Mariano Martín Villuendas: The Metascience of Target Systems: A Pragmatist-Inferentialist Approach

Tuesday Jan 12 2027 @11:30 (CET)
Sala B, Edificio de Humanidades, UNED & online

Abstract: Philosophical principles are generally treated as background assumptions—secondary commitments adopted only once research is already underway. Against this view, I hold that the philosophical principles I call metascientific—ontological and metasemantic—are neither optional nor limited to consolidating results in the final stages of research; they are central to scientific inquiry. First, they shape which aspects of an empirical situation acquire salience as research targets (constitutive principles). Second, they constrain the epistemic standing granted to those targets once constituted (evaluative principles).

Highlighting the role of metascientific principles is essential for clarifying central aspects of scientific modeling. Target systems are not simply given by the phenomenon they represent; they are the result of an intentional construction. This act of constitution, as well as its evaluation, has not received detailed consideration. Most work invoking the model-target-phenomenon triad addresses the model-target relation while treating the target-phenomenon relation as already settled. This talk fills that gap by asking not how models relate to already-given targets, but how targets are carved out of phenomena in the first place.

Among accounts that address this point, I distance my proposal from onto-representationalist views, in which a target results from abstracting a phenomenon’s causally relevant properties, yielding an objectively correct partition assessed by correspondence. This view collides with the plurality of equally legitimate targets that scientific practice countenances. I illustrate this point through the phenomenon of biological individuality, where physiological and evolutionary criteria each constitute distinct, equally legitimate research targets.

Against this backdrop, I develop a pragmatist-inferentialist framework. Constitutively, pragmatism frees ontological choice from a priori metaphysical constraints, subordinating it instead to the demands of practice; inferentialism establishes that the evidence relevant for specifying a target is determined through inferential relations aimed at transforming a problematic situation into a determinate one. Evaluatively, pragmatism asserts that a target lacks meaning outside the practice that generates it; inferentialism specifies the concrete criteria for adequacy: control, reliability, and consistency, rather than correspondence to a uniquely correct partition.

Bio
Mariano Martín-Villuendas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science at UNED. He earned his Ph.D. in Logic and Philosophy of Science from the University of Salamanca (2024), graduating Summa Cum Laude and receiving the International Doctorate Mention. In 2025, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Philosophy at Jagiellonian University (Poland). Mariano has carried out research stays at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh (USA) and the Department of Philosophy I at Ruhr University Bochum (Germany). 
His research focuses on modeling practices in the life sciences from a pragmatist perspective, with particular emphasis on cancer research, epigenetics, and biological individuality. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes, and presented his work at major international and national meetings in philosophy of science and philosophy of biology.