-EVANS, HARRY,EDWARD (2018) Understanding, normativity, and scientic practice, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12780/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk Understanding, Normativity, and Scientific Practice Harry Lewendon-Evans PhD Thesis Department of Philosophy Durham University 2018 Abstract Understanding, Normativity, and Scientific Practice Harry Lewendon-Evans Recent work in epistemology and philosophy of science has argued that understanding is an important cognitive achievement that philosophers should seek to address for its own sake. This thesis outlines and defends a new account of scientific understanding that analyses the concept of understanding in terms of the concept of normativity. The central claim is that to understand means to grasp something in the light of norms. The thesis is divided into two parts: Part I (chapters one to three) addresses the question of the agency of understanding and Part II (chapters four to five) focuses on the vehicles of scientific understanding. Chapter One begins with an account of understanding drawn from the work of Martin Heidegger, which presents understanding as a practical, normative capacity for making sense of entities. Chapter Two builds on Robert Brandom’s normative inferentialism to argue that conceptual understanding is grounded in inferential rules embedded within norm-governed, social practices. Chapter Three argues that normativity should be located in the intersubjective nature of social practices. The chapters in Part II draw on and extend the account of understanding developed in Part I by focusing on how models and explanations function within scientific practice to facilitate scientific understanding. Chapter Four investigates the nature of model- based understanding. It defends the claim that constructing and using models enables a form of conceptual articulation which facilitates scientific understanding by rendering scientific phenomena intelligible. Chapter Five considers the connection between understanding and explanation through the role of explanatory discourse in scientific practice. I argue that the function of explanations is to sculpt and make explicit the norms of intelligibility required for scientific understanding. This thesis concludes that scientific understanding is an inherently norm-governed phenomenon that is unintelligible without reference to the normative dimension of our social and scientific practices. 2 Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 2 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 6 Introduction Understanding, Normativity and Science ............................................... 9 1 Understanding and Normativity ...................................................................................9 2 Understanding and Explanation ..................................................................................10 3 Understanding and Knowledge...................................................................................18 4 Methodological Commitments ...................................................................................21 5 Overview.....................................................................................................................24 Chapter One The Subject of Understanding ............................................................. 28 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................28 2 Understanding as an Ability .......................................................................................29 3 Heidegger on Understanding ......................................................................................33 4 Dasein: The Subject Who Understands ......................................................................40 5 Implications for Scientific Understanding ..................................................................52 6 Concluding Remarks ..................................................................................................55 Chapter Two Understanding as Inferential Ability ................................................... 57 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................57 2 Motivating Inferentialism ...........................................................................................58 3 Normative Inferentialism ............................................................................................61 4 Normative Pragmatics ................................................................................................65 5 Inferentialist Semantics ..............................................................................................70 6 Two-Dimensional Conceptual Normativity ...............................................................79 7 Concluding Remarks ..................................................................................................83 Chapter Three Rules, Norms, and Practices.............................................................. 86 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................86 2 Regulism: Norms as Rules .........................................................................................86 3 Regularism: Norms as Regularities ............................................................................89 4 Normative Attitudes....................................................................................................93 5 Temporal Normativism and Human Practices ............................................................98 6 Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................103 Chapter Four The Meaning of Models: Model-Based Understanding and Conceptual Articulation ........................................................................................... 106 3 1 Introduction ..............................................................................................................106 2 Models: An Overview...............................................................................................107 3 Understanding with Models ......................................................................................111 4 Scientific Research as Conceptual Articulation .......................................................115 5 Models as Tools for Conceptual Articulation ...........................................................120 6 Conceptual Normativity and Model-Based Understanding ......................................131 7 Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................136 Chapter Five Rethinking Explanatory Understanding ............................................ 138 1 Introduction ..............................................................................................................138 2 Understanding and Explanation ................................................................................139 3 Rethinking Explanation: Woody’s Functional Perspective ......................................147 4 Explanatory Understanding, Skills and Normativity ................................................159 5 Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................165 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 166 1 Summary of the Thesis .............................................................................................166 2 Further Research .......................................................................................................171 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 181 4 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author's prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 5 Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my supervisors Simon James and Peter Vickers for their unwavering support, patience and guidance over the last four and a half years. Both have provided me with the confidence to pursue the arguments developed in this thesis, as well as the space and encouragement to develop them in all the weird and wonderful
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