William d´Alessandro: Mathematical Explanation and Understanding: A Noetic Account

Organized by the Department of Logic

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William d´Alessandro (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Mathematical Explanation and Understanding: A Noetic Account

Abstract
We defend a noetic account of intramathematical explanation. On this view, a piece of mathematics is explanatory just in case it produces an appropriate type of understanding. We motivate the view by presenting some appealing features of noeticism. We then discuss and criticize the most prominent extant version of noeticism, due to Matthew Inglis and Juan-Pablo Mejía-Ramos, which identifies explanatory understanding with the possession of detailed cognitive schemas. Finally, we present a novel noetic account. On our view, explanatory understanding arises from meeting specific explanatory objectives, the theory of which we briefly set out. [This talk is based on joint work with Ellen Lehet.]

Invitation pdf