Paolo Parrini’s Third Way: the Network Model

Abstract

This paper aims to examine three aspects of Paolo Parrini’s philosophy. Firstly, it intends to clarify in what sense the proposal of a third way is realised in the term ‘positive philosophy’. Secondly, the purpose is to read the network model as a paradigmatic example of positive philosophy (more specifically one concerning the relationship between observation and theory). Thirdly, it proposes to use the structure of the network model to open up a broader, meta-philosophical scenario, the scenario to which Parrini devoted himself with particular intensity in the last years of his life. My hypothesis is that it is possible to interpret his position as post-analytic (in a weak sense as I will attempt to clarify) or synthetic, i.e. as a kind of substitute (to borrow an expression used by Husserl in Krisis), in the field of meta-philosophy, for what we call the network model at the epistemological level and positive philosophy at the more general theoretical level.