Matteo De Benedetto

This paper aims to show the central role that higher-order evidence plays in an established cultural practice in our society, namely, legal cross-examination. First, we will show how legal cross-examination can be epistemologically reconstructed as an epistemic practice that has the higher-order defeat of a witness’ testimony as its main goal. Then, we will discuss how different paradigmatic cases of successful cross-examination arguably instantiate different mechanisms of higher-order defeat that have been described in the epistemological literature. We will argue that our analysis further demonstrates the significance of higher-order evidence as an epistemic phenomenon and provides a prima facie case for a pluralist view of higher-order defeat.

Structures are ubiquitous in mathematics. But how should they be understood? Modelists claim they are model-theoretic structures. This thesis can be read in two ways: as a claim about what structures refer to, or about how we conceptualize them. Objects-modelism, developed by Button and Walsh, pursues the first; the second leads to concepts-modelism, which remains underexplored. In this paper we develop and defend a version of concepts-modelism, cognitive modelism, drawing on Carey’s theory of conceptual development, and we show how it addresses the challenges Button and Walsh pose for a conceptual account of mathematical structures.

In this paper, we offer a novel normative analysis of the inclusion fallacy. This refers to the robust tendency of experimental participants to reason about categories in a way that violates the laws of probability. In contrast to the received view, we argue that participants’ preferences in this kind of task might be rationally defended. To this purpose, we employ the philosophical notion of truthlikeness as a normative benchmark for category-based induction. Our analysis complements the main empirical findings and theoretical predictions of the psychological literature and it explains the difficulties that probabilistic models have in treating cases like the inclusion fallacy.

In this paper, we will focus on a specific way in which non-epistemic values can influence scientific inquiry, i.e., how they affect the way in which members of a scientific community apply epistemic values. We will first introduce the concept of epistemic niche construction in science, that is, the idea that the epistemic commitments underlying the practice of a scientific community result from a feedback-loop process between the scientific practice itself and the related disciplinary matrix. We will then describe how non-epistemic values can affect the different steps of this feedback-loop process. We will substantiate our argumentation through a historical case study: the rise and fall of nineteenth-century craniology.

Carey’s (2009) account of bootstrapping in developmental psychology has been criticized out of a lack of theoretical precision and because of its alleged circularity (Rips et al. 2013, Cognition 128 (3): 320–330; Fodor 2010, Times Literary Supplement, 7–8; Rey 2014, Mind & Language 29 (2): 109–132). In this paper, we respond to these criticisms by connecting the debate on bootstrapping with recent accounts of conceptual creativity in philosophy of science. Specifically, we build on Nersessian’s (2010) hybrid-models-based theory of scientific conceptual change to develop a refined model of bootstrapping. The key explanatory feature of this model, which we will call hybrid bootstrapping, is the iterated hybridization of different representational domains. We show how hybrid bootstrapping can answer two major critiques that have been leveled against Carey’s account: the circularity challenge and the specification challenge.

In this paper, we will analyze the relationships among three important philosophical theses in Kuhn’s thought: the plurality of worlds thesis, the no universal algorithm thesis, and the niche-construction analogy. We will do that by resorting to a hitherto neglected notion employed by Kuhn: the idea of a feedback loop. We will show that this notion captures an important structural aspect of the epistemic dynamics at work in each of the three theses, therefore allowing us to read them as constituting a virtuous epistemic cycle. Finally, we will apply our unified interpretation of the three theses to scientific practice to sketch a novel neo-Kuhnian picture of theory choice.

We focus on a neglected aspect of scientific theory choice: how the selection of theories affects epistemic values. Building on Kuhn, we provide a general characterization of the feedback-loop dynamic between theories and values in theory choice as analogous to the relationship between organisms and the environment in niche construction. We argue that understanding theory choice as niche construction can explain how certain values acquire more weight and a specific application over time, and how resistance to scientific change can, therefore, arise. We illustrate our picture by looking at the Mendelian–biometrician controversy.

In the last decades, scientific laws and concepts have been increasingly conceptualized as a patchwork of contextual and indeterminate entities. These patchwork constructions are sometimes claimed to be incompatible with traditional views of scientific theories and concepts, but it is difficult to assess such claims due to the informal character of these approaches. In this paper, we will show that patchwork approaches pose a new problem of theoretical terms. Specifically, we will demonstrate how a toy example of a patchwork structure might trivialize Carnap’s semantics for theoretical terms based upon epsilon calculus. However, as we will see, this new problem of theoretical terms can be given a neo-Carnapian solution, by generalizing Carnap’s account of theoretical terms in such a way that it applies also to patchwork constructions. Our neo-Carnapian approach to theoretical terms will also demonstrate that the analytic/synthetic distinction is meaningful even for patchwork structures.

In this paper, I will focus on the nature of theoretical concepts, i.e., the psychological entities related to theoretical terms in science. I will first argue that the standard picture of theoretical concepts in twentieth-century philosophy of science understood them as representation-oriented common taxonomic concepts. However, I will show how, in light of recent pragmatist approaches to scientific laws and theories, several important theoretical concepts in science do not seem to fit such picture. I will then argue that these theoretical concepts should be understood instead as goal-derived concepts, since their construction and use exhibit the typical characteristics that cognitive scientists assign to goal-derived concepts. I will furthermore argue that the existence of theoretical concepts that are goal-derived concepts represents yet another example of the central role that human goals play in science.

In this paper, we will survey the different uses of the term algorithm in contemporary legal practice. We will argue that the concept of algorithm currently exhibits a substantial degree of open texture, co-determined by the open texture of the concept of algorithm itself and by the open texture inherent to legal discourse. We will substantiate our argument by virtue of a case study, in which we analyze a recent jurisprudential case where the first and second-degree judges have carved-out contrasting notions of algorithm. We will see that, thanks to our analysis of the open texture of the notion of algorithm in legal language, we can make sense of the different decisions taken by the judges as different contextually-determined sharpenings of the concept of algorithm. Finally, we will draw some general conclusions concerning the use of technical terms in legal instruments that address new technologies, such as the EU AI Act.

This paper develops a novel approach to the question of the normativity of logic, which we reinterpret as a clash between two intuitions: the direct normativity intuition and the unfeasibility intuition. The standard response has been to dismiss the direct normativity intuition, bridging logic and reasoning via principles that relativize the normative import of logic to pragmatic and feasibility considerations. We argue that the standard response is misguided. Building upon theories of bounded rationality, our approach conceptualizes reasoning as constrained by multiple, independent normative factors, logical and non-logical ones. These different factors can conflict with one another, to the effect that logically sound inferences might not coincide with what is feasible for an agent to infer. From this perspective, we will argue that logic gives us only prima facie, i.e. contributive and defeasible, obligations on what to believe, but that such obligations do not always coincide with what an agent ought to believe all things considered. These distinctions will dissolve the alleged clash between the direct normativity and the unfeasibility intuition.

Conceptual engineering wants analytic philosophy to be centered around the assessment and improvement of philosophical concepts. But contemporary debates about conceptual engineering do not engage much with the vast literature on conceptual change that exists in philosophy of science. In this article, I argue that an adequate appreciation of the history of philosophy of science can contribute to discussions about conceptual engineering. Specifically, I show that the evolution of debates over scientific conceptual change arguably demonstrates that, contrary to what is commonly assumed in the literature about conceptual engineering, conceptual change is possible within an externalist metasemantics and that any adequate theory of conceptual change should be metasemantically plastic.

Lakatos’ (Lakatos, 1976) model of mathematical conceptual change has been criticized for neglecting the diversity of dynamics exhibited by mathematical concepts. In this work, I will propose a pluralist approach to mathematical change that re-conceptualizes Lakatos’ model of proofs and refutations as an ideal dynamic that mathematical concepts can exhibit to different degrees with respect to multiple dimensions. Drawing inspiration from Godfrey-Smith’s (Godfrey-Smith, 2009) population-based Darwinism, my proposal will be structured around the notion of a conceptual population, the opposition between Lakatosian and Euclidean populations, and the spatial tools of the Lakatosian space. I will show how my approach is able to account for the variety of dynamics exhibited by mathematical concepts with the help of three case studies.

In this paper, I will offer a novel perspective on Carnapian explication, understanding it as a philosophical analogue of the transfer principle methodology that originated in nineteenth-century projective geometry. Building upon the historical influence that projective geometry exerted on Carnap’s philosophy, I will show how explication can be modeled as a kind of transfer principle that connects, relative to a given task and normatively constrained by the desiderata chosen by the explicators, the functional properties of concepts belonging to different conceptual frameworks. Moreover, I will demonstrate how, in light of this characterization, we can better appreciate the evolution of Carnap’s metaphilosophy.

According to Kuhn's speciation analogy, scientific specialisation is fundamentally analogous to biological speciation. In this paper, we extend Kuhn's original language-centred formulation of the speciation analogy, to account for episodes of scientific specialisation centred around methodological differences. Building upon recent views in evolutionary biology about the process of speciation by genetic divergence, we will show how these methodology-centred episodes of scientific specialisation can be understood as cases of specialisation driven by value divergence. We will apply our model of specialisation by value divergence to an episode of methodology-centred scientific specialisation: the emergence of molecular biology.

This thesis focuses on models of conceptual change in science and philosophy. In particular, I developed a new bootstrapping methodology for studying conceptual change, centered around the formalization of several popular models of conceptual change and the collective assessment of their improved formal versions via nine evaluative dimensions. Among the models of conceptual change treated in the thesis are Carnap’s explication, Lakatos’ concept-stretching, Toulmin’s conceptual populations, Waismann’s open texture, Mark Wilson’s patches and facades, Sneed’s structuralism, and Paul Thagard’s conceptual revolutions. In order to analyze and compare the conception of conceptual change provided by these different models, I rely on several historical reconstructions of episodes of scientific conceptual change. The historical episodes of scientific change that figure in this work include the emergence of the morphological concept of fish in biological taxonomies, the development of scientific conceptions of temperature, the Church-Turing thesis and related axiomatizations of effective calculability, the history of the concept of polyhedron in 17th and 18th century mathematics, Hamilton’s invention of the quaternions, the history of the pre-abstract group concepts in 18th and 19th century mathematics, the expansion of Newtonian mechanics to viscous fluids forces phenomena, and the chemical revolution. I will also present five different formal and informal improvements of four specific models of conceptual change. I will first present two different improvements of Carnapian explication, a formal and an informal one. My informal improvement of Carnapian explication will consist of a more fine-grained version of the procedure that adds an intermediate, third step to the two steps of Carnapian explication. I will show how this novel three-step version of explication is more suitable than its traditional two-step relative to handle complex cases of explications. My second, formal improvement of Carnapian explication will be a full explication of the concept of explication itself within the theory of conceptual spaces. By virtue of this formal improvement, the whole procedure of explication together with its application procedures and its pragmatic desiderata will be reconceptualized as a precise procedure involving topological and geometrical constraints inside the theory of conceptual spaces. My third improved model of conceptual change will consist of a formal explication of Darwinian models of conceptual change that will make vast use of Godfrey-Smith’s population-based Darwinism for targeting explicitly mathematical conceptual change. My fourth improvement will be dedicated instead to Wilson’s indeterminate model of conceptual change. I will show how Wilson’s very informal framework can be explicated within a modified version of the structuralist model-theoretic reconstructions of scientific theories. Finally, the fifth improved model of conceptual change will be a belief-revision-like logical framework that reconstructs Thagard’s model of conceptual revolution as specific revision and contraction operations that work on conceptual structures. At the end of this work, a general conception of conceptual change in science and philosophy emerges, thanks to the combined action of the three layers of my methodology. This conception takes conceptual change to be a multi-faceted phenomenon centered around the dynamics of groups of concepts. According to this conception, concepts are best reconstructed as plastic and inter-subjective entities equipped with a non-trivial internal structure and subject to a certain degree of localized holism. Furthermore, conceptual dynamics can be judged from a weakly normative perspective, bound to be dependent on shared values and goals. Conceptual change is then best understood, according to this conception, as a ubiquitous phenomenon underlying all of our intellectual activities, from science to ordinary linguistic practices. As such, conceptual change does not pose any particular problem to value-laden notions of scientific progress, objectivity, and realism. At the same time, this conception prompts all our concept-driven intellectual activities, including philosophical and metaphilosophical reflections, to take into serious consideration the phenomenon of conceptual change. An important consequence of this conception, and of the analysis that generated it, is in fact that an adequate understanding of the dynamics of philosophical concepts is a prerequisite for analytic philosophy to develop a realistic and non-idealized depiction of itself and its activities.

Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in the method of explication as a procedure for conceptual engineering in philosophy and in science. In the philosophical literature, there has been a lively debate about the different desiderata that a good explicatum has to satisfy. In comparison, the goal of explicating the concept of explication itself has not been central to the philosophical debate. The main aim of this work is to suggest a way of filling this gap by explicating ‘explication’ by means of conceptual spaces theory. Specifically, I show how different, strictly-conceptual readings of explication desiderata can be made precise as geometrical or topological constraints over the conceptual spaces related to the explicandum and the explicatum. Moreover, I show also how the richness of the geometrical representation of concepts in conceptual spaces theory allows us to achieve more fine-grained readings of explication desiderata, thereby overcoming some alleged limitations of explication as a procedure of conceptual engineering.

Thagard presented a framework for conceptual change in science based on conceptual systems. Thagard challenged belief revision theorists, claiming that traditional belief-revision systems are able to model only the two most conservative types of changes in his framework, but not the more radical ones. The main aim of this work is to take up Thagard’s challenge, presenting a belief-revision-like system able to mirror radical types of conceptual change. We will do that with a conceptual revision system, i.e. a belief-revision-like system that takes conceptual structures as units of revisions. We will show how our conceptual revision and contraction operations satisfy analogous of the AGM postulates at the conceptual level and are able to mimic Thagard’s radical types of conceptual change.

Mark Wilson presents a highly original account of conceptual behavior that challenges many received views about concepts in analytic philosophy. Few attempts have been made to rationally reconstruct Wilson’s framework of patches and facades within a precise semantic framework. I will show how a modified version of the structuralist framework offers a semantic reconstruction of scientific theories capable of modeling Wilson’s ideas about conceptual behavior. Specifically, I will argue that Theory-Elements and a modified version of Theory-Nets explicate respectively Wilson’s patches and facades. I will also demonstrate how several wandering phenomena described by Wilson can be adequately reconstructed within my framework.

In recent years two different axiomatic characterizations of the intuitive concept of effective calculability have been proposed, one by Sieg and the other by Dershowitz and Gurevich. Analyzing them from the perspective of Carnapian explication, I argue that these two characterizations explicate the intuitive notion of effective calculability in two different ways. I will trace back these two ways to Turing’s and Kolmogorov’s informal analyses of the intuitive notion of calculability and to their respective outputs: the notion of computorability and the notion of algorithmability. I will then argue that, in order to adequately capture the conceptual differences between these two notions, the classical two-step picture of explication is not enough. I will present a more fine-grained three-step version of Carnapian explication, showing how with its help the difference between these two notions can be better understood and explained.