Lorenzo Magnani

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Lorenzo Magnani (born 1952), is an Italian philosopher. He teaches Logic and Epistemology in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pavia, where he directs the Computational Philosophy Laboratory. He is visiting professor at the Sun Yat-sen University in China. Previously, he was Weissman Distinguished Visiting Professor at The New York City University (Baruch College, NYC) (2003), and Visiting Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta (1999-2003).

His primary research interests are in the area of philosophy of science, logic, and artificial intelligence. Currently he is studying the processes of conceptual innovation and change in science. A major objective of his research is to create a working synthesis between epistemological/historical perspectives and investigations of representations and reasoning practices carried out in the sciences of cognition.

His historical research centered on 19th and 20th century geometry and ¨philosophy of geometry. His past positions have included: Visiting researcher at the Universities of Pittsburgh (CMU, 1992), Montreal (McGill, 1992, 1993), Waterloo (Philosophy Department, 1993) and Atlanta (Georgia Tech, 1995, 1998, 1999), Visiting Professor of Philosophy of Science and Theories of Ethics at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta (1999-), and Weissman Distinguished Visiting Professor at Baruch College, The City University of New York, NTYC (2003). He has directed and directs many international academic programs in collaboration with USA and China.

Author of several books and articles: Non-Euclidean Geometries (in Italian, 1978); “A computational Model of Diagnostic Reasoning” (1989); Applied Epistemology (in Italian, 1991); “Abductive Reasoning: Philosophical and Educational Perspectives in Medicine” (1992); Introduction to Computational Philosophy (1997); Textbook of Logic: Classical Logic and Logic of Common Sense (in Italian, 1997); Abduction, Reason, and Science. Processes of Discovery and Explanation (Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, 2001); Philosophy and Geometry. Theoretical and Historical Issues (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2001), he has also recently completed the book Morality in a Technological World. Knowledge as a Duty (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007), which develops a philosophical and cognitive theory of the relationships between ethics and technology in a naturalistic perspective. The book describes how modern technology has brought about consequences of such magnitude that old policies and ethics can no longer contain them.

Recent chair of the International Conferences MBR’98 (Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery), with Nancy J. Nersessian and Paul Thagard, MBR’01 (Model-Based Reasoning: Scientific Discovery, Technological innovation, Values), with Nancy J. Nersessian, E-CAP2004_ITALY (Computing and Philosophy), MBR04 (Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Engineering, Abduction, Visualiza-tion, and Simulation), MBR06_CHINA. (Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Medicine), with P. Li. He also edited seven new books (two in Chinese) and many special issues deriving from the international conferences indicated above.

[edit] Recent authored books

• Abduction, Reason, and Science. Processes of Discovery and Explanation (Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, 2001);
• Philosophy and Geometry. Theoretical and Historical Issues (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2001)
• Morality in a Technological World. Knowledge as a Duty (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007)