Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Duration: 2006 - 2008

Code: HUM2005-04369/FISO (MEC)

Principal Investigator

José Antonio Díez (diez.ja@gmail.com)

All researchers

Summary

Explaining and representing are arguably the two main cognitive activities in scientific practice. The object of this research is to investigate whether they have elements in common, and which are their main

differences, focussing on the structural and pragmatic aspects of both activities. By 'structural' we mean here what is related to (i) the formal components and the logical form of the relata involved (representatum/explanandum, representans/explanans) and (ii) the logical form of the relation between them (morphism, subsumption… ). By 'pragmatic', what is related to the cognitive attitudes which are sensitive to the context of use of such practices.

The working hypothesis that will be tested are the following: (a) among the components of both representation and explanation, at least one (the reprentans/explanans) may be identified and reconstructed model-theoretically as certain kind of structure, in a wide sense; (b) the relation between the relata is in both cases a kind of subsumption; (c) the main difference between representing and explicative subsumptions is that the later, but not necessarily the former, introduces new conceptual/ontological apparatus; (d) the reference to intentional attitudes sensitive to the context of use is necessary in order to distinguish subsumptions that can be qualified as representations/explanations from others that, though structurally similar, cannot be so considered.