Paolo Parrini
Full Professor Theoretical Philosophy (Università di Firenze)
c/o Dipartimento di Filosofia,
Via Bolognese, 52 - Firenze
Now Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Florence, he started his career and research work in 1969. A former student of Giulio Preti and last of his collaborators, he held different institutional positions and has coordinated and still coordinates various research groups. He is member of some scientific associations and institutions and of the scientific committee of different reviews. He has organized national and international meetings and has given several conferences both in Italy and abroad.
His published materials relate to the areas of History of Philosophy and its methodology, Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Knowledge.
His historical studies concern the most relevant aspects of the Kantian and post-Kantian epistemological thought, i.e. the epistemological status of geometry, the philosophical debate on Einstein’s relativity, Popper’s falsificationism, and the history of Italian “scientific philosophy”. Furthermore, he has developed a new interpretation of Logical Positivistic thought, with particular attention to its relations with Kantian philosophy, the Conventionalist tradition (i.e. Poincarè, Duhem), Quinean thought and the ‘New Philosophy of Science’.
Dealing with which issues, see the following works: Una filosofia senza dogmi (1980), Empirismo logico e convenzionalismo (1983), L’empirismo logico (2002), Filosofia e scienza nell’Italia del Novecento (2004). See also the editions of: B. Russell e A. N. Whitehead, Introduzione ai “Principia Mathematica” (1976), Fisica e geometria dall’ottocento ad oggi (1979), Logical Empiricism. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (with M. and W. Salmon, 2003), Il pensiero filosofico di Giulio Preti (with L. M. Scarantino, 2004).
As for his theoretical position, starting from the 1976 book Linguaggio e Teoria, he has defended the theoretical and synthetic character of the so called ‘coordinative definition’ of congruence and a relativised conception of the a priori. In Knowledge and Reality. An Essay in Positive Philosophy (the revised 1998 edition of the 1995 book Conoscenza e realtà. Saggio di filosofia positiva) he has developed a philosophical perspective concerning the relations between truth, reality, rationality and empiricism.
In the last few years, he has further analysed such questions in a number of works dedicated to the comparison between Epistemology and Hermeneutics, the problem of Nihilism, the nature of knowledge and the relations between the crisis of foundationalism, epistemic justification and the nature of philosophy. On these topics, as well as editing Forme di argomentazione razionale (with R. Egidi, 1998) and Conoscenza e cognizione (2002), he has published Sapere e interpretare. Per una filosofia e un’oggettività senza fondamenti (2002), as well as numerous essays such as: “Verità e realtà” (2005), “A priori materiale e forme trascendentali della conoscenza” (2006), “Fra nichilismo e assolutismo” (2006), “Mill on Causation and the Historical Turn in Philosophy of Science” (2007), “Il convenzionalismo epistemologico al di là dei problemi geocronometrici” (2007).
Forthcoming: “Analyticity and Epistemological Holism: Prague Alternatives” and “Carnap’s Relativised A Priori and Ontology”.