Agazzi, Evandro
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Agazzi, Evandro
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Agazzi Carminati, Evandro
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eagazzi
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56013702100
Researcher ID
CAQ-1712-2022

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The Multiple Aspects of the Philosophy of Science

2021 , Agazzi, Evandro

Philosophy of Science, understood as a special philosophical discipline, was born only at the beginning of the twentieth century as part of the effort for overcoming the “foundational crisis” that had affected especially mathematics and physics. Therefore, it was conceived as an investigation about the features and reliability of scientific knowledge and for a few decades was deeply marked by the philosophical approach of logical empiricism. This cognitive point of view persisted also when, after Kuhn’s work, the attention focused on the scientific activity in order to understand scientific change and a sociological model replaced the view that empirical adequacy and logical consistency are the factors that determine the change of scientific theories. Ethical, social and political considerations regarding science ware considered inappropriate and potentially dangerous since they violate the alleged “neutrality of science” with respect to values. Nevertheless, the strict intertwining of science and technology in contemporary “technoscience” has produced a wide debate regarding the practical aspect of technoscientific activity that has the intrinsic features of a philosophical debate. Therefore, it is natural and advisable that the entire wealth of the philosophical disciplines (and not just logic, ontology, epistemology and philosophy of language) be called to contribute to the specific complex discourse of the Philosophy of Science.

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Philosophy of Science and Ethics

2018 , Agazzi, Evandro

The issue whether science can be correctly submitted to ethical judgment has been widely debated especially in the 1960s. Those who denied the legitimacy of such a judgment stressed that this would entail an undue limitation of the freedom of science; those who defended such a limitation laid stress on the great dangers that an uncontrolled growth of scientific knowledge has already produced and would continue to produce against humankind. This sterile debate can be settled by recognizing that scientific knowledge can and must be evaluated, as far as its validity is concerned, exclusively through the methodological criteria admitted by the professionals of the single scientific disciplines concerned, and no ethical judgment is pertinent from this point of view. Nevertheless, if we consider science as a particular system of social activities, entailing concrete procedures, conditions and applications, the ethical evaluation of these actions is pertinent and correct. A second question is whether or not the inclusion of these ethical investigations in the specific domain of philosophy of science is correct. If one conceives philosophy of science simply as an epistemology of science consisting in a logical-methodological investigation about the language of scientific theories, this broadening would appear spurious. This view, however, is too narrow and dated: a fully fledged philosophical investigation on the complex phenomenon of science cannot prevent important outlooks and instruments of the philosophical inqujiry (in particular ethics) from legitimately pertaining to the philosophy of science. © 2018, Springer Nature B.V.

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Scientific objectivity and its contexts

2014 , Agazzi, Evandro

The first part of this book is of an epistemological nature and develops an original theory of scientific objectivity, understood in a weak sense (as intersubjective agreement among the specialists) and a strong sense (as having precise concrete referents). In both cases it relies upon the adoption of operational criteria designed within the particular perspective under which any single science considers reality. The “object” so attained has a proper ontological status, dependent on the specific character of the criteria of reference (regional ontologies). This justifies a form of scientific realism. Such perspectives are also the result of a complex cultural-historical situation. The awareness of such a “historical determinacy” of science justifies including in the philosophy of science the problems of ethics of science, relations of science with metaphysics and social dimensions of science that overstep the traditional restriction of the philosophy of science to an epistemology of science. It is to this “context” that the second part of the book is devoted.

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Truth between semantics and pragmatics

2015 , Agazzi, Evandro

Truth had been excluded from the requirements of science after the so-called "foundationa crisis" of the exact sciences (mathematics and physics) occurred between the end o the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. A formalistic outlook had imposed itself i the philosophy of science, from which meaning and truth were excluded. This approach, however was seriously weakened after the discovery of the "internal limitations of formalisms entailed by Goedel's theorems, and Tarski almost at the same time advocated the legitimac of meaning and truth for the formalized languages, calling "semantics" this part of the metatheoretica investigations. This terminology has remained standard especially in mathematica logic. One must note, however, that semantics regards in a proper sense the level of meaning whereas truth implies in addition the reference of the language to some extralinguistic domai of entities. This domain is not accessible by means of logical, linguistic or conceptual analysis but can be attained through "operations" of some concrete kind, whose nature determines als the ontological status of the referents. Operations belong to praxis, and this is why the notio of truth is more properly attributed to "pragmatics", understood not in the original Morris sense, but rather in a sense closer to pragmatism, in which the performance of actions is considere essential for providing criteria of truth.

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The truth of theories and scientific realism

2017 , Agazzi, Evandro

The thesis maintained in this paper is that scientific anti-realism was the consequence of having lost the confidence in the capability of science to attain truth, something that historically occurred at the end of the nineteenth century. Therefore, the requirement of truth was removed from science and replaced by the requirement of objectivity. This has a ‘weak’ sense, according to which scientific knowledge is ‘independent of the single subjects’ (intersubjectivity) In addition, however, every science is considered to investigate not reality in general, but only its specific objects (‘strong’ ontological sense of objectivity). These specific objects are ‘clipped out’ of the reality of common sense ‘things’ by considering them from a specific point of view focusing only on certain attributes of reality. In order to determine these clips, the scientific community elaborates certain standardized operational procedures for establishing whether certain statements regarding things are immediately true or false. In such a way these operational procedures are ‘criteria of reference’ and ‘criteria of truth’ for a given science, and moreover turn out to be the same used for securing objectivity in the weak sense. This amounts to recovering the characteristic of truth for scientific knowledge, and giving it a realist interpretation both ontologically and epistemologically, at least for its empirically testable statements. The contemporary struggle about realism, however, regards the unobservable entities introduced in scientific theories, and the strategy proposed in the present paper is that of suitably ‘extending’ to theories the notion of truth, which is immediately and directly defined for single declarative statements. From the referential nature of truth follows that if we have reasons for admitting the truth of a theory, we must also admit, for the same reasons, the existence of its referents, even when they are unobservable entities. ©Springer International Publishing.

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The Methodological Turn in Philosophy

2015 , Agazzi, Evandro

Controversies have always characterized philosophy as expression of its typical critical attitude that depends on the complexity of the fundamental philosophical issues. Traditionally these discrepancies regarded the answers given to certain questions and, therefore, the content of the opposite doctrines, as all legitimately belonging to philosophy. With modernity the determination of the correct method of thinking becomes the necessary precondition for philosophizing and represents the core of the philosophical activity itself. As a consequence people adopting a certain method of thinking often qualify as non-philosophical the discourse of those who do not belong to their methodological school, independently of the content of the doctrine they defend. This dominance of the methodological concern, on the contrary, has produced the discovery and deepening of several “thinking methods,” whose plurality must be considered a wealth and not a reason for skepticism, since it can offer to philosophy the tools for better coping with the increasing complexity of its fundamental issues.

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The problems of scientific realism today

2022 , Agazzi, Evandro

The article describes scientific realism and the debate around this position. It shows that initially (in the scholastic tradition) the debate between realists and antirealists was purely ontological, since it was accepted that when we know, we know the real − knowledge cannot be anything other than knowledge of the real. The question about the reality of the object of our knowledge, about whether the world beyond our representations is equal to the world we represent to ourselves, distinguishes modern philosophy from classical philosophy and arises from the claim that we know our representations and not the real. A twofold problem is formed: first, to demonstrate the existence of the world beyond our representations, and second, to demonstrate that that the knowledge we have constitutes precisely the knowledge of the world in which we live and is, in fact, actual knowledge, not chimer. Thus the problem of realism takes on an almost exclusively epistemological meaning. Nevertheless, contemporary realistic positions often confuse ontological and epistemological theses, which leads to internal contradictions. The same is true of the proponents of anti-realist views. The question of the causes of the anti-realistic tendency in the philosophy of science is raised and it is shown that the initial attitude of the modern science was realistic. It was undermined, on the one hand, by anti-realistic interpretations of the cognitive process (starting from Kant), on the other hand, by difficulties of theoretical order arisen in physics, and the main thing was that science began to deal with the unobservable, undermining the cognitive basis of radical empiricism. However, the new cognitive situation does not necessarily lead to anti-realism, another way of development relies on an understanding of the complexity and problematic relationship between theory and experience. A number of reasons in favor of scientific realism are concluded.

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Scientific Realism Within Perspectivism and Perspectivism Within Scientific Realism

2016 , Agazzi, Evandro

Perspectivism is often understood as a conception according to which subjective conditions inevitably affect our knowledge and, therefore, we are never confronted with reality and facts but only with interpretations. Hence, subjectivism and anti-realism are usually associated with perspectivism. The thesis of this paper is that, especially in the case of the sciences, perspectivism can be better understood as an appreciation of the cognitive attitude that consists in considering reality only from a certain ‘point of view’, in a way that can avoid subjectivism. Whereas the way of conceiving a notion is strictly subjective, the way of using it is open to intersubjective agreement, based on the practice of operations whose nature is neither mental nor linguistic. Therefore, intersubjectivity (that is a ‘weak’ sense of objectivity) is possible within perspectivism. Perspectivism can also help understand the notion of ‘scientific objects’ in a referential sense: they are those ‘things’ that become ‘objects’ of a certain science by being investigated from the ‘point of view’ of that science. They are ‘clipped out’ of things (and constitute the ‘domain of objects’ or the ‘regional ontology’ of that particular science) by means of standardized operations which turn out to be the same as those granting intersubjectivity. Therefore this ‘strong’ sense of objectivity, which is clearly realist, coincides with the ‘weak’ one. The notion of truth appears fully legitimate in the case of the sciences, being clearly defined for the regional ontology of each one of them and, since this truth can be extended in an analogical sense to the theories elaborated in each science, it follows that are real also the unobservable entities postulated by those theories. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

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El estatuto epistemológico de la bioética

2019 , Agazzi, Evandro

La bioética no se presenta como una ciencia bien delimitada, sino más bien como un ámbito de cuestiones y problemas que se ha ido ampliando a partir de los años 70. En los inicios, la bioética abarcaba esencialmente la medicina y las biotecnologías, hoy incluye otros aspectos como el cuidado de los animales y la protección del medio ambiente, y muchos de sus temas conciernen a las políticas de salud y a la propuesta de normas legales. La novedad de la bioética, con respecto a la ética médica tradicional, se basa en el hecho de que el enorme progreso de las tecnologías en la práctica médica ha producido una gran cantidad de situaciones inéditas, en las que es posible y hasta necesario tomar decisiones para las cuales no existían normas en la ética tradicional. Esto depende también de la notable complejidad de las situaciones típicas de los debates bioéticos. Por estas razones, la bioética se presenta como un paradigma de lo que tiene que ser la ética en el contexto de una civilización tecnológica, es decir como la búsqueda de un punto de encuentro entre la tecnología y la conciencia moral. Si nos damos cuenta de esta característica fundamental, es posible reconocer en la bioética la presencia de un estatuto epistemológico propio, que consiste en la adopción del método interdisciplinar desde un enfoque sistémico y con capacidad de tomar en cuenta los fenómenos de la complejidad. De esta manera, la bioética conseguirá constituirse desde un punto de vista holístico que le permitirá relacionar los niveles más simples con los más complejos, así como aprovechar constructivamente las diferencias doctrinales y culturales que conlleva la globalización en nuestro tiempo. ©2019 Arbor, CSIC Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.

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Freedom Versus Regulation in Science and Technology

2020 , Agazzi, Evandro

Almost half a century ago a strong controversy opposed the philosophers advocating an unrestricted freedom of science to those advocating a moral and legal regulation of science, that dispute did not produce significant results because it rested on a lack of distinction (that does not mean separation) between science and technology. The defining aim of science is acquisition of knowledge and that of technology is production of objects and performances. Humans have always developed a large display of techniques for the realization of different activities and technology can be defined as that special sector of technique that consists in the application of scientific knowledge. With reference to this clarification it is possible to see that pure science enjoys a substantial freedom, being ethically limited only in the case of particular means, conditions and consequences directly involved in experimental science. Applied science must be ethically evaluated also considering the goals of the application envisaged. In the case of technology ethical evaluations are much more pertinent and articulated because actions are involved and regulations are legitimate as far as they concern limitations of the freedom of action; they also can entail legal regulations. The concrete example of Medicine, that is a special technology according to the above definition, concludes the paper and it is shown that due to the fact that Medicine has to do with human persons, it is not sufficient to take into consideration its technical aspects but several other values of psychological, social and spiritual kind must contribute to the global assessment of the medical praxis in the different concrete situations. © 2020, Springer Nature B.V.

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