Day 1

14.30 - 15.30

Opening greetings

Giorgio Calcagnini, Chancellor, University of Urbino

 Andrea Viceré, Director, Dept. for Pure and Applied Sciences, University of Urbino

Vincenzo Fano, President, Italian Society for Logic and the Philosophy of Science

Evandro Agazzi, Honorary President, Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences 

Jure Zovko, President, Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences 

15.30 - 16.30

A Defense of Model Realism 

Vincenzo Fano (University of Urbino)

 In this brief paper, I consider Alai’s criticism of Agazzi’s scientific realism. Alai is persuaded that realism restricted to a single set of models, as that proposed by Agazzi, is not able to face the pessimistic meta-induction and results in a contradictory scientific image of reality. I show that model realism is a serious option, that can overcome skepticism, even if we should accept that the scientific image of the world is not as coherent as we wish.

16.30 - 17.00

Coffee Break

17.00 - 18.00

Factivity and Probability

Dennis Dieks (University of Utrecht)

History and Philosophy of Science, Utrecht University

Mario Alai is one of the most eloquent recent defenders of scientific realism. In his work, a prominent place is taken by the No Miracles Argument, according to which the truth of our best scientific theories is the only hypothesis that does not make science’s predictive success a miracle. Recently, Mario has elaborated on this argument using probability theory. In the talk we will discuss this argumentative strategy.