Manfred Eigen extended Erwin Schroedinger’s concept of “life is physics and chemistry” through the introduction of information theory and cybernetic systems theory into “life is physics and chemistry and information.” Based on this assumption, Eigen developed the concepts of quasispecies and hypercycles, which have been dominant in molecular biology and virology ever since. He insisted that the genetic code is not just used metaphorically: it represents a real natural language.However, the basics of scientific knowledge changed dramatically within the second half (...) of the 20th century.Unfortunately, Eigen ignored the results of the philosophy of science discourse on essential features of natural languages and codes: a natural language or code emerges from populations of living agents that communicate. This contribution will look at some of the highlights of this historical development and the results relevant for biological theories about life. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap’s logical pluralism is often held to be one in which corresponding connectives in different logics have different meanings. This paper presents an alternative view of Carnap’s position, in which connectives can and do share their meaning in some contexts. This re-interpretation depends crucially on extending Carnap’s linguistic framework system to include meta-linguistic frameworks, those frameworks which we use to talk about linguistic frameworks. I provide an example that shows how this is possible, and give some textual evidence that (...) Carnap would agree with this interpretation. Additionally, I show how this interpretation puts the Carnapian position much more in line with the position given in Shapiro than had been thought before. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the 20th century, philosophers of science have asked, "what kind of thing is a scientific theory?" The logical positivists answered: a scientific theory is a mathematical theory, plus an empirical interpretation of that theory. Moreover, they assumed that a mathematical theory is specified by a set of axioms in a formal language. Later 20th century philosophers questioned this account, arguing instead that a scientific theory need not include a mathematical component; or that the mathematical component need (...) not be specified by a set of axioms in a formal language. We survey various accounts of scientific theories entertained in the 20th century -- removing some misconceptions, and clearing a path for future research. (shrink)

There has been a growing trend to include non-causal models in accounts of scientific explanation. A worry addressed in this paper is that without a higher threshold for explanation there are no tools for distinguishing between models that provide genuine explanations and those that provide merely potential explanations. To remedy this, a condition is introduced that extends a veridicality requirement to models that are empirically underdetermined, highly-idealised, or otherwise non-causal. This condition is applied to models of electroweak symmetry breaking beyond (...) the Standard Model. (shrink)

A standard formalization of a scientific theory is a system of axioms for that theory in a first-order language (possibly many-sorted; possibly with the membership primitive $$\in$$ ). Suppes (in: Carvallo M (ed) Nature, cognition and system II. Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1992) expressed skepticism about whether there is a “simple or elegant method” for presenting mathematicized scientific theories in such a standard formalization, because they “assume a great deal of mathematics as part of their substructure”. The major difficulties amount to these. (...) First, as the theories of interest are mathematicized, one must specify the underlying applied mathematics base theory, which the physical axioms live on top of. Second, such theories are typically geometric, concerning quantities or trajectories in space/time: so, one must specify the underlying physical geometry. Third, the differential equations involved generally refer to coordinate representations of these physical quantities with respect to some implicit coordinate chart, not to the original quantities. These issues may be resolved. Once this is done, constructing standard formalizations is not so difficult—at least for the theories where the mathematics has been worked out rigorously. Here we give what may be claimed to be a simple and elegant means of doing that. This is for mathematicized scientific theories comprising differential equations for $$\mathbb{R}$$ -valued quantities Q (that is, scalar fields), defined on n (“spatial” or “temporal”) dimensions, taken to be isomorphic to the usual Euclidean space $$\mathbb{R}^n$$. For illustration, I give standard (in a sense, “text-book”) formalizations: for the simple harmonic oscillator equation in one-dimension and for the Laplace equation in two dimensions. (shrink)

Each science has its own domain of investigation, but one and the same science can be formalized in different languages with different universes of discourse. The concept of the domain of a science and the concept of the universe of discourse of a formalization of a science are distinct, although they often coincide in extension. In order to analyse the presuppositions and implications of choices of domain and universe, this article discusses the treatment of omega arguments in three very different (...) formalizations of arithmetic. In Peano's formalization the domain is a restricted class of individuals, while the universe of discourse is the unrestricted class of all individuals. In Gödel's formalization the domain is a restricted class of individuals as in Peano's formalization, but the universe of discourse coincides with the domain. In Whitehead-Russell's formalization the domain is a class of logical notions in Tarski's sense, that are necessarily not individuals, whereas the universe of discourse is the unrestricted class of individuals as in Peano's formalization. The present approach emphasizes the viewpoint that the universe of discourse of a given discourse is important in determining which propositions are expressed by which sentences. (shrink)

Conventionalism about mathematics claims that mathematical truths are true by linguistic convention. This is often spelled out by appealing to facts concerning rules of inference and formal systems, but this leads to a problem: since the incompleteness theorems we’ve known that syntactic notions can be expressed using arithmetical sentences. There is serious prima facie tension here: how can mathematics be a matter of convention and syntax a matter of fact given the arithmetization of syntax? This challenge has been pressed in (...) the literature by Hilary Putnam and Peter Koellner. In this paper I sketch a conventionalist theory of mathematics, show that this conventionalist theory can meet the challenge just raised , and clarify the type of mathematical pluralism endorsed by the conventionalist by introducing the notion of a semantic counterpart. The paper’s aim is an improved understanding of conventionalism, pluralism, and the relationship between them. (shrink)

Languages involving modalities and languages involving vagueness have each been thoroughly studied. On the other hand, virtually nothing has been said about the interaction of modality and vagueness. This paper aims to start filling that gap. Section 1 is a discussion of various possible sources of vague modality. Section 2 puts forward a model theory for a quantified language with operators for modality and vagueness. The model theory is followed by a discussion of the resulting logic. In Section 3, the (...) framework will permit us to address a puzzle raised by Elizabeth Barnes and Robert Williams. (shrink)

El presente escrito se propone presentar el modelo de tres niveles del conocimiento científico (datos, fenómenos y teorías) desde los recientes resultados de la filosofía de la ciencia obtenidos por dos perspectivas filosóficas particulares: el nuevo experimentalismo y el enfoque semántico de las teorías. Para ello contrasta los planteamientos principales de estas dos perspectivas con el modelo de dos niveles del conocimiento científico (observación y teoría) del positivismo lógico, que dominó el panorama de la filosofía de la ciencia en las (...) primeras seis décadas del siglo XX. (shrink)

Der Begriff ‘Modell’ leitet sich vom Lateinischen ‘modulus’ (das Maß) ab, im Italienischen existiert seit dem 16. Jh. ‘modello’ und R. Descartes verwendet im 17. Jh. ‘modèlle’. Während der Begriff in Architektur und Kunst schon seit der Renaissance gängig ist, wird er in den Naturwissenschaften erst im 19. Jh. verwendet.1 Dort greifen wissenschaftliche Modelle die für eine gegebene Problemstellung als wesentlich erachteten Charakteristika (Eigenschaften, Beziehungen, etc.) eines Untersuchungsgegenstandes heraus und machen diesen so einem Verständnis bzw. einer weiterführenden Untersuchung zugänglich. Es (...) ist üblich, zwischen Skalenmodellen, Analogmodellen und theoretischen Modellen zu unterscheiden. (shrink)

The present note is intended to draw the reader's attention to the analysis of the relation between Newtonian Mechanics and Special Relativity Mechanics (henceforth to be referred to as NM and SRM), given by Philipp Frank, one of the classics of Logical Empiricism (in Frank [1938]). Frank's analysis of the relation between NM and SRM is interesting in many ways. Firstly, it shows clearly that problems of disruptive changes and of conceptual disparity were known to and discussed by Logical Empiricists (...) and that, therefore, some of them at least were not at all blinded to 'dynamic' problems of changes in actual science by their view of physical theories as interpreted axiomatic systems and did not deal with those theories as 'static, frozen in logical mold'. Secondly, it reveals some of the reasons for the Logical Empiricist rejection of what came to be known later as the incommensurability claim. (shrink)

We forward an epistemological perspective regarding non-classical logics which restores the universality of logic in accordance with the thesis of global pluralism. In this perspective every non-classical truth-theory is actually a theory of some metalinguistic concept which does not coincide with the concept of truth (described by Tarski's truth theory). We intend to apply this point of view to Quantum Logic (QL) in order to prove that its structure properties derive from properties of the metalinguistic concept of testability in Quantum (...) Physics. To this end we construct a classical language L cand endow it with a classical effective interpretation which is partially inspired by the Ludwig approach to the foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Then we select two subsets of formulas in L cwhich can be considered testable because of their interpretation and we show that these subsets have the structure properties of Quantum Logics because of Quantum Mechanical axioms, as desired. Finally we comment on some relevant consequences of our approach (in particular, the fact that no non-classical logic is strictly needed in Quantum Physics). (shrink)

Many commentators on Alfred Tarski have, following Hartry Field, claimed that Tarski's truth-definition was motivated by physicalism—the doctrine that all facts, including semantic facts, must be reducible to physical facts. I claim, instead, that Tarski did not aim to reduce semantic facts to physical ones. Thus, Field's criticism that Tarski's truth-definition fails to fulfill physicalist ambitions does not reveal Tarski to be inconsistent, since Tarski's goal is not to vindicate physicalism. I argue that Tarski's only published remarks that speak approvingly (...) of physicalism were written in unusual circumstances: Tarski was likely attempting to appease an audience of physicalists that he viewed as hostile to his ideas. In later sections I develop positive accounts of: (1) Tarski's reduction of semantic concepts; (2) Tarski's motivation to develop formal semantics in the particular way he does; and (3) the role physicalism plays in Tarski's thought. (shrink)

The concept of a “scientific philosophy” first developed in the mid nineteenth century, as a reaction against what was viewed as the excessively speculative and metaphysical character of post-Kantian German idealism. One of the primary intellectual models of this movement was a celebrated address by Hermann von Helmholtz, “Über das Sehen des Menschen,” delivered at the dedication of a monument to Kant at Königsberg in 1855. Helmholtz begins by asking, on behalf of the audience, why a natural scientist like himself (...) is speaking in honor of a philosopher. This question only arises, he says, because of the current deplorable climate of enmity and mutual distrust between the two fields – a climate which is due, in Helmholtz’s opinion, to the entirely speculative system of Naturphilosophie that Schelling and Hegel have erected wholly independent of, and even in open hostility towards, the actual positive results of the natural sciences. What Helmholtz is now recommending, however, is a return to the close cooperation between the two fields exemplified in the work of Kant, who himself made significant contributions to natural science , and, in general, “stood in relation to the natural sciences together with the natural scientists on precisely the same fundamental principles.”1 And it was this recommendation that was enthusiastically embraced within the emerging “back to Kant!” movement, where it led to the idea that all metaphysics should be replaced by the new discipline of “epistemology” or “theory of knowledge” , so that philosophy itself would now become “scientific.”. (shrink)

Both realists and instrumentalists have found it difficult to understand (much less accept) Carnap's developed view on theoretical terms, which attempts to stake out a neutral position between realism and instrumentalism. I argue that Carnap's mature conception of a scientific theory as the conjunction of its Ramsey sentence and Carnap sentence can indeed achieve this neutral position. To see this, however, we need to see why the Newman problem raised in the context of recent work on structural realism is no (...) problem for Carnap's conception; and we also need to locate Carnap's work on theoretical terms within his wider program of Wissenschaftslogik or the logic of science. (shrink)

Thirty years after the conference that gave rise to The Structure of Scientific Theories, there is renewed interest in the nature of theories and models. However, certain crucial issues from thirty years ago are reprised in current discussions; specifically: whether the diversity of models in the science can be captured by some unitary account; and whether the temporal dimension of scientific practice can be represented by such an account. After reviewing recent developments we suggest that these issues can be accommodated (...) within the partial structures formulation of the semantic or model-theoretic approach. (shrink)

According to Carnap an account of the nature of mathematics, both pure and applied, must include the thesis that mathematical truths are devoid of factual content. He first formulated this thesis around 1930 and in its defence attempted to combine the reduction of mathematics to logic undertaken in the Principia with Wittgenstein’s insights into the nature of logic. In this paper I will show that this synthesis faces serious difficulties. Thus, it plays, with good reason, no longer a role in (...) Carnap’s mature philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

This volume covers a wide range of topics that fall under the 'philosophy of quantifiers', a philosophy that spans across multiple areas such as logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and even the history of philosophy. It discusses the import of quantifier variance in the model theory of mathematics. It advances an argument for the uniqueness of quantifier meaning in terms of Evert Beth’s notion of implicit definition, and clarifies the oldest explicit formulation of quantifier variance: the one proposed by Rudolf Carnap. -/- (...) The volume further examines what it means that a quantifier can have multiple meanings, and addresses how existential vagueness can induce vagueness in our modal notions. Finally, the book explores the role played by quantifiers with respect to various kinds of semantic paradoxes, the logicality issue, ontological commitment, and the behavior of quantifiers in intensional contexts. ​. (shrink)

The received view in the history of the philosophy of psychology is that the logical positivists—Carnap and Hempel in particular—endorsed the position commonly known as “logical” or “analytical” behaviourism, according to which the relations between psychological statements and the physical-behavioural statements intended to give their meaning are analytic and knowable a priori. This chapter argues that this is sheer legend: most, if not all, such relations were viewed by the logical positivists as synthetic and knowable only a posteriori. It then (...) traces the origins of the legend to the logical positivists’ idiosyncratic extensional or at best weakly intensional use of what are now considered crucially strongly intensional semantic notions, such as “translation,” “meaning” and their cognates, focussing on a particular instance of this latter phenomenon, arguing that a conflation of explicit definition and analyticity may be the chief source of the legend. (shrink)

The Linda paradox is a key topic in current debates on the rationality of human reasoning and its limitations. We present a novel analysis of this paradox, based on the notion of verisimilitude as studied in the philosophy of science. The comparison with an alternative analysis based on probabilistic confirmation suggests how to overcome some problems of our account by introducing an adequately defined notion of verisimilitudinarian confirmation.

Abstract Artificial language philosophy (also called ‘ideal language philosophy’) is the position that philosophical problems are best solved or dissolved through a reform of language. Its underlying methodology—the development of languages for specific purposes—leads to a conventionalist view of language in general and of concepts in particular. I argue that many philosophical practices can be reinterpreted as applications of artificial language philosophy. In addition, many factually occurring interrelations between the sciences and philosophy of science are justified and clarified by the (...) assumption of an artificial language methodology. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is make a contribution to the ongoing search for an adequate concept of the a priori element in scientific knowledge. The point of departure is C.I. Lewis’s account of a pragmatic a priori put forward in his "Mind and the World Order" (1929). Recently, Hasok Chang in "Contingent Transcendental Arguments for Metaphysical Principles" (2008) reconsidered Lewis’s pragmatic a priori and proposed to conceive it as the basic ingredient of the dynamics of an embodied scientific reason. (...) The present paper intends to further elaborate Chang’s account by relating it with some conceptual tools from cognitive semantics and certain ideas that first emerged in the context of the category-theoretical foundations of mathematics. (shrink)

This paper seeks to evaluate the potential of the Newman objection to function as an immanent critique of Carnap's use of the Ramsey method of regimenting scientific theories. Stress is laid on the distinctive way in which ramseyfications are used by Carnap to formulate the analytic/synthetic distinction for the theoretical language and on the difference between the ontological and the epistemic readings of the Newman objection. While the former reading of the Newman objection is rejected as trading on an assumption (...) that Carnap did not share, the latter is accepted as critical. It is argued to turn on overlooking that the Ramsey sentence constitutes an idealization concerning which our normal expectations of what theories are like are bound to be frustrated. This idealisation need not reflect Carnap's considered view but can be regarded as adopted solely for the project of semantic explication. The distinctions drawn in the course of the argument also help to motivate Carnap's abstention from the discourse of realism and its denial. (shrink)

We argue against the claim that the employment of diagrams in Euclidean geometry gives rise to gaps in the proofs. First, we argue that it is a mistake to evaluate its merits through the lenses of Hilbert’s formal reconstruction. Second, we elucidate the abilities employed in diagram-based inferences in the Elements and show that diagrams are mathematically reputable tools. Finally, we complement our analysis with a review of recent experimental results purporting to show that, not only is the Euclidean diagram-based (...) practice strictly regimented, it is rooted in cognitive abilities that are universally shared. (shrink)

: This paper contains the analysis of nine interviews with UK scientists on the topic of scientific models. Scientific models are an important, very controversially discussed topic in philosophy of science. A reasonable expectation is that philosophical conceptions of models ought to be in agreement with scientific practice. Questioning practicing scientists on their use of and views on models provides material against which philosophical positions can be measured.

Postmodernism has established a significant hold in educational thought and some of the most important ideas are to be found in the writings of Michael Peters. This paper examines his postmodern stance and use of Lyotard's account of knowledge, and from a naturalist point of view raises a number of objections centred on science as a metanarrative, the unity of the empirical and the evaluative, and reason, truth and the growth of knowledge. It is concluded that postmodern epistemology, unlike naturalism, (...) does not serve education well. (shrink)

The increasing complexity of biological problems and the increase of mathematical means to handle them on the one hand, and the possibility of automatized computation at the other, necessitate a revaluation of the present interactions between biology and mathematics; in this connection interrelations occur which can be divided into three kinds: mathematical biology, biological mathematics, and general biomathematics or methodology of the biomathematical sciences, by which are meant those scientific branches which arise from the said interactions.

We shall address from a conceptual perspective the duality between algebra and geometry in the framework of the refoundation of algebraic geometry associated to Grothendieck’s theory of schemes. To do so, we shall revisit scheme theory from the standpoint provided by the problem of recovering a mathematical structure A from its representations \ into other similar structures B. This vantage point will allow us to analyze the relationship between the algebra-geometry duality and the structure-semiotics duality. Whereas in classical algebraic geometry (...) a certain kind of rings can be recovered by considering their representations with respect to a unique codomain B, Grothendieck’s theory of schemes permits to reconstruct general rings by considering representations with respect to a category of codomains. The strategy to reconstruct the object from its representations remains the same in both frameworks: the elements of the ring A can be realized—by means of what we shall generally call Gelfand transform—as quantities on a topological space that parameterizes the relevant representations of A. As we shall argue, important dualities in different areas of mathematics can be understood as particular cases of this general pattern. In the wake of Majid’s analysis of the Pontryagin duality, we shall propose a Kantian-oriented interpretation of this pattern. We shall use this conceptual framework to argue that Grothendieck’s notion of functor of points can be understood as a “relativization of the a priori” that generalizes the relativization already conveyed by the notion of domain extension to more general variations of the corresponding domains. (shrink)

Logical inferentialism maintains that the formal rules of inference fix the meanings of the logical terms. The categoricity problem points out to the fact that the standard formalizations of classical logic do not uniquely determine the intended meanings of its logical terms, i.e., these formalizations are not categorical. This means that there are different interpretations of the logical terms that are consistent with the relation of logical derivability in a logical calculus. In the case of the quantificational logic, the categoricity (...) problem is generated by the finite nature of the standard calculi and one direction in which it can be solved is to strengthen the deductive systems by adding infinitary rules (such as the ω-rule), i.e., to construct a full formalization. Another main direction is to provide a natural semantics for the standard rules of inference, i.e., a semantics for which these rules are categorical. My aim in this paper is to analyze some recent approaches for solving the categoricity problem and to argue that a logical inferentialist should accept the infinitary rules of inference for the first order quantifiers, since our use of the expressions “all” and “there is” leads us beyond the concrete and finite reasoning, and human beings do sometimes employ infinitary rules of inference in their reasoning. (shrink)

The relationship between Carnap’s Logical Syntax of Language and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has been interpreted in several ways during past decades. One of the interpretations has gained keen advocates among Carnap scholars. It was originally provoked by what Caranp said in LSL, and it consists of two parts. First, it indicates that in TLP the possibility of speaking about the logical form of a language within the same language had been foresworn by Wittgenstein, but Carnap proved him wrong by producing (...) a book written exactly in the manner which had been proscribed by Wittgenstein. This is the debate about the possibility of speaking about logical form. Second, Wittgenstein’s dogmatism with regard to the existence of a unique correct grammar at the foundation of the language has been contrasted with Carnap’s open-mindedness in conceiving a boundless ocean of possibilities for constructing logical systems. Interestingly enough, Wittgenstein rambled with rage in reaction to Carnap’s view about the LSL-TLP relationship. But unlike Carnap’s view, which led to a dominant interpretation of the relationship, Wittgenstein’s testimony about the case has been strangely ignored in the history of analytic philosophy. In this paper, I try to make an inquiry about the grounds for Wittgenstein’s dissatisfaction with the Carnapian reading of the LSL-TLP relationship. I will show that Wittgenstein was not totally unfair in his judgment, and that some salient aspects of LSL could be best understood in the light, or rather the gloom, of TLP, and bear a significant resemblance to it. This, however, does not need to diminish the logical and historical significance of LSL. (shrink)

Carnap's conception of linguistic frameworks is widespread; however, it is not entirely clear nor consensual to pinpoint what is the influence of his stance within the traditional realist/anti-realist debate. In this paper, we place Carnap as a proponent of a scientific realist stance, by presenting what he called “linguistic realism”. Some possible criticisms are considered, and a case study is offered with wave function realism, a popular position in the philosophy of quantum mechanics.

Whether meaning is compositional has been a major issue in linguistics and formal philosophy of language for the last 2 decades. Semantic holism is widely and plausibly considered as an objection to the principle of semantic compositionality therein. It comes as a surprise that the holistic peculiarities of scientific language have been rarely addressed in formal accounts so far, given that semantic holism has its roots in the philosophy of science. For this reason, a model-theoretic approach to semantic holism in (...) the language of science is presented here. This approach preserves compositionality to a large extent. *Received September 2009; revised February 2010. †To contact the author, please write to: Seminar for Philosophy, Logic, and Theory of Science, Hauspostfach 49, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich 80539, Germany; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to explore connections between a Carnapian semantics of theoretical terms and an eliminative structuralist approach in the philosophy of mathematics. Specifically, we will interpret the language of Peano arithmetic by applying the modal semantics of theoretical terms introduced in Andreas (Synthese 174(3):367–383, 2010). We will thereby show that the application to Peano arithmetic yields a formal semantics of universal structuralism, i.e., the view that ordinary mathematical statements in arithmetic express general claims about all admissible interpretations (...) of the Peano axioms. Moreover, we compare this application with the modal structuralism by Hellman (Mathematics without numbers: towards a modal-structural interpretation. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1989), arguing that it provides us with an easier epistemology of statements in arithmetic. (shrink)

Some scientific theories are inconsistent, yet non-trivial and meaningful. How is that possible? The present paper aims to show that we can analyse the inferential use of such theories in terms of consistent compositions of the applications of universal axioms. This technique will be represented by a preferred models semantics, which allows us to accept the instances of universal axioms selectively. For such a semantics to be developed, the framework of partial structures by da Costa and French will be extended (...) by a few elements of the Sneed formalism, also known as the structuralist approach to science. (shrink)

In this paper, a solution to the problem of theoretical terms is developed that is based on Carnap’s doctrine of indirect interpretation of theoretical terms. This doctrine will be given a semantic, model-theoretic explanation that is not given by Carnap himself as he remains content with a syntactic explanation. From that semantic explanation, rules for the truth-value assignment to postulates, i.e. sentences that determine the meaning of theoretical terms, are derived. The logical status of postulates will be clarified thereby in (...) such a way that the problem of theoretical terms disappears. (shrink)

Modal logic has been applied in many different areas, as reasoning about time, knowledge and belief, necessity and possibility, to mention only some examples. In the present paper, an attempt is made to use modal logic to account for the semantics of theoretical sentences in scientific language. Theoretical sentences have been studied extensively since the work of Ramsey and Carnap. The present attempt at a modal analysis is motivated by there being several intended interpretations of the theoretical terms once these (...) terms are introduced through the axioms of a theory. (shrink)

This article concerns the split between syntactic and semantic approaches to scientific theories. It aims at showing that an axiomatic representation of a scientific theory is a precondition of comprehending if the models of contain infinite entities. This result is established on the basis of the proposition that the human mind—which is finitely bounded for all we know—is not capable of directly grasping infinite entities. In view of this cognitive limitation, an indirect and finite representation of possibly infinite components of (...) the models of a scientific theory proves to be indispensable. Sets of axioms and sets of axiom schemes provide such a representation. These considerations will be cast into an argument for an axiomatic conception of scientific theories. The article concludes with a case study of the ideal gas model. (shrink)

Designing models of complex phenomena is a difficult task in engineering that can be tackled by composing a number of partial models to produce a global model of the phenomena. We propose to embed the partial models in software agents and to implement their composition as a cooperative negotiation between the agents. The resulting multiagent system provides a global model of a phenomenon. We applied this approach in modelling two complex physiological processes: the heart rate regulation and the glucose-insulin metabolism. (...) Beyond the effectiveness demonstrated in these two applications, the idea of using models associated to software agents to give reason of complex phenomena is in accordance with current tendencies in epistemology, where it is evident an increasing use of computational models for scientific explanation and analysis. Therefore, our approach has not only a practical, but also a theoretical significance: agents embedding models are a technology suitable both to representing and to investigating reality. (shrink)

Once upon a time, logical conventionalism was the most popular philosophical theory of logic. It was heavily favored by empiricists, logical positivists, and naturalists. According to logical conventionalism, linguistic conventions explain logical truth, validity, and modality. And conventions themselves are merely syntactic rules of language use, including inference rules. Logical conventionalism promised to eliminate mystery from the philosophy of logic by showing that both the metaphysics and epistemology of logic fit into a scientific picture of reality. For naturalists of all (...) stripes, this was paradise. Alas, paradise was lost. By the end of the twentieth century, logical conventionalism had been almost universally abandoned. But more recently, it has been revitalized. This chapter provides an overview of logical conventionalism and its history, clears away misunderstandings, and briefly responds to both the canonical objections to conventionalism (from Quine, Dummett, Boghossian, and many others) as well as new objections (from Field and Golan). From paradise lost, to paradise regained: logical conventionalism is back. (shrink)

According to the received view formal semantics applies to natural language to some extent only. It is so because natural language is inherently indefinite, in particular, its expressions are ambiguous, vague and admits departures from syntactic rule. Moreover, intensional contexts occur in ordinary language—it results in limitations of the principle of compositionality. The ordinary conversation appeals to various principles, for instance, Grice’s maxims which exceed logical formalism. Thus, ordinary language cannot be fully formalized. On the other hand, if L is (...) a formal language, its metalanguage ML, must be partially informal—for instance, it contains, terms of ordinary mathematics, especially set theory. Even, if, for instance, due to the technique of aritmetization, ML can be represented in L, such a representation is only local. In fact, this view can be derived from some Tarski’s remarks on the role played by natural language. It is usually assumed that the universality of natural language, is the source of troubles associated with antinomies. It is so this circumstance requires a solution, for example by distinguishing levels of language. However, even if antinomies are excluded, what is informal is prior with respect to what is formal. It shows that formal semantics has limitations even with respect to formalized languages. (shrink)

Three metascientific concepts that have been object of philosophical analysis are the concepts oflaw, model and theory. The aim ofthis article is to present the explication of these concepts, and of their relationships, made within the framework of Sneedean or Metatheoretical Structuralism (Balzer et al. 1987), and of their application to a case from the realm of biology: Population Dynamics. The analysis carried out will make it possible to support, contrary to what some philosophers of science in general and of (...) biology in particular hold, the following claims: a) there are "laws" in biological sciences, b) many of the heterogeneous and different "models" of biology can be accommodated under some "theory", and c) this is exactly what confers great unifying power to biological theories. (shrink)

Two metascientific concepts that have been ― and still are ― object of philosophical analysis are the concepts of model and theory. But while the concept of scientific theory was one of the concepts to which philosophers of science devoted most attention during the 20th century, it is only in recent decades that the concept of scientific model has come to occupy a central position in philosophical reflection. However, it has done so in such a way that, at present, as (...) Jim Bogen states in the back cover of the book Scientific Models in the Philosophy of Science, by Daniela Bailer-Jones, “[t]he standard philosophical literature on the role of models in scientific reasoning is voluminous, disorganized, and confusing”. In spite of this, one of the axes that would allow us to organize at least part of this literature, and with which Bailer-Jones’ book closes, is that which is identified as one of the “contemporary philosophical issues: how theories and models relate to each other” (Bailer-Jones 2009, p. 208).That is why, in this introduction to the special issues of Metatheoria devoted to the topic of “Models and Theories in Biology”, we will present the main advances that have been made in the philosophical analysis of the concepts of model and theory in general and in biology in particular, and we will also do the same with the answers that have been given to the problem of "how theories and models relate to each other”. (shrink)

In searching for life in extraterrestrial space, it is essential to act based on an unequivocal definition of life. In the twentieth century, life was defined as cells that self-replicate, metabolize, and are open for mutations, without which genetic information would remain unchangeable, and evolution would be impossible. Current definitions of life derive from statistical mechanics, physics, and chemistry of the twentieth century in which life is considered to function machine like, ignoring a central role of communication. Recent observations show (...) that context-dependent meaningful communication and network formation (and control) are central to all life forms. Evolutionary relevant new nucleotide sequences now appear to have originated from social agents such as viruses, their parasitic relatives, and related RNA networks, not from errors. By applying the known features of natural languages and communication, a new twenty-first century definition of life can be reached in which communicative interactions are central to all processes of life. A new definition of life must integrate the current empirical knowledge about interactions between cells, viruses, and RNA networks to provide a better explanatory power than the twentieth century narrative. (shrink)

Se examinan las motivaciones teóricas, los lineamientos generales y las principales variantes de dos modos complementarios de entender la naturaleza de la lógica. El primero centrado en logros técnicos alcanzados desde fines del siglo XIX, y el segundo vinculado con la reflexión clásica sobre la naturaleza de los principios de la actividad de la razón. Se pone énfasis en la importancia del vínculo constitutivo entre las reglas y leyes lógicas y la estructura del lenguaje, en particular de aquél que subyace (...) cuando el habla se orienta por pretensiones cognoscitivas. (shrink)

This Ph.D. thesis provides a pilosophical account of the structure of the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 40s. The first, more historical part analyses how classical genetics came to be integrated into evolutionary thinking, highlighting in particular the importance of chromosomal mapping of Drosophila strains collected in the wild by Dobzansky, but also the work of Goldschmidt, Sumners, Timofeeff-Ressovsky and others. The second, more philosophical part attempts to answer the question wherein the unity of the synthesis consisted. I argue (...) that it exemplifies a weak of form of explanatory unification. (shrink)