Matteo Motterlini

Last updated

Matteo Motterlini (born 6 January 1967) is an Italian philosopher of science, behavioral and neuroeconomist. He teaches at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan, Italy.

Contents

Academic career and publications

Former Adviser for Social and Behavioral Sciences for the Presidency of the Council of Ministers in Italy (appointed 5 May 2016 - ended March 2018)

Motterlini holds graduate degrees in Logic & Scientific Method and Economics from The London School of Economics and Political Science. He held teaching and research positions at Carnegie Mellon University (Dept. of Social and Decision Sciences, 1999–2000) and University of California Los Angeles (Dept. of Psychology, 2011–2012).

He is perhaps best known for his contribution to the field of philosophy of science and the history of ideas, mainly to the issue of the rationality of science and the debate “for and against method” with respect to the philosophical ideas of Imre Lakatos and Paul K. Feyerabend. [1]

Based on the original material in the Lakatos Archive, he edited For and Against Method (1999, University of Chicago Press), including Lakatos's Lectures on Scientific Method and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence. [2] [3]

He investigates the neurological basis of human irrationality. His research focuses on the neural correlations of financial decision making, with a special reference to the role of emotions, regret, [4] social learning [5] and loss aversion. [5]

He is director of the Center for Experimental and Applied Epistemology (CRESA) where he and his team design and the test ways in which neuro-behavioral economics findings may inform more effective evidence-based public policy. [6]

He is also a prolific writer for general public and contributes regularly to several Italian newspapers, notably Il Corriere della sera and Il Sole 24 Ore. His pop-science books Economia emotiva (Emotional Economics) (2006, Rizzoli) and Trappole mentali (Mental Traps) (2008, Rizzoli) are worldwide best sellers with translations into Spanish, Korean, Japanese and Chinese. He was Scientific Advisor of AC Milan football club for six seasons from 2004 to 2010.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Falsifiability</span> Property of a statement that can be logically contradicted

Falsifiability or refutability is a deductive standard of evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses, introduced by the philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934). A theory or hypothesis is falsifiable if it can be logically contradicted by an empirical test.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pseudoscience</span> Unscientific claims wrongly presented as scientific

Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; absence of systematic practices when developing hypotheses; and continued adherence long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally discredited. It is not the same as junk science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Imre Lakatos</span> Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science

Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its "methodology of proofs and refutations" in its pre-axiomatic stages of development, and also for introducing the concept of the "research programme" in his methodology of scientific research programmes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive neuroscience</span> Scientific field

Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental processes. It addresses the questions of how cognitive activities are affected or controlled by neural circuits in the brain. Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both neuroscience and psychology, overlapping with disciplines such as behavioral neuroscience, cognitive psychology, physiological psychology and affective neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in cognitive science coupled with evidence from neurobiology, and computational modeling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Feyerabend</span> Austrian philosopher of science (1924–1994)

Paul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian philosopher best known for his work in the philosophy of science. He started his academic career as lecturer in the philosophy of science at the University of Bristol (1955–1958); afterwards, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for three decades (1958–1989). At various points in his life, he held joint appointments at the University College London (1967–1970), the London School of Economics (1967), the FU Berlin (1968), Yale University (1969), the University of Auckland, the University of Sussex (1974), and, finally, the ETH Zurich (1980–1990). He gave lectures and lecture series at the University of Minnesota (1958-1962), Stanford University (1967), the University of Kassel (1977) and the University of Trento (1992).

Scientism is the view that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre Duhem</span> French physicist (1861–1916)

Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem was a French theoretical physicist who worked on thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, and the theory of elasticity. Duhem was also a historian of science, noted for his work on the European Middle Ages, which is regarded as having created the field of the history of medieval science. As a philosopher of science, he is remembered principally for his views on the indeterminacy of experimental criteria.

In philosophy of science and epistemology, the demarcation problem is the question of how to distinguish between science and non-science. It also examines the boundaries between science, pseudoscience and other products of human activity, like art and literature and beliefs. The debate continues after more than two millennia of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields. The debate has consequences for what can be termed "scientific" in topics such as education and public policy.

The Lakatos Award is given annually for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science, widely interpreted. The contribution must be in the form of a monograph, co-authored or single-authored, and published in English during the previous six years. The award is in memory of the influential Hungarian philosopher of science and mathematics Imre Lakatos, whose tenure as Professor of Logic at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) was cut short by his early and unexpected death. While administered by an international management committee organised from the LSE, it is independent of the LSE Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method, with many of the committee's members being academics from other institutions. The value of the award, which has been endowed by the Latsis Foundation, is £10,000, and to take it up a successful candidate must visit the LSE and deliver a public lecture.

<i>Against Method</i> 1975 book by Paul Feyerabend

Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge is a 1975 book by Austrian philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend. The central thesis of the book is that science should become an anarchic enterprise. In the context of the work, the term "anarchy" refers to epistemological anarchy, which does not remain within one single prescriptive scientific method on the grounds that any such method would restrict scientific progress. The work is notable in the history and philosophy of science partially due to its detailed case study of Galileo's hypothesis that the earth rotates on its axis and has since become a staple reading in introduction to philosophy of science courses at undergraduate and graduate levels.

In computer science, the scientific community metaphor is a metaphor used to aid understanding scientific communities. The first publications on the scientific community metaphor in 1981 and 1982 involved the development of a programming language named Ether that invoked procedural plans to process goals and assertions concurrently by dynamically creating new rules during program execution. Ether also addressed issues of conflict and contradiction with multiple sources of knowledge and multiple viewpoints.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vita-Salute San Raffaele University</span> Private university in Milan, Italy

The Vita-Salute San Raffaele University is a private university in Milan, Italy. It was founded in 1996 and is organized in three departments; Medicine, Philosophy and Psychology. It is affiliated with San Raffaele Hospital (OSR).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Worrall (philosopher)</span> Philosopher

John Worrall was a professor of philosophy of science at the London School of Economics until his retirement in 2019, when he became Emeritus Professor. He was also associated with the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the same institution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrea Moro</span> Italian linguist

Andrea Carlo Moro is an Italian linguist, neuroscientist and novelist.

<i>Killing Time</i> (autobiography) 1994 autobiography by Paul Feyerabend

Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend is an autobiography by philosopher Paul Feyerabend. The book details, amongst other things, Feyerabend's youth in Nazi-controlled Vienna, his military service, notorious academic career, and his multiple romantic conquests. The book's title, Killing Time is a play on the homophone Feierabend, a German compound noun meaning 'the workday's end and the evening following it'.

Anders Martin Dale is a prominent neuroscientist and professor of radiology, neurosciences, psychiatry, and cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and is one of the world's leading developers of sophisticated computational neuroimaging techniques. He is the founding Director of the Center for Multimodal Imaging Genetics (CMIG) at UCSD.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John W. N. Watkins</span> Philosopher and professor

John William Nevill Watkins was an English philosopher, a professor at the London School of Economics from 1966 until his retirement in 1989 and a prominent proponent of critical rationalism.

Bold hypothesis or bold conjecture is a concept in the philosophy of science of Karl Popper, first explained in his debut The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1935) and subsequently elaborated in writings such as Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963). The concept is nowadays widely used in the philosophy of science and in the philosophy of knowledge. It is also used in the social and behavioural sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russell Poldrack</span>

Russell "Russ" Alan Poldrack is an American psychologist and neuroscientist. He is a professor of psychology at Stanford University, associate director of Stanford Data Science, member of the Stanford Neuroscience Institute and director of the Stanford Center for Reproducible Neuroscience and the SDS Center for Open and Reproducible Science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dimitri Van De Ville</span> Swiss-Belgian computer scientist and neuroscientist specialized in brain activity networks

Dimitri Van De Ville is a Swiss and Belgian computer scientist and neuroscientist specialized in dynamical and network aspects of brain activity. He is a professor of bioengineering at EPFL and the head of the Medical Image Processing Laboratory at EPFL's School of Engineering.

References

  1. Motterlini, Matteo (2002). "Reconstructing Lakatos: A reassessment of Lakatos' epistemological project in the light of the Lakatos Archive". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. 33 (3): 487-509. Bibcode:2002SHPSA..33..487M. doi:10.1016/S0039-3681(02)00024-9.
  2. Lakatos, Imre; Feyerabend, Paul (1999). For and Against Method: Including Lakatos's Lectures on Scientific Method and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence. University of Chicago Press. ISBN   0226467759.
  3. Ian Hacking's Review of "For and Against Method", on London Review of Books
  4. Canessa, Nicola; Motterlini, Matteo; Di Dio, Cinzia; Perani, Daniela; Scifo, Paola; Cappa, Stefano F.; Rizzolatti, Giacomo (2009). "Understanding Others' Regret: A fMRI Study". PLOS ONE. 4 (10): e7402. Bibcode:2009PLoSO...4.7402C. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007402 . PMC   2756584 . PMID   19826471.
  5. 1 2 Canessa, N.; Motterlini, M.; Alemanno, F.; Perani, D.; Cappa, S. F. (2011). "Learning from other people's experience: A neuroimaging study of decisional interactive-learning". NeuroImage. 55 (1): 353–362. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.11.065. PMID   21126586.
  6. CRESA Website

2019. “Testing donation menus: on charitable giving for cancer research – evidence from a natural field experiment ” (con Marianna Baggio), Behavioural Public Policy, Page 1 of 22, Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/bpp.2019.13