New publications
Anna Michalska
Richard David-Rus, Institute of Anthropology, Romanian Academy
Defending understanding without explanation. In: Mărăşoiu, A.I., & Dumitru, M. (Eds.). (2024). Understanding and Conscious Experience: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives (1st ed.). Routledge, pp. 258. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003437239
ABSTRACT
The present chapter aims to reject a bold critique raised against understanding without explanation (UwE). It begins by reviewing the way UwE was reflected during the last two decades of the debate on understanding. It continues by introducing Lipton’s account of UwE and the general lines along which Khalifa articulates his critique of UwE. The critique is rejected in two ways. First, it discloses Khalifa’s incorrect reconstruction of Lipton’s basic assumptions and argument. The second challenge rejects the more general argumentative strategy deployed by Khalifa in dealing with UwE cases in showing that the explanatory sort of understanding always surpasses the non-explanatory form. The case of UwE through merely potential explanation will be used to exemplify the argument.
Andrei Ionuț Mărăşoiu Mircea Dumitru, University of Bucharest
Understanding and Conscious Experience: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives (1st ed.). Routledge, pp. 258. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003437239
ABSTRACT
This volume explores how understanding relates to conscious experience. In doing so, it builds bridges between different philosophical disciplines and provides a metaphysically robust characterization of understanding, both in and beyond science. The past two decades have witnessed growing interest from epistemologists, philosophers of science, philosophers of mind and ethicists in the nature and value of intellectual understanding. This volume features original essays on understanding and the phenomenal experiences that underlie it. The chapters are divided into three thematic sections. Part 1 provides theoretical characterizations of understanding, including Henk de Regt’s defense of a contextual theory of scientific understanding and a debate on whether scientific inference and explanatory power are necessary or central features of understanding. Part 2 explores how conscious experience and understanding are related. The chapters articulate a phenomenal theory of understanding and address themes that are connected to understanding, including awareness, transformative experiences and exemplification. Finally, Part 3 is devoted to domain-specific inquiries about understanding, such as logical proofs, particle physics and moral understanding. Understanding and Conscious Experience will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in the philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics and phenomenology.
Lilia Gurova, New Bulgarian University
Understanding and inference in recent works on scientific understanding. In: Mărăşoiu, A.I., & Dumitru, M. (Eds.). (2024). Understanding and Conscious Experience: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives (1st ed.). Routledge, pp. 258. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003437239
ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades, the literature on scientific understanding has been dominated by discussions on topics such as ‘understanding and knowledge’, ‘understanding and truth’, ‘explanation and understanding’, and similar. These topics inspired heated debates among the scholars of understanding, but they also blurred certain important similarities in their views. It is possible, however, to look at the seemingly diverse accounts of understanding from a different perspective. This chapter shows how the explications of the relationship between understanding and inference found in three recent books point to a minimal inferential account of understanding, built on the assumption that the recognized manifestations of understanding are always associated with certain demonstrations of inferential abilities. The most interesting corollaries of this assumption are discussed to illuminate the connections between prediction and understanding, and between categorization and understanding.
Chapter link: Understanding and inference in recent works on scientific understandin
Anna Martin, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Science
Shared agency in complex settings. Philosophy and Science Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Studies (pol. Filozofia i Nauka. Studia Filozoficzne i Interdyscyplinarne, vol. 13, 2025, pp. 133–152. https://filozofiainauka.studiafilozoficzne.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Martin_133.pdf
ABSTRACT
The paper begins by identifying two opposing approaches to (shared) agency— the standard model and the dynamical model. Despite differences between them, both models essentially converge upon the belief that shared agency entails direct mutual influence between agents, in the form of either mutual control or mutual responsiveness, respectively. This assumption becomes problematic when applied to interdisciplinary practices, like interdisciplinary research, which involve role specialization and thus do not lend themselves to an explanation in terms of direct mutual influence. In response to this difficulty, the paper advances a third approach— referred to here as the regulatory model (e.g., Schore, 2000)—which explains shared agency in terms of loose coupling (Gruber, Bödeker, 2005) understood as a pattern of cyclical organization of action in the course of which different positions (perspectives, agendas) are first differentiated during the exploratory phase and then integrated, giving rise to a dialogical from of self-organization.
Kadri Simm, Jaana Eigi-Watkin, University of Tartu
Diverse Sources of Normativity in Open Science and Their Implications for Ethical Governance. Royal Society Open Science (2024). https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.240480
ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, open science (OS) has emerged as a global science policy and research initiative with implications for most aspects of research, including planning, funding, publishing, evaluation, data sharing and access. As OS has gained increasing prominence, it has also faced substantial criticism. Whether it is the worries about the equality of access associated with open-access publishing or the more recent allegations of OS benefitting those who act in the private interest without giving back to OS, there are, indeed, many potential as well as actual harms that can be linked to the practice of OS. These criticisms often revolve around ethical challenges and fairness concerns, prompting the question of whether a comprehensive ethical governance framework is needed for OS. This commentary contends that owing to the heterogeneous nature of the normative foundations of OS and the inherent diversity within scientific practices, a pluralistic and deliberative approach to governance is needed.