• PI: Edoardo Datteri
• Lab budget: € 1.5 million
• Funding program: FIS Advanced Grant (Fondo Italiano per la Scienza)
• Duration: 2026 – 2031
• Other partners: none

In 2026, we will recruit postdoctoral researchers with expertise in the philosophy of scientific modelling, cognitive science, measurement and explanation. For more information, please email edoardo.datteri@unimib.it.

Robots are increasingly used as experimental tools in the life sciences to perform automated measurements of inaccessible environments, discover neural and cognitive mechanisms, provide reliable and controlled stimuli for behavioural studies, explain individual and social cognition. As such, they are natural objects of study for the philosophy of science. Can they provide novel, genuine, reliable and epistemically justifiable knowledge about the behaviour and mechanisms of living systems? RiLS will address this broad question by linking it to the philosophical debate on the possibility of automating science, the role of models in science, inter-theoretical reduction, scientific measurement, scientific explanation. It will systematically and deeply explore what robots can legitimately offer as tools for measurement, scientific discovery, model testing, and explanation of biological and cognitive capacities. It will adopt a methodological approach called “philosophy of science in vivo”, based on the philosophical analysis of four scientific case studies developed within the project itself, in collaboration with the scientific community. While the studies will have a life of their own, strengthening the interdisciplinary nature of the project, they will also provide a unique ecosystem for direct philosophical scrutiny of scientific research processes. Four interdisciplinary research groups will be formed, comprising scientists and philosophers. The scientific and philosophical work packages will interact and cross-fertilise.

• PI: Edoardo Datteri
• Lab budget: € 92.745
• Funding program: PRIN (Ministry of University and Research)
• Duration: 2023 – 2026
• Other partners: INDIRE (Margherita di Stasio), University of Florence (Riccardo Bruni), CNR-ICAR (Agnese Augello)

The HERB project aims to shift the focus of research from whether people attribute a mind to robots to fine-grained explanations of robotic behaviours. Rather than simply investigating whether people believe that robots have a mind, we want to examine how they think their mind works. We aim to examine the cognitive, rational and emotional architecture that people attribute to robots in various interaction contexts, as well as how they use these theories to explain robotic behaviour. We will study the structure and content of human explanations of robotic behaviours (HERBs) as depending on the cognitive and social abilities of the robots, the characteristics of the human partners (e.g. computer literacy, age and purpose) and whether the human can modify the robot’s behaviour. Drawing on interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophers of science, logicians, pedagogists, and roboticists, the project will produce analyses of HERBs in various interaction contexts, as well as reliable HERB study methods. A key feature of this project is that the analysis of HERBs will be empirical yet firmly rooted in philosophical analyses of the ‘logic’ of scientific explanation. Two complementary philosophical units within the consortium (one with expertise in the philosophy of science and the other in logic) will provide the conceptual framework and address epistemological questions concerning how humans understand robotic behaviours. The two units will also carry out empirical analyses of HERBs in educational and social contexts, and coordinate the development of methods for studying HERBs. Overall, the consortium involves several complementary and well-integrated disciplines, including philosophy of science, logic, pedagogy and robotics.

• PI: Monica Pivetti (University of Bergamo)
• Lab budget: € 111.450
• Funding program: PRIN (Ministry of University and Research)
• Duration: 2023 – 2026

The project’s main objective is to analyse how educational robotics activities can encourage engagement in STEM subjects, particularly among girls from migrant backgrounds. In line with this goal, the RobotiCSS Unit will study how culture shapes children’s understanding of, and attitude towards, social robots. Using a non-geographical approach, we will study cultural profiles and use explicit and implicit experimental tools to model children’s attribution of human-like abilities to humanoid robots.