Abstract
In epistemology and philosophy of science, there has been substantial debate about truth’s relation to understanding. “Non-factivists” hold that radical departures from the truth are not always barriers to understanding; “quasi-factivists” demur. The most discussed example concerns scientists’ use of idealizations in certain derivations of the ideal gas law from statistical mechanics. Yet, these discussions have suffered from confusions about the relevant science, as well as conceptual confusions. Addressing this example, we shall argue that the ideal gas law is best interpreted as favoring non-factivism about understanding, but only after delving a bit deeper into the statistical mechanics that has informed these arguments and stating more precisely what non-factivism entails. Along the way, we indicate where earlier discussions have gone astray, and highlight how a naturalistic approach furnishes more nuanced normative theses about the interaction of rationality, understanding, and epistemic value.
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Notes
Some of us reject the arguments proffered here (Sullivan and Khalifa 2019); but we all agree that these are the best arguments for non-factivism that invoke the ideal gas law.
Rancourt (2017) coined this distinction.
Note that this result holds whether we treat the single particle classically or quantum mechanically. However, for a fully quantum gas, for which two particles have a non-negligible probability of occupying the same state, the need to enforce Bose or Fermi statistics on the full system will introduce an effective interaction among particles, leading to corrections to the ideal gas law.
It should be noted that, in discussing the ideal gas law, the authors do not distinguish bases from objects in the ways we discuss in Sect. 4.2.1. For the sake of advancing the discussion, we correct for this ambiguity in this section.
Oddie (2016) reviews the literature on approximate truth.
Insofar as this is a viable option, it would appear that the simple approximation objection collapses into the virial objection, which we discuss in Sect. 5.1.2.
Elgin (2004) offers an argument along these lines.
Elgin has been misinterpreted on this point. For instance, in a widely read survey of the literature on epistemic value, Pritchard (2007) takes Elgin to assert that in the case of idealizations, “scientists […] have false beliefs in the subject matter.” He then goes on to suggest that “scientists might well accept their theories in such cases (i.e. endorse them for all practical purposes, as the best theory available), even though they don’t actually believe them.” Curiously, this comes three years after Elgin made precisely the same distinction!
Once again, recall that Mizrahi conflates bases and objects; see Sect. 4.2.1.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following people for feedback on earlier drafts of this paper (or parts thereof): Holly Andersen, Sorin Bangu, Richard Dawid, Henk de Regt, Catherine Elgin, Jan Faye, Insa Lawler, Mark Newman, Cailin O’Connor, Benjamin Rancourt, Juha Saatsi, Jonathan Schaffer, Samuel Schindler, Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, Brad Skow, Michael Strevens, and Daniel Wilkenfeld. We would also like to thank the audiences at the Workshop on Explanation and Understanding in Aarhus, Denmark, and the 2016 Meeting of Philosophy of Science Association in Atlanta, GA for their feedback on talks that used parts of this paper.
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Doyle, Y., Egan, S., Graham, N. et al. Non-factive Understanding: A Statement and Defense. J Gen Philos Sci 50, 345–365 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-019-09469-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-019-09469-3