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11Kantian Accounts of Thought ExperimentsIn James Robert Brown, Yiftach J. H. Fehige & Michael T. Stuart (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments, Routledge. 2018.The paper outlines a critical history of the concept of TE from a broadly Kantian viewpoint. The thread of our discussion has been Kant's position on the nature of the a priori and how each neo-Kantian theory of TEs can be understood in terms of its own position on this issue. Section 2 examines some aspects of Kant's philosophy that are related to today's debate on TEs. Section 3 is devoted to the precursors of neo-Kantian accounts of TEs, with a special emphasis on Ørsted's account. This autho…Read more
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9Carl G. Hempel: Thought Experiments Between Methodological Monism and the Discovery/Justification DichotomyEpistemology and Philosophy of Science 61 (1): 202-222. 2024.Hempel’s account of thought experiments has been discussed only by a very few authors and, for the most part, with rather cursory remarks. Its importance, however, is not only historical, but also systematic theoretical, because it involves the distinction between discovery and justification, a main pillar of neopositivistic philosophy of science. Hempel raised the question whether thought experiments constitute a methodological component of scientific research or, on the contrary, are merely a …Read more
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7Induktive Exemplifikation in realen und gedanklichen ExperimentenDistinctio 2 (2): 17-43. 2023.Der Neue Experimentalismus musste sich angesichts seines Gegensatzes zwischen experimentellen Praktiken und grundlegenden Theorien mit dem Problem der Beziehung zwischen der Einmaligkeit der ersteren und der Allgemeinheit der letzteren auseinandersetzen. Andere Autoren (von Charles A. Baylis und Nelson Goodman bis Catherine Elgin) haben das Konzept der Exemplifikation verwendet, um die Beziehung zwischen partikulären und universellen/allgemeinen Begriffen oder Gesetzen zu klären. Es stellt sich …Read more
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6Evandro Agazzi: Scientific Objectivity and Its Contexts: Springer, Heidelberg/new York/dordrecht/london, 2014, 504 pp, $179.00, ISBN: 978-3-319-04659-4 (review)Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 47 (1): 257-259. 2016.
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4All the most important epistemological and ontological theses of Kuhn's theory of science depend to a decisive extent on corresponding ideas of Wittgenstein's theory of meaning. The semantic and ontological assumptions that determine the main trend of Kuhn's epistemology consist, respectively, of a theory of meaning as use or application of empirical terms to nature and an ontology that conceives the real as a continuous essentially amorphous and undifferentiated, in which only language and its …Read more
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3Robustness, Mechanism, and the Counterfactual Attribution of Goals in BiologyIn Marta Bertolaso, Silvia Caianiello & Emanuele Serrelli (eds.), Biological Robustness. Emerging Perspectives from within the Life Sciences, Springer. pp. 55-74. 2018.The first part of this paper discusses two important meanings of robustness and shows their essential connection with the notion of intersubjective reproducibility. As I shall maintain, robustness in both senses of the term is intimately connected with the notion of scientific experiment. This is the important element of truth of the mechanistic systems approach, which explains events as products of robust and regular systems and processes. In the second part of this paper I shall show that the …Read more
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3Duhem on Thought Experiments. Or: Did Duhem Really Reject Mach’s Thought Experiments?In Friedrich Stadler (ed.), Ernst Mach – Life, Work, Influence, Springer Verlag. pp. 651-662. 2019.The conventional interpretation that Duhem condemned outright any type of thought experiment in Mach’s sense should be, at least in large part, rejected. There are some interesting remarks made by Mach and Duhem that suggest a very different reading. In this paper I shall take up and develop these remarks, which lead to the conjecture that Duhem’s criticism was not intended to be a complete rejection of thought experiments but a completion and supplement of Mach’s theory. Duhem, while retaining …Read more
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2Thought Experiments and Computer SimulationsIn Lorenzo Magnani & Claudia Casadio (eds.), Model Based Reasoning in Science and Technology. Logical, Epistemological, and Cognitive Issues, Springer Verlag. 2006.The main purpose of this paper is to investigate some important aspects of the relationship between thought experiment and computer simulation, from the point of view of real experiment. In the first part of this paper, I shall pass in critical review four important approaches concerning the relationship between TE and CS. None of these approaches, though containing some important insights, has succeeded in distinguishing between CS and TE, on the one hand, and REs, on the other. Neither have th…Read more
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A. Antonietti, "Cervello, mente, cultura. L'interazionismo di J.C. Eccles " (review)Epistemologia 12 (1): 169. 1989.
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R. Harré, "Le filosofie della scienza. Panorama introduttivo" (review)Epistemologia 8 (2): 345. 1985.
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G. Villani, Complesso e Organizzato. Sistemi strutturati in fisica, chimica, biologia e oltreEpistemologia 32 (2): 347. 2009.
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Psychology between science, technology and hermeneuticsRivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica 94 (3): 471-490. 2002.
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Operazionismo ed ermeneutica nella fondazione epistemologica della psicoanalisiEpistemologia 11 (1): 61. 1988.
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Verità ed epistemologia evoluzionisticaPhilosophical News 2. 2011.The theory of evolution and the theory of truth are closely connected in the pro-gram of Evolutionary Epistemology . This paper aims to show that the verybroad, naturalistic conception of cognition and truth adopted by EE, which comprises an amoeba’s reactions as well as human symbolic thinking, usually leads to confusion between “adaptation to the environment” on the one hand and knowledge on the other hand. However, the main thesis of EE can be consistently upheld if we make this distinction
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Gewissheit und Wahrheit bei PopperIn Wilhelm Baumgartner (ed.), Gewissheit und Gewissen: Festschrift für Franz Wiedmann zum 60. Geburtstag, Königshausen & Neumann. 1987.
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Individualismo metodologico e mondo delle istituzioni in PopperNuova Civiltà Delle Macchine 20 (3/4). 2002.
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Paul Ricœur. Persona e ontologia, coll. « Nuova Universale Studium » n° 55Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 179 (4): 609-609. 1989.