About me

Link para currículo Lattes (the Brazilian "official" CV for researchers);

http://buscatextual.cnpq.br/buscatextual/visualizacv.do?id=K4721997A6

I am retired as a Full Professor at the Department of  Philosophy of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, in Florianópolis. I am also retired as a Full Professor of Foundations of Mathematics at the Department of Mathematics of the Federal University of Paraná, in Curitiba. Presently I am a member of the staff of the Graduate Program in Logic and Metaphysics of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, in the city of Rio. 

My scientific interests lie in logic in all its aspects, mainly in the philosophy of logic, in the foundations of mathematics and of the empirical sciences (mainly physics), and in the metaphysical aspects of quantum theories, especially in the structure of a metaphysics which takes quantum objects as "non-individuals". I am a member of CLE-Centro de Lógica, Epistemologia e História da Ciência/UNICAMP, of the Brazilian Academy of Philosophy (ABF)  and of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences (AIPS), located in Brussels, among other scientific associations in my field of interest. 

A glimpse of me

I retired as a Full Professor of the Department of Philosophy of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, where I have taught logic, philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. I am also retired as a Full Professor from the Department of Mathematics of the Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, PR – Brazil. I received my PhD from the Department of Philosophy of the University of São Paulo under Newton da Costa. My first contact with philosophy was when, by chance, I met Dr. Alvino Moser of the Department of Philosophy of the Federal University of Paraná when I was an undergraduate student of chemical engineering. Later, Moser invited me to work with him in the post-graduate program in Education at the same university, where I met Dr. José Alberto Pedra, who was the supervisor of my master's thesis, which dealt mainly with Lakatos and Popper and has also contributed to my education in human sciences, yet mathematics was my first interest. I started teaching at UFPR in 1977.

From 1978 to 1991, I taught mathematics (differential and integral calculus, numerical calculus, analytic geometry, linear algebra) to undergraduate students of engineering at the Department of Mathematics of the Federal Centre of Technological Education of Paraná (CEFET/PR), in Curitiba, PR, Brazil (today, the Technological Federal University of Paraná). 

In 1978, I also taught mathematics at the Faculty of Economy and Administration (FAE) in Curitiba, and in 1986, at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (PUC/PR).

Before my “university” period, when I was an undergraduate student, I taught physics, mathematics, and geometric drawing in elementary schools.

I received a grant from CAPES for getting my PhD at the University of São Paulo, and three grants from the Brazilian council CNPq for post-graduate studies, which I spent at three good universities, from which I have had quite nice experiences. They are the universities of Florence, Leeds, and Oxford. I have also given talks at other universities, such as the University of Paris, London, Córdoba, Santiago, Cali, and Buenos Aires, as well as at several other places, including congresses and scientific meetings.

Presently, I am a member of the staff of the Graduate Program in Logic and Metaphysics of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and I continue my research in CNPq at level 1A. 

I am a member of several scientific societies and a member of the editorial board of many journals in Brazil and abroad. I was also a member of the CA-Comitê Assessor of the section Philosophy and Theology of CNPq. 

I am a member of CLE-Centro de Lógica, Epistemologia e História da Ciência da UNICAMP and of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences, located in Brussels, as well as other scientific associations in my field of interest.

More details about my academic life can be seen in my 2015-Memorial, written in Portuguese.

 Philosophy -- I am a logical and scientific pluralist. I accept the existence of several legitimate non-equivalent logical systems and scientific theories used in specific contexts or in their particular domains of application, with no privilege from one over the other except in what respects pragmatic aims. This position does not imply relativism, at least concerning knowledge, truth and the validity of science,  since I believe that the choice of a logic or a theory is made by pragmatic criteria such as simplicity, capacity of expression, adequacy, and even beauty. In my opinion, science looks for truth in the strong correspondence sense, but I think this is something unattainable. Anyway, it is this, truth aiming to know the things as they are what is looked for. 

I am not an anti-realist since I accept the existence of an objective, independent reality. The problem is that we don’t know what this reality is precisely. All we have are our best theories, which support our belief that they describe 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 some theory can be said to be true, such as that most fish 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 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 parcels of it by using concepts we formulate and with our resulting theories; we use logic to ground concepts and `structure' the 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 partially immersed in a cup with water, properly speaking, 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 (in Schrödinger's. terms, our brains produce an objectivation of reality -- Mind and Matter, Chap.3).  

So, there is a reality out of us, independent of us, and there is a reality we elaborate on; 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.