The volume is based on the papers that were presented at the Interna tional Conference Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery (MBR'98), held at the Collegio Ghislieri, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, in December 1998. The papers explore how scientific thinking uses models and explanatory reasoning to produce creative changes in theories and concepts. The study of diagnostic, visual, spatial, analogical, and temporal rea soning has demonstrated that there are many ways of performing intelligent and creative reasoning that cannot be described with the help only of tradi tional notions...

This volume explores abduction (inference to explanatory hypotheses), an important but neglected topic in scientific reasoning. My aim is to inte grate philosophical, cognitive, and computational issues, while also discuss ing some cases of reasoning in science and medicine. The main thesis is that abduction is a significant kind of scientific reasoning, helpful in delineating the first principles of a new theory of science. The status of abduction is very controversial. When dealing with abduc tive reasoning misinterpretations and equivocations are common. What are the differences between...

There are several key ingredients common to the various forms of model-based reasoning considered in this book. The term model comprises both internal and external representations. The models are intended as interpretations of target physical systems, processes, phenomena, or situations and are retrieved or constructed on the basis of potentially satisfying salient constraints of the target domain. The book s contributors are researchers active in the area of creative reasoning in science and technology.

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The study of creative, diagnostic, visual, spatial, analogical, and temporal reasoning has demonstrated that there are many ways of performing intelligent and creative reasoning that cannot be described with the help only of traditional notions of reasoning such as classical logic. Understanding the contribution of modeling practices to discovery and conceptual change in science requires expanding scientific reasoning to include complex forms of creative reasoning that are not always successful and can lead to incorrect solutions. The study of these heuristic ways of reasoning is situated at...

This volume is a collection of papers that explore various areas of common interest between philosophy, computing, and cognition. The book illustrates the rich intrigue of this fascinating recent intellectual story. It begins by providing a new analysis of the ideas related to computer ethics, such as the role in information technology of the so-called moral mediators, the relationship between intelligent machines and warfare, and the new opportunities offered by telepresnece, for example in teaching and learning. The book also ties together the concerns of epistemology and logic, showing,...

Information technology has been, in recent years, under increasing commercial pressure to provide devices and systems which help/ replace the human in his daily activity. This pressure requires the use of logic as the underlying foundational workhorse of the area. New logics were developed as the need arose and new foci and balance has evolved within logic itself. One aspect of these new trends in logic is the rising impor- tance of model based reasoning. Logics have become more and more tailored to applications and their reasoning has become more and more application dependent. In fact, some...

Philosophers have studied geometry since ancient times. Geometrical knowledge has often played the role of a laboratory for the philosopher's conceptual experiments dedicated to the ideation of powerful theories of knowledge. Lorenzo Magnani's new book Philosophy and Geometry illustrates the rich intrigue of this fascinating story of human knowledge, providing a new analysis of the ideas of many scholars (including Plato, Proclus, Kant, and Poincare), and discussing conventionalist and neopositivist perspectives and the problem of the origins of geometry. The book also ties...

There are several key ingredients common to the various forms of model-based reasoning considered in this book. The term model comprises both internal and external representations. The models are intended as interpretations of target physical systems, processes, phenomena, or situations and are retrieved or constructed on the basis of potentially satisfying salient constraints of the target domain. The book s contributors are researchers active in the area of creative reasoning in science and technology.

"

The volume is based on the papers that were presented at the Interna- tional Conference Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery (MBR'98), held at the Collegio Ghislieri, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, in December 1998. The papers explore how scientific thinking uses models and explanatory reasoning to produce creative changes in theories and concepts. The study of diagnostic, visual, spatial, analogical, and temporal rea- soning has demonstrated that there are many ways of performing intelligent and creative reasoning that cannot be described with the help only of tradi- tional...

This book ties together the concerns of philosophers of science and AI researchers, showing for example the connections between scientific thinking and medical expert systems. It lays out a useful general framework for discussion of a variety of kinds of abduction. It develops important ideas about aspects of abductive reasoning that have been relatively neglected in cognitive science, including the use of visual and temporal representations and the role of abduction in the withdrawal of hypotheses.