Dear all, I am happy to announce Oscar Westerblad as the first speaker of our HPS workshop series for the upcoming Wednesday, Nov 11. He will be giving a 20min presentation on “Scientific Understanding as Practical Understanding” (abstract below), leaving us 40min for collective discussion. The workshop will take place at 5pm in the designated channel 3.11 on Microsoft Teams. As most of you know, the format aims to provide a supportive atmosphere in which HPS graduate students can discuss their work in progress. Oscar's talk might be of interest for philosophy graduate students as well. If you are interested, please drop me a short message so I can make sure you are able to access the Teams channel.
All best, Miguel - Abtract: Scientific understanding has typically been construed as explanatory understanding, meaning that in order to understand some phenomenon scientifically, one has to know or grasp some explanation of that phenomenon. In this talk, I will defend an alternative conception of scientific understanding: scientific understanding as practical understanding. Practical understanding is under-explored by philosophers of science and epistemologists, but captures much of what is epistemically valuable in scientific practice. I will begin by giving an indication of why practical understanding is important, before turning to a quick survey of conceptions of practical understanding focusing on skill, abilities, and know-how. Then, in formulating my own view of practical understanding, I will argue that practical understanding should be divided into a primary and secondary notion of understanding. Finally, if time permits, I will make use of this account of understanding to accommodate some of the problems facing accounts of scientific understanding as explanatory understanding and give some indications of further prospects and challenges. _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: https://lists.cam.ac.uk/pipermail/phil-events/ Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
