Understanding and structure

This chapter explores two claims about metaphysical structure: that “carving nature at the joints” is a valuable intellectual achievement and that understanding is constituted by a “grasp” of explanatory structure, and the following claim about their relationship is defended: explanatory understanding requires “carving nature at the joints.” The existence of explanatory connections, to be “grasped” in understanding, requires the existence of natural “joints,” which must be represented in understanding. However, neither “carving nature at the joints” nor understanding is plausibly seen as “the aim of belief” or the “the aim of inquiry.” The chapter concludes with a discussion of the metaphysical preconditions for explanatory understanding through a discussion of the role of socially constructed properties in explanations: despite beign in some sense “non-natural,” such properties are real enough to ground the possibility of explanatory understanding. The fact that explanatory understanding requires “carving nature at the joints” therefore does not preclude the possibility of understanding in disciplines whose subject matters are plausibly understood as comprising socially constructed properties.