Dalla scienza cognitiva alla filosofia della scienza e ritorno

This essay investigates at an introductory level the relationship between cognitive science and philosophy of science, as this has been conceived of by computational philosophers of science. They champion the general programme of radically changing “traditional” philosophy of science by reinterpreting it in computational, mechanistic, and naturalistic terms. In spite of these characteristics, no computational philosopher of science denies that philosophy still has a role to play in this programme, that is to say to preserve that portion of normativity that philosophy of science cannot give up, inasmuch as it lives up to its justificatory ideal. After presenting Paul Thagard’s viewpoint on this topic, some critical remarks on the actual compatibility between justificatory normativity and naturalistic philosophy of science are made.