Otávio Bueno

Structuralism and factualism are two significant metaphysical views about the fundamental traits of the world. Structuralism characterizes these traits in terms of structures, which, in turn, are either taken as primitive or accounted for mathematically in ways that may not settle what they are metaphysically (French, The structure of the world: metaphysics and representation. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014). Factualism takes fundamental traits of the world to be facts, which, in turn, either have constituents (Cumpa, A materialist criterion of fundamentality. Am Philos Q 51:319–324, 2014; Factualism and the scientific image. Int J Philos Stud 26:669–678, 2018) or do not, in which case their ultimate nature is similarly left open. These are importantly different accounts of the fundamental, which despite some surface similarities, turn out to be incompatible with one another. Can the debate between them be settled? Is there a fact of the matter to achieve that? In this paper, I argue that it is unclear how to offer conclusive answers to these questions, and advance an alternative, deflationary way of making sense of the debate.

Mona Simion and Christoph Kelp (2020) have recently challenged the traditional conceptual engineering project. They defend a reorientation of this project that moves away from correcting conceptual shortcomings and emphasizes conceptual innovation instead. Central to their proposal is the role played by etiological functions. The present paper argues that this approach leaves them without a specific mechanism for conceptual innovation. It then proposes one such mechanism, which operates independently of functions, by identifying the crucial role of conceptual refinement. After developing the refinement‐based approach, it illustrates how this approach works by considering instances of refined conceptual change from mathematics and logic as well as the sciences, and argues that the approach avoids the challenges faced by the function‐based view.

Some dialetheists have claimed that one of the central advantages of their approach to the Paradoxes of Self-Reference is that they are able to offer a unified solution to structurally similar paradoxes that arise in the semantic and set-theoretic realms (Priest in Mind 103:25–34, [12] and Beyond the limits of thought. Clarendon Press, Oxford, [16]). They argue that since the structures of all of these paradoxes conform with the Inclosure Schema (IS), the Principle of Uniform Solution (PUS) dictates that we should solve them all the same way. But the dialetheist’s approach to PUS collapses when it comes to the Curry Paradox, to which any solution based on dialetheism seems inapplicable. We show that a particular version of a ‘paracomplete’ theory (inspired by Field in Saving truth from paradox. Oxford University Press, Oxford, [8]) has available to it a way of avoiding these problems that the dialetheist cannot mirror without losing Modus Ponens. JC Beall has suggested a way of minimizing this loss, but Beall’s strategy runs up against a further difficulty about the PUS. This one involves the Irrationalist’s Paradox. We conclude with a dilemma: The dialetheist can either reject the principles that are used to accommodate ordinary reasoning when Modus Ponens or Disjunctive Syllogism fail, and thus live without the ability to mimic these inferences, or they can sacrifice the Principle of Uniform Solution by solving an extremely Liar-like semantic paradox in a way that has nothing to do with their solution to the Liar and Curry’s Paradox. In either case, the prospects for a plausible and truly uniform dialetheic solution to the paradoxes of self-reference are grim.

Typical accounts of reference demand that referring terms denote existent objects. This assumption is shared by theories across a variety of areas of philosophy, in particular, direct reference views in philosophy of language; neo-Fregean conceptions in the philosophy of mathematics, and easy-ontology approaches in metaphysics. In this paper, this assumption is resisted and the significance and the possibility of referring to the nonexistent is highlighted. After identifying difficulties in all these three theories and resisting a free-logic approach, ontologically neutral quantifiers, which do not require the existence of what is quantified over, are suggested as providing a better conception. It is concluded that the difficulties raised to the previous theories do not affect the ontologically neutral approach, while the approach, properly conceived, allows for nonexistent objects to have properties.

This comprehensive collection of original essays written by an international group of scholars addresses the central themes in Latin American philosophy. Represents the most comprehensive survey of historical and contemporary Latin American philosophy available today Comprises a specially commissioned collection of essays, many of them written by Latin American authors Examines the history of Latin American philosophy and its current issues, traces the development of the discipline, and offers biographical sketches of key Latin American thinkers Showcases the diversity of approaches, issues, and styles that characterize the field.

Proofs are central to mathematical practice in large part due to the heuristic role that some of them play. Not only do they help establish a result, but often provide new avenues of mathematical research. Jody Azzouni has argued that underlying the practice of creating mathematical proofs there is a very specific norm: to each proof there should be a corresponding algorithmic derivation, a derivation in an algorithmic system. Here a framework is provided to classify and assess mathematical proofs. It is argued that there is a plurality of kinds of proofs in mathematics and a plurality of roles these proofs play. In the end, mathematical practice is far less unified in this respect than it may seem to be.

Crucial to Hilary Putnam’s realism in the philosophy of mathematics is to maintain the objectivity of mathematics without the commitment to the existence of mathematical objects. Putnam’s indispensability argument was devised as part of this conception. In this paper, I reconstruct and reassess Putnam’s argument for the indispensability of mathematics, and distinguish it from the more familiar, Quinean version of the argument. Although I argue that Putnam’s approach ultimately fails, I develop an alternative way of implementing his form of realism about mathematics that, by using different resources than those Putnam invokes, avoids the difficulties faced by his view.

Scientific representation: A long journey from pragmatics to pragmatics Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9465-5 Authors James Ladyman, Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Rd, Bristol, BS8 1TB UK Otávio Bueno, Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA Mauricio Suárez, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain Bas C. van Fraassen, Philosophy Department, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

In a recent debate, Eric Drexler and Richard Smalley have discussed the chemical and physical possibility of constructing molecular assemblers - devices that guide chemical reactions by placing, with atomic precision, reactive molecules. Drexler insisted on the mechanical feasibility of such assemblers, whereas Smalley resisted the idea that such devices could be chemically constructed, because we do not have the required control. Underlying the debate, there are differences regarding the appropriate goals, methods, and theories of nanotechnology, and the appropriate way of conceptualizing molecular assemblers. Not surprisingly, incommensurability emerges. In this paper, I assess the main features of the debate, the levels of the emerging incommensurability, and indicate one way in which the debate could be decided.

A number of people have recently argued for a structural approach to accounting for the applications of mathematics. Such an approach has been called "the mapping account". According to this view, the applicability of mathematics is fully accounted for by appreciating the relevant structural similarities between the empirical system under study and the mathematics used in the investigation ofthat system. This account of applications requires the truth of applied mathematical assertions, but it does not require the existence of mathematical objects. In this paper, we discuss the shortcomings of this account, and show how these shortcomings can be overcome by a broader view of the application of mathematics: the inferential conception.

Styles of reasoning are important devices to understand scientific practice. As I use the concept, a style of reasoning is a pattern of inferential relations that are used to select, interpret, and support evidence for scientific results. In this paper, I defend the view that there is a plurality of styles of reasoning: different domains of science often invoke different styles. I argue that this plurality is an important source of disunity in scientific practice, and it provides additional arguments in support of the disunity claim. I also contrast Ian Hacking’s broad characterization of styles of reasoning with a narrow understanding that I favor. Drawing on examples from molecular biology, chemistry and mathematics, I argue that differences in style of reasoning lead to differences in the way the relevant results are obtained and interpreted. The result is a pluralist view about styles of reasoning that is sensitive to nuances of inferential relations in scientific activity.

One major motivation for nominalism, at least according to Hartry Field, is the desirability of intrinsic explanations: explanations that don’t invoke objects that are causally irrelevant to the phenomena being explained. There is something right about the search for such explanations. But that search must be carefully implemented. Nothing is gained if, to avoid a certain class of objects, one only introduces other objects and relations that are just as nominalistically questionable. We will argue that this is the case for two alleged nominalist views: Field’s fictionalism, and Frank Arntzenius and Cian Dorr’s geometricalism. Central to our competing approach to nominalism is a distinction between terms that refer to objects and ones that instead code empirical phenomena while being referentially empty. We next contrast our approach to nominalism, which uses this term-grained distinction between coding and referring, with approaches that instead attempt to make a sentence-grained distinction between mathematical and non-mathematical content. We show the latter approach fails to be responsive to objections raised by van Fraassen. In the end, only one last approach to nominalism is left standing. 1 Introduction2 Troubles for Mathematical Fictionalism2.1 A distinction2.2 Field’s programme2.3 Parts of nominalistically acceptable entities are nominalistically acceptable2.4 Structural assumptions: How far can these be pushed?2.5 Cases of indispensable theories where the mathematical posits are known not to be real2.6 How does science distinguish between the indispensable structural presuppositions taken to be real and those that aren’t?2.7 Do physicists distinguish between mathematical posits and non-mathematical posits?2.8 Mathematical coding versus genuine metaphysics. Case study: Fields2.9 The upshot3 Troubles for Topologism4 Contrasts: Kitcher, Maddy, Sober, and van Fraassen4.1 Sober’s approach4.2 Maddy’s approach4.3 Kitcher’s approach4.4 Where do we go from here?4.5 Van Fraassen’s objection to Maddy’s approach to ontological commitment5 Conclusion.

An account of scientific representation in terms of partial structures and partial morphisms is further developed. It is argued that the account addresses a variety of difficulties and challenges that have recently been raised against such formal accounts of representation. This allows some useful parallels between representation in science and art to be drawn, particularly with regard to apparently inconsistent representations. These parallels suggest that a unitary account of scientific and artistic representation is possible, and our article can be viewed as laying the groundwork for such an account—although, as we shall acknowledge, significant differences exist between these two forms of representation.

Pyrrhonists provide a way of investigating the world in which conflicting views about a given topic are critically compared, assessed, and juxtaposed. Since Pyrrhonists are ultimately unable to decide between these views, they end up suspending judgment about the issues under examination. In this paper, I consider the question of whether Pyrrhonists can be realists or anti-realists about science, focusing, in particular, on contemporary philosophical discussions about it. Althoughprima faciethe answer seems to be negative, I argue that if realism and anti-realism are understood as philosophical stances rather than particular doctrines—that is, if they are conceptualized in terms of a mode of engagement, a style of reasoning, and some propositional attitudes—the apparent tension between Pyrrhonism, realism, and anti-realism vanishes. The result is a first step in the direction of bringing Pyrrhonism to bear on contemporary debates in the philosophy of science.

In this paper, we provide a new formulation of a coherence theory of truth using the resources of the partial structures approach − in particular the notions of partial structure and quasi-truth. After developing this new formulation, we apply the resulting theory to the philosophy of mathematics, and argue that it can be used to develop a new account of nominalism in mathematics. This application illustrates the strength and usefulness of the proposed formulation of a coherence theory of truth.Neste artigo, propomos uma nova formulação de uma teoria coerentista da verdade utilizando os recursos da abordagem de estruturas parciais - em particular as noções de estrutura parcial e quase-verdade. Após desenvolver esta formulação, aplicamos a teoria resultante à filosofia da matemática, e argumentamos que aquela pode ser usada para desenvolver um novo tratamento do nominalismo na matemática. Esta aplicação ilustra a força e utilidade da formulação proposta de uma teoria coerentista da verdade.

Michael Dummett, Frege and other philosophers. Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1991. xii + 330pp. £35. ISBN W.Balzer and C.U.Moulines, Structuralist theory of science:focal issues, new results, Berlin; de Gruyter, 1996. xi + 295 pp.DM 210. ISBN 3-11-014075-6 Henry Prakken, Logical tools for modeling legal argument a study of defeasible reasoning in law.Dordrecht, The Netherlands:Kluwer Academic, 1997, xiii + 314pp.£75.00/$125.00 J.Srzednicki and Z.Stachniak Lesniewski’s Systems.Protothetic.Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, 54, Dordrecht, Boston and London:Kluwer, 1998. xiv + 310 pp, £99. ISBN 0-7923-4504-5

Perceptual experiences provide an important source of information about the world. It is clear that having the capacity of undergoing such experiences yields an evolutionary advantage. But why should humans have developed not only the ability of simply seeing, but also of seeing that something is thus and so? In this paper, I explore the significance of distinguishing perception from conception for the development of the kind of minds that creatures such as humans typically have. As will become clear, it is crucial to pay careful attention to the different kinds of information that are involved in perceiving and conceiving (including the way such information is gathered and transmitted). By identifying such kinds of information and the role they play, we can then understand an important feature of why creatures like us have the kind of consciousness and mental processes we do.

This comprehensive collection of original essays written by an international group of scholars addresses the central themes in Latin American philosophy. Represents the most comprehensive survey of historical and contemporary Latin American philosophy available today Comprises a specially commissioned collection of essays, many of them written by Latin American authors Examines the history of Latin American philosophy and its current issues, traces the development of the discipline, and offers biographical sketches of key Latin American thinkers Showcases the diversity of approaches, issues, and styles that characterize the field.