Lorenzo Magnani

Camouflage commonly refers to the ability to make something appear as different from what it actually is, or not to make it appear at all. This concept originates from biological studies to describe a range of strategies used by organisms to dissimulate their presence in the environment, but it is frequently borrowed by other semantic fields as it is possible to camouflage one’s position, intentions, opinion etc.: an interesting conceptual continuum between the multiple denotations of camouflage seems to emerge from the multiple homologies. Following this outlook, the first part of this paper aims at sketching out the main forms of camouflage as understood within their biological framework, insisting on the inferential dynamics underdetermined and allowing camouflage, making use of the concept of abduction as received from the Peircean heritage. The second part explores some of the most relevant occurrences of camouflage in dialectical and rhetorical perspectives. The third section aims at drawing the sums of the comparison between linguistic and biological camouflage, showing how strategies aimed at debunking verbal camouflage correspond to their respective countermeasures in biologically-intended camouflage.

During the second half of the last century, the importance of serendipitous events in scientific frameworks has been progressively recognized, fueling hard debates about their role, nature, and structure in philosophy and sociology of science. Alas, while discussing the relevance of the topic for the comprehension of the nature of scientific discovery, the philosophical literature has hardly paid attention to the cognitive significance of serendipity, accepting rather than examining some of its most specific features, such as its game-changing effect, the unexpectedness of its occurrence, and its affinity with the concept of “luck”. Thus, in this paper we aim at analyzing these characteristics in the light of their cognitive implications in the recognition, performance, and possible stimulation of serendipitous events in relation to scientific discoveries.

This handbook offers the first comprehensive reference guide to the interdisciplinary field of model-based reasoning. It highlights the role of models as mediators between theory and experimentation, and as educational devices, as well as their relevance in testing hypotheses and explanatory functions. The Springer Handbook merges philosophical, cognitive and epistemological perspectives on models with the more practical needs related to the application of this tool across various disciplines and practices. The result is a unique, reliable source of information that guides readers toward an understanding of different aspects of model-based science, such as the theoretical and cognitive nature of models, as well as their practical and logical aspects. The inferential role of models in hypothetical reasoning, abduction and creativity once they are constructed, adopted, and manipulated for different scientific and technological purposes is also discussed. Written by a group of internationally renowned experts in philosophy, the history of science, general epistemology, mathematics, cognitive and computer science, physics and life sciences, as well as engineering, architecture, and economics, this Handbook uses numerous diagrams, schemes and other visual representations to promote a better understanding of the concepts. This also makes it highly accessible to an audience of scholars and students with different scientific backgrounds. All in all, the Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science represents the definitive application-oriented reference guide to the interdisciplinary field of model-based reasoning.

In her book Abductive Reasoning Atocha Aliseda stresses the attention to the logical models of abduction, centering on the semantic tableaux as a method for extending and improving both the whole cognitive/philosophical view on it and on other more restricted logical approaches. I will describe the importance of increasing logical knowledge on abduction also taking advantage of some ideas coming from the so-called distributed cognition where logical models are seen as forms of cognitive externalizations of preexistent in-formal human reasoning performances.

In her book Abductive Reasoning Atocha Aliseda (2006) stresses the attention to the logical models of abduction, centering on the semantic tableaux as a method for extending and improving both the whole cognitive/philosophical view on it and on other more restricted logical approaches. I will provide further insight on two aspects. The first is re-lated to the importance of increasing logical knowledge on abduction: Aliseda clearly shows how the logical study on abduction in turn helps us to extend and modernize the classical and received idea of logic. The second refers to some ideas coming from the so-called distributed cognition and concerns the role of logical models as forms of cognitive exter-nalizations of preexistent in-formal human reasoning performances. The logical externalization in objective systems, communicable and sharable, is able to grant stable perspectives endowed with symbolic, abstract, and rigorous cogni-tive features. I will also emphasize that Aliseda especially stresses that this character of stability and objectivity of logical achievements are not usually present in models of abduction that are merely cognitive and epistemological, and of ex-treme importance from the computational point of view.

In this paper we show how some reasoning, though fallacious, can appear to be attractive and useful for beings-like-us. Although they do not provide conclusive evidence to support or reject a certain claim the way scientific statements do, they tell us something interesting about how humans build up their arguments and reasons. First of all, we will consider and investigate three main types of fallacies: argumentum ad hominem, argumentum ad verecundiam, and argumentum ad populum. These three fallacies are traditionally considered as examples of a broader category called ignoratio elenchi. Secondly, we show how people who commit these fallacies rely on information about other human beings in their reasoning. That is, they do not follow certain logical procedures that eventually lead them to correct conclusions. But they simply make use of others as social characters. For example, being an authority, being an expert, being part of a class, etc., become the substitutes for more direct evidence to support a certain claim or to make an argument more appealing.

En el presente artículo se sostiene que, a través de la tecnología, las personas podemos simplificar y resolver tareas morales incluso en presencia de información incompleta o de una capacidad insuficiente para la acción moral. Muchas cosas externas, normalmente concebidas como inertes desde un punto de vista moral, pueden considerarse lo que aquí se denominarán mediadores morales. Por lo tanto, no todas las herramientas morales están en el interior de nuestra cabeza, sino que muchas están distribuidas en objetos y estructuras externas que funcionan como dispositivos éticos. Con el objeto de investigar con detalle este conflicto ético entre los seres humanos y las cosas, consideraremos el papel que desempeñan los objetos, las estructuras y los artefactos tecnológicos mostrándolos como delegados y mediadores morales.