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Paying the Price for a Theory of Explanation: De Regt's Discussion of Trout

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

J. D. Trout
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Abstract

In his discussion of “Scientific Explanation and the Sense of Understanding” (Trout 2002), de Regt (2004) argues that Trout “denounces understanding as irrelevant, if not dangerous, from an epistemic perspective…” (de Regt 2004, 98), and that Trout prefers “a thoroughly objectivist view, in which understanding has no epistemic function and explanations require only accurate theories” (100). I argue that this is a fundamental misinterpretation of the objectivist proposal of Trout (2002), and that it results from de Regt's failure to address the distinction announced there between genuine and counterfeit understanding. De Regt also advances a pragmatic alternative to my realist account of understanding in scientific explanation, one that focuses on the skills of scientists and the intelligibility of theories. After supplementing my earlier account of genuine understanding, I argue that de Regt's pragmatic account obscures the nature of scientific explanation, and is vulnerable on several additional fronts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , January 2005 , pp. 198 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Thanks are due to two anonymous referees for very useful comments on this response. I am also grateful to the National Science Foundation for grant SES#0327104 that supported this research.

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