SILFS 1 SILFS1 Philosophy of Science New Essays in Logic and SILFS The papers collected in this volume are based on the best contributions to the conference of the Italian Society for SILFS Logic and Philosophy of Science (SILFS) that took place in Milan on 8-10 October 2007. The aim of the Society, New Essays in Logic and since its foundation in 1952, has always been that of bringing together scholars — working in the broad areas of Logic, Philosophy of Science and History of Science — Philosophy of Science who share an open-minded approach to their disciplines and regard them as essentially requiring continuous confrontation and bridge-building to avoid the danger of over-specialism. In this perspective, logicians and philosophers of science should not indulge in inventing and cherishing their own “internal problems” — although these may occasionally be an opportunity for conceptual clarifi cation — but should primarily look at the challenging conceptual and methodological questions that arise in any genuine attempt to extend our objective knowledge. As Ludovico Geymonat used to put it: “[good] philosophy should be sought in the folds of science itself”. Contributions are distributed into six sections, fi ve of which — “Logic and Computing”, “Physics and Mathematics”, “Life Sciences”, “Economics and Social Sciences”, “Neuroscience and Philosophy of Mind” — are devoted Corrado Sinigaglia Pievani Telmo Federico Laudisa Giulio Giorello Marcello D’Agostin to the discussion of cutting-edge problems that arise Editors from current-day scientifi c research, while the remaining section on “General Philosophy of Science” is focused on foundational and methodological questions that are common to all areas. Editors Marcello D’Agostino Giulio Giorello Federico Laudisa Telmo Pievani Corrado Sinigaglia SILFS Volume 1 New Essays in Logic and Philosophy of Science Volume 1 New Essays in Logic and Philosophy of Science Marcello D’Agostino, Federico Ladisa, Telmo Pievani and Corrado Sinigaglia, eds SILFS Series Editor Marcello D’Agostino [email protected] New Essays in Logic and Philosophy of Science Edited by Marcello D’Agostino, Federico Laudisa, Telmo Pievani, and Corrado Sinigaglia © Individual author and College Publications 2010. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-84890-003-5 College Publications Scientific Director: Dov Gabbay Managing Director: Jane Spurr Department of Computer Science King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK http://www.collegepublications.co.uk Cover designed and created by Laraine Welch Printed by Lightning Source, Milton Keynes, UK All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission, in writing, from the publisher. Table of contents Editors’ preface ix List of contributors xi PART I LOGIC AND COMPUTING 1 Umberto Rivieccio A bilattice for contextual reasoning 3 Francesca Poggiolesi Reflecting the semantic features of S5 at the syntactic level 13 Gisele` Fischer Servi Non monotonic conditionals and the concept I believe only A 27 Carlo Penco, Daniele Porello Sense and Proof 37 Andrea Pedeferri Some reflections on plurals and second order logic 47 G. Casini, H. Hosni Default-assumption consequence relations in a preferential setting: reasoning about normality 53 Bianca Boretti, Sara Negri On the finitization of Priorean linear time 67 Riccardo Bruni Proof-theoretic aspects of quasi-inductive definitions 81 Giacomo Calamai Remarks on a proof-theoretic characterization of polynomial space functions 95 PART II PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS 115 Vincenzo Fano, Giovanni Macchia How contemporary cosmology bypasses Kantian prohibition against a science of the universe 117 Giulia Giannini Poincar´e and the electromagnetic world picture. For a revaluation of his conventionalism 131 Marco Toscano “Besides quantity”: the epistemological meaning of Poincar´e’s qualitative analysis 141 vi Laura Felline Structural explanation from special relativity to quantum mechanics 153 Miriam Cometto When the structure is not a limit. On continuity through theory-change 163 Gianluca Introzzi Approaches to wave/particle duality: historical analysis and critical remarks 173 Marco Pedicini, Mario Piazza An application of von Neumann algebras to computational complexity 183 Miriam Franchella Phenomenology and intuitionism: the pros and cons of a research program 195 Luca Bellotti A note on the circularity of set-theoretic semantics for set theory 207 Valeria Giardino The use of figures and diagrams in mathematics 217 Paola Cantu` The role of epistemological models in Veronese’s and Bettazzi’s theory of magnitudes 229 PART III LIFE SCIENCES 243 Pietro Omodeo Evolution by increasing complexity in the framework of Darwin’s theory 245 Stefano Giaimo, Giuseppe Testa Gene: an entity in search of concepts 257 Elena Casetta Categories, taxa, and chimeras 265 Flavio D’Abramo Final, efficient and complex causes in biology 279 Ludovica Lorusso The concept of race and its justification in biology 289 PART IV ECONOMICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 301 Marco Novarese, Alessandro Lanteri, Cesare Tibaldeschi Learning, generalization, and the perception of information: an experimental study 303 Andrea Pozzali Tacit knowledge and economics: recent findings and perspectives of research 319 vii Viviana Di Giovinazzo From individual well-being to economic welfare. Tibor Scitovsky explains why (consumers’) dissatisfaction leads to a joyless economy 327 Federica Russo Explaining causal modelling. Or, what a causal model ought to explain 347 Enzo Di Nuoscio The epistemological statute of the rationality principle. Comparing Mises and Popper 363 Albertina Oliverio Evolution, cooperation and rationality: some remarks 377 Francesco Di Iorio Self-organization of the mind and methodological individualism in Hayek’s thought 389 Simona Morini Can ethics be naturalized? 403 Stefano Vaselli Searle’s collective intentionality and the “invisible hand” explanations 409 Sergio Levi The naturalness of religion and the action representation system 423 Andrea Zhok On value judgement and the ethical nature of economic optimality 433 Dario Antiseri Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich A. von Hayek and Karl Popper: four Viennese in defense of methodological individualism 447 PART V NEUROSCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND 463 Fabio Bacchini Jaegwon Kim and the threat of epiphenomenalism of mental states 465 Wolfgang Huemer Philosophy of mind between reduction, elimination and enrichment 481 Laura Sparaci Discourse and action: analyzing the possibility of a structural similarity 493 Alessandro Dell’Anna Visuomotor representations: Jacob and Jeannerod between enaction and the two visual systems hypothesis 505 viii Daniela Tagliafico Mirror neurons and the “radical view” on simulation 515 Vincenzo G. Fiore Multiple realizations of the mental states: hunting for plausible chimeras 529 Arturo Carsetti The embodied meaning and the “unfolding” of the mind’s eyes 539 Katja Crone Consciousness and the problem of different viewpoints 547 Giulia Piredda The whys and hows of extended mind 559 Carmela Morabito Movement in the philosophy of mind: traces of the motor model of mind in the history of science 571 Jean-Luc Petit The brain, the person and the world 585 PART VI GENERAL PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 601 Gustavo Cevolani, Vincenzo Crupi, Roberto Festa The whole truth about Linda: probability, verisimilitude, and a paradox of conjunction 603 Antonino Freno Probabilistic Graphical Models and logic of scientific discovery 617 Massimiliano Carrara, Davide Fassio Perfected science and the knowability paradox 629 Luca Tambolo Two problems for normative naturalism 637 Silvano Zipoli Caiani Explaining the scientific success. A critique of an abductive defence of scientific realism 649 Mario Alai Van Fraassen, observability and belief 663 Marco Giunti Reduction in dynamical systems: a representational view 677 Alexander Afriat Duhem, Quine and the other dogma 695 Edoardo Datteri Bionic simulation of biological systems: a methodological analysis 711 Luca Guzzardi Some remarks on a heuristic point of view about the role of experiment in the physical sciences 725 Editors’ preface The papers collected in this volume stem from the contributions delivered to the conference of the Italian Society for Logic and Philosophy of Science (SILFS) that took place in Milan on 8-10 October 2007. The aim of the So- ciety, since its foundation in 1952, has always been that of bringing together scholars — working in the broad areas of Logic, Philosophy of Science and History of Science — who share an open-minded approach to their disciplines and regard them as essentially requiring continuous confrontation and bridge- building to avoid the vanity of over-specialism. In this perspective, logicians and philosophers of science should not indulge in inventing and cherishing their own “internal problems” — although these may occasionally be an op- portunity for conceptual clarification — but should primarily look at the challenging conceptual and methodological questions that arise in any gen- uine attempt to extend our “objective” knowledge of the physical, biological, social and intellectual environment in which we are embedded. As Ludovico Geymonat used to put it: “[good] philosophy should be sought in the folds of science itself”. Accordingly, the accepted contributions were distributed into six sections, five of which — “Logic and Computing”, “Physics and Mathematics”,