Reconstructor: A computer program that uses three-valued logics to represent lack of information in empirical scientific contexts

ROFFÉ, ARIEL

JOURNAL OF APPLIED NON-CLASSICAL LOGICS

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

Año: 2019

1166-3081

In this article,I develop three conceptual innovations within the area of formal metatheory,and present a computer program, called Reconstructor, that implements thosedevelopments. The first development consists in a methodology for testingformal reconstructions of scientific theories, which consists checking bothwhether translations of paradigmatically successful applications into modelssatisfy the formalization of the laws, and also whether unsuccessfulapplications do not. I show how Reconstructor can help carry this out, since itallows the end-user to specify a formal language, input axioms and modelsformulated in that language, and then ask if the models satisfy the axioms. Thesecond innovation is the introduction of incomplete models (for which thedenotation of some terms is missing) into scientific metatheory, in order torepresent cases of missing information. I specify the paracomplete semantics builtinto Reconstructor to deal with sentences where denotation failures occur. Thethird development consists in a new way of explicating the structuralist notionof a determination method, by equating them with algorithms. This allowsdetermination methods to be loaded into Reconstructor and then executed withina model to find out the value of a previously non-denoting term (i.e. it allowsthe formal reconstruction to make predictions). This, in turn, can help testthe reconstruction in a different way. Finally, I conclude with somesuggestions about additional uses the program may have.