Causal compatibilism claims that even though physics is causally closed, and even though mental properties are multiply realizable and are not identical to physical causal properties, mental properties are causal properties nonetheless. This position asserts that there is genuine causation at multiple descriptive/ontological levels; physics-level causal claims are not really incompatible with mentalistic causal claims. I articulate and defend a version of causal compatibilism that incorporates three key contentions. First, causation crucially involves robust patterns of counterfactual dependence among properties.Second, often several distinct such patterns, all subsuming a single phenomenon, exist at different descriptive/ontological levels (e.g., microphysical, neurobiological, macrobiological, and psychological). Third, the concept of causation is governed by an implicit contextual parameter that normally determines a specific descriptive/ontological level as the contextually relevant level, for the context-sensitive semantic evaluation of causal statements.

The problem of exclusion threatens non-reductive physicalist theories of the mind by implying that they cannot account for mental causation. This paper attempts to clarify what exactly the exclusion problem is, and, given the problem, to survey the theoretical options open. First I reconstruct the problem from its most influential sources (Malcolm and Kim), showing that it should be understood as an ontological rather than an explanatory problem. I then distinguish the problem from some consequences that seem to follow from it. Finally I sketch a map of possible answers to exclusion.

In this expository paper, we examine some philosophical and technical issues brought by paraconsistency (such as, motivations for developing a paraconsistent logic, the nature of this logic, and its application to set theory). We also suggest a way of accommodating these issues by considering some problems in the philosophy of logic from a new perspective.

The article studies two especific forms of social interaction, linguistically mediated: promises and threats. Two pregnant theoretical accounts are to be considered here. Firstly, the analysis propounded within the framework of Game Theory, assuming an intentionalist account of human agency and an instrumentalist concept of rationality; and secondly, the attempt carried out by Speech Acts theorists. In the first case, it can be shown that the theoretical premisses are insufficient to offer a proper account of such basic forms of social interchange. This result gives indirect support, so it is argued, to the second theoretical framework considered. Yet some of the solutions offered seem to be also unsatisfactory. Reasons are given of why it is so, and an attempt of solution, within the same theoretical framework, is suggested.

In this paper, I am concerned with the possibility of applying an abductive strategy in founding ethical realism. First, I criticize Harman’s position, according to which abduction, though useful for founding scientific realism, does not serve to found ethical realism. Secondly, I examine Sturgeon’s critique, according to which distinctively moral facts do constitute the best explanations of the moral evidence. Finally,I conclude that Sturgeon is right in as far as the ontological status of moral properties is concerned but his answer to Harman’s point is not properly developed.

In the following discussion, I examine what constitutes the dialectical strain in Putnam’s thought. As part of this examination, I consider Putnam’s (1981) criticism of the fact/value dichotomy. I compare this criticism to Putnam’s analysis of the metaphysical realist’s position, a position which has occupied Putnam’s thinking more than any other philosophical stance. I describe how Putnam pursues a chargeof self-refutation against the metaphysical realist and against the proponent of a fact/value dichotomy, a charge which assumes dialectical significance. So it is that the self-refuting nature of these positions is linked to their unintelligibility. My conclusion relates Putnam’s dialectical project to his wider philosophical ambitions, ambitions which are influenced in large part by Wittgensteinian considerations.

Imre Lakatos argued that a theory of scientific method must be empirical, and therefore self-applicable; the standards it imposes on scientific theories must be ones it satisfies itself. But in relying on this standard of self-referential consistency to protect his theory from criticism, Lakatos becomcs vulnerable to relativism. He escapes by hypothesizing that scientific changes which are methodologically progressive according to his theory are also progressive epistemically. The question is whethcr his theory of method has the resources to warrant this hypothesis. I construct a line of argument logically open to him, and use its inevitable failure to show that his epistemic aspirations depend on precepts of method that he has wrongly rejected.

Dynamic interaction is said to occur when two significanrly different fields A and B come into relation, and their interaction is dynamic in the sense that at first the flow of ideas is principally from A to B, but later ideas from B come to influence A. Two examples are given of dynamic interactions with the philosophy of mathematics. The first is with philosophy of scicnce, and thc sccond with computer science. Theanalysis cnables Lakatos to be charactcrised as thc first to devclop the philosophy of mathematics using ideas taken from thc philosophy of science.

In this paper I try to explain why Lakatos’s (and Popper’s) conventionalist view must be replaced by a phenomenological conception of the empirical basis; for only in this way can one make sense of the theses that the hard core of an RP (Research Programme) can be shielded against refutations; that this metaphysical hard core can be turned into a set of guidelines or, alternatively, into a set of heuristic metaprinciples governing the development of an RP; and that a distinction can legitimately be made between novel predictions and facts to which a theory might have been adjusted post hoc. Two basic metaprinciples are finally examined: the (conservative) Correspondence Principle and various (revolutionary) symmetry requirements; both of these heuristic devices illustrate the fundamental role which, according to Lakatos, mathematics plays in the progress of empirical science.

Lakatos’s approach to prediction and novel facts is of considerable interest. Prediction appears in his conception in at least three different levels: a) as an important aim of the research programs; b) as a procedure -a key method- for increasing our scientific knowledge both theoretically and empirically; and c) as the way to assess the scientific character of knowledge claims -means for evaluating results-. At all these levels he envisions a close connection between prediction and novel facts. The paper has four aims. First, to examine his concept of “prediction” in Lakatos’s MSRP, taking into account different aspects (semantical, logical, epistemological, methodological and axiological). Second, to clarify the notion of “novel facts”, which requires the consideration of the various ways in which new facts can be understood. Third, to examine the prediction of novel facts as criterion of appraisal (theoretical, empirical and heuristical). Fourth, to explore Lakatos’s approach (i.e., the concept of prediction linked to novel facts) in connection with the field of economics, in order to shed new light on issues that have been discussed in recent years.

Imre Lakatos’ idea that history of science without philosophy of science is blind may still be given a plausible interpretation today, even though his theory of the methodology of scientific research programmes has been rejected. The latter theory captures neither rationality in science nor the sense in which history must be told in a rational fashion. Nonetheless, Lakatos was right in insisting that the discipline of history consists of written rational reconstructions. In this paper, we will examine possible ways to cash out different, philosophically interesting, relationships: between rationality and science, between rationality and philosophy of science and/or epistemology, and, of course, between history and philosophy of science. Our conclusion is that the historian of science may be a philosopher of science as weIl, but if that philosophy of science is essentially a historical and dogmatic, it either cannot be used for history or it will deprive history of some of its most interesting and useful categories.