Animating Scientific Understanding

The mainstream account of scientific understanding is explanationism. According to explanationism, scientific understanding is only achieved when a subject grasps a full or partial explanation of the target phenomenon. Objectualists disagree and argue that there are instances of scientific understanding that outstrip explanatory understanding. In this paper, I advance a novel form of objectualism that I call epistemic pluralism or PLURALISM for short. On this view, the satisfaction of any scientific epistemic concern, explanatory or not, constitutes a partial ground for understanding a phenomenon scientifically. I put pressure on explanationism by arguing that, in contrast with PLURALISM, it faces a dilemma when it comes to account for the epistemic achievements of non-explanatory scientific research.