This is the webpage of Prof. Dr. Décio Krause
My philosophy, put in simple terms
I am a logical and scientific pluralist. I accept the existence of several non-equivalent logical systems and scientific theories used in specific contexts or in their particular domains of application. This position does not imply relativism, since I believe that the choice of a logic or of a theory is made by pragmatic criteria such as simplicity, capacity of expression, adequacy, and even beauty.
I am not an anti-realist since I accept the existence of an independent reality. The problem is that we don’t know what is this reality precisely. All we have are our best theories which provide us support to the belief that they are describing reality with some degree of confidence. But knowledge is not certain, except in some trivial cases; for instance, it is reasonable to say that it is true that I am in front of my computer right now and that this is not just a dream of mine.
I am not a scientific realist because I don’t believe our theories are true or even approximately true. Perhaps some assertion within a certain theory can be said to be true, such as that most fishes live in water. But to say that a theory as a whole is true is something very difficult to accept, even if we speak of mathematics; 1+1=2 is true in the standard model of the natural numbers but in the group Z2, 1+1=0. This is mainly due to the vagueness of the notion of truth.
We live in a world and describe this world with our theories. These theories vary and change from time to time. Our understanding increases and gives us a better approach to what we call reality. But the reality we know is a construction of ours in the same sense that when you look at a pencil immersed in a cup with water, you don't see the pencil. If you did, you did not `see' it broken. We interact with the world and from these interactions, our intellectual capacity, cultural aspects and perhaps much more, we elaborate a conception of reality.
So, there is a reality out of us, independent of us and there is a reality we elaborate; as the mathematician René Thom has said (in his book Paraboles et Catastrophes), ``Each science is, first of all, a study of a phenomenology''. The task of science is to approach these two realities.
About me: Video Los maestros de América Latina: Otávio Bueno about Décio Krause https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ghEB6qYZc&t=2s
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Graduate Program in Logic and Metaphysics (PPGLM), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Former full professor of the federal universities of Paraná (UFPR), Mathematics, and Santa Catarina (UFSC), Philosophy.
CNPq PQ1A
Member of AIPS - Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences
Member of CLE - Center for Logic, Epistemology and History of Science, UNICAMP/SP.