Selene Arfini – författare

This book offers a comprehensive philosophical investigation of ignorance. Using a set of cognitive tools and models, it discusses features that can describe a state of ignorance if linked to a particular type of cognition affecting the agent’s social behavior, belief system, and inferential capacity. The author defines ignorance as a cognitive condition that can be either passively (and unconsciously) borne by an agent or actively nurtured by him or her, and a condition that entails epistemic limitations (which can be any lack of knowledge, belief, information or data) that affect the agent’s behavior, belief system, and inferential capacity.

The author subsequently describes the ephemeral nature of ignorance, its tenacity in the development of human inferential and cognitive performance, and the possibility of sharing ignorance among human agents within the social dimension. By combining previous frameworks such as the naturalization of logic, the eco-cognitive perspective in philosophy and concepts from Peircean epistemology, and adding original ideas derived from the author’s own research and reflections, the book develops a new cognitive framework to help understand the nature of ignorance and its influence on the human condition.

This book discusses how scientific and other types of cognition make use of models, abduction, and explanatory reasoning in order to produce important, innovative, and possibly creative changes in theories and concepts. Gathering revised contributions presented at the international conference on Model-Based Reasoning (MBR023), held on June 7–9, 2023 in Rome, Italy, the book addresses various intertwined topics ranging from the epistemology and applications of models also concerning the problem of knowledge production and scientific methodology (information visualization, experimental methods, and design) to the analysis of their role in cognition, decision-making, also with respect to social implications. The problem of model-based cognition is also illustrated taking advantage of recent results regarding problem-solving, abduction, and logic, paying attention to a critique of the dominant and received approaches, to the aim of fostering new discussions and stimulate new ideas. All in all, the book provides researchers and graduate students in the fields of applied philosophy, epistemology, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence alike with an authoritative snapshot of the latest theories and applications of model-based reasoning.