Numbers

Edited by Rafal Urbaniak (Uniwersytetu Gdanskiego, Uniwersytetu Gdanskiego)
Assistant editors: Sam Roberts, Pawel Pawlowski
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66 found
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  1. The Cultural Phenomenology of Qualitative quantity - work in progress - Introduction autobiographical.Borislav Dimitrov - manuscript
    This study is about the Quality. Here I have dealt with the quality that differs significantly from the common understanding of quality /as determined quality/ that arise from the law of dialectics. This new quality is the quality of the quantity /quality of the quantitative changes/, noticed in philosophy by Plato as “quality of numbers”, and later developed by Hegel as “qualitative quantity. The difference between the known determined quality and qualitative quantity is evident in the exhibit form of these (...)
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  2. Phenomenological Objects & Meaning: A Fregean & Husserlian Discussion.Daniel Sierra - manuscript
    Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl are two seemingly different philosophers in their methodology. Both have significantly influenced Western philosophy in that their contributions established fields within philosophy that are of intensive study today. Still, their differences in methodology have, in certain instances, yielded similar or distinct results. Their results ranged from the distinction of sense and reference, objectivity, and the theory of mathematics: specifically, their definition of number. Frege and Husserl have such striking similarities in their theory of sense and (...)
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  3. Abstraction and Grounding.Louis deRosset & Øystein Linnebo - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
    The idea that some objects are metaphysically “cheap” has wide appeal. An influential version of the idea builds on abstractionist views in the philosophy of mathematics, on which numbers and other mathematical objects are abstracted from other phenomena. For example, Hume’s Principle states that two collections have the same number just in case they are equinumerous, in the sense that they can be correlated one-to-one: (HP) #xx=#yy iff xx≈yy. The principal aim of this article is to use the notion of (...)
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  4. On What Ground Do Thin Objects Exist? In Search of the Cognitive Foundation of Number Concepts.Markus Pantsar - 2023 - Theoria 89 (3):298-313.
    Linnebo in 2018 argues that abstract objects like numbers are “thin” because they are only required to be referents of singular terms in abstraction principles, such as Hume's principle. As the specification of existence claims made by analytic truths (the abstraction principles), their existence does not make any substantial demands of the world; however, as Linnebo notes, there is a potential counter-argument concerning infinite regress against introducing objects this way. Against this, he argues that vicious regress is avoided in the (...)
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  5. Logic, mathematics, physics: from a loose thread to the close link: Or what gravity is for both logic and mathematics rather than only for physics.Vasil Penchev - 2023 - Astrophysics, Cosmology and Gravitation Ejournal 2 (52):1-82.
    Gravitation is interpreted to be an “ontomathematical” force or interaction rather than an only physical one. That approach restores Newton’s original design of universal gravitation in the framework of “The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”, which allows for Einstein’s special and general relativity to be also reinterpreted ontomathematically. The entanglement theory of quantum gravitation is inherently involved also ontomathematically by virtue of the consideration of the qubit Hilbert space after entanglement as the Fourier counterpart of pseudo-Riemannian space. Gravitation can be (...)
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  6. Mathematical Internal Realism.Tim Button - 2022 - In Sanjit Chakraborty & James Ferguson Conant (eds.), Engaging Putnam. Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter. pp. 157-182.
    In “Models and Reality” (1980), Putnam sketched a version of his internal realism as it might arise in the philosophy of mathematics. Here, I will develop that sketch. By combining Putnam’s model-theoretic arguments with Dummett’s reflections on Gödelian incompleteness, we arrive at (what I call) the Skolem-Gödel Antinomy. In brief: our mathematical concepts are perfectly precise; however, these perfectly precise mathematical concepts are manifested and acquired via a formal theory, which is understood in terms of a computable system of proof, (...)
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  7. Fermat’s last theorem proved in Hilbert arithmetic. II. Its proof in Hilbert arithmetic by the Kochen-Specker theorem with or without induction.Vasil Penchev - 2022 - Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics eJournal (Elsevier: SSRN) 14 (10):1-52.
    The paper is a continuation of another paper published as Part I. Now, the case of “n=3” is inferred as a corollary from the Kochen and Specker theorem (1967): the eventual solutions of Fermat’s equation for “n=3” would correspond to an admissible disjunctive division of qubit into two absolutely independent parts therefore versus the contextuality of any qubit, implied by the Kochen – Specker theorem. Incommensurability (implied by the absence of hidden variables) is considered as dual to quantum contextuality. The (...)
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  8. Preface to Forenames of God: Enumerations of Ernesto Laclau toward a Political Theology of Algorithms.Virgil W. Brower - 2021 - Internationales Jahrbuch Für Medienphilosophie 7 (1):243-251.
    Perhaps nowhere better than, "On the Names of God," can readers discern Laclau's appreciation of theology, specifically, negative theology, and the radical potencies of political theology. // It is Laclau's close attention to Eckhart and Dionysius in this essay that reveals a core theological strategy to be learned by populist reasons or social logics and applied in politics or democracies to come. // This mode of algorithmically informed negative political theology is not mathematically inert. It aspires to relate a fraction (...)
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  9. Objectivity in Mathematics, Without Mathematical Objects†.Markus Pantsar - 2021 - Philosophia Mathematica 29 (3):318-352.
    I identify two reasons for believing in the objectivity of mathematical knowledge: apparent objectivity and applications in science. Focusing on arithmetic, I analyze platonism and cognitive nativism in terms of explaining these two reasons. After establishing that both theories run into difficulties, I present an alternative epistemological account that combines the theoretical frameworks of enculturation and cumulative cultural evolution. I show that this account can explain why arithmetical knowledge appears to be objective and has scientific applications. Finally, I will argue (...)
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  10. The Billionaire.Ilexa Yardley - 2021 - Https://Medium.Com/the-Circular-Theory/.
    Zero and one. Circumference and diameter. Intelligent anarchy. Explanation for abstraction (as a noun) (as a verb).
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  11. Invasive Weeds in Parmenides' Garden.Olga Ramirez Calle - 2020 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 20 (60):391-412.
    The paper attempts to conciliate the important distinction between what-is, or exists, and what-is-not _thereby supporting Russell’s existential analysis_ with some Meinongian insights. For this purpose, it surveys the varied inhabitants of the realm of ‘non-being’ and tries to clarify their diverse statuses. The position that results makes it possible to rescue them back in surprising but non-threatening form, leaving our ontology safe from contradiction.
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  12. Fermat’s Last Theorem Proved by Induction (and Accompanied by a Philosophical Comment).Vasil Penchev - 2020 - Metaphilosophy eJournal (Elsevier: SSRN) 12 (8):1-8.
    A proof of Fermat’s last theorem is demonstrated. It is very brief, simple, elementary, and absolutely arithmetical. The necessary premises for the proof are only: the three definitive properties of the relation of equality (identity, symmetry, and transitivity), modus tollens, axiom of induction, the proof of Fermat’s last theorem in the case of n = 3 as well as the premises necessary for the formulation of the theorem itself. It involves a modification of Fermat’s approach of infinite descent. The infinite (...)
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  13. On the Varieties of Abstract Objects.James E. Davies - 2019 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (4):809-823.
    I reconcile the spatiotemporal location of repeatable artworks and impure sets with the non-location of natural numbers despite all three being varieties of abstract objects. This is possible because, while the identity conditions for all three can be given by abstraction principles, in the former two cases spatiotemporal location is a congruence for the equivalence relation featuring in the relevant principle, whereas in the latter it is not. I then generalize this to other ‘physical’ properties like shape, mass, and causal (...)
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  14. Apophatic Finitism and Infinitism.Jan Heylen - 2019 - Logique Et Analyse 62 (247):319-337.
    This article is about the ontological dispute between finitists, who claim that only finitely many numbers exist, and infinitists, who claim that infinitely many numbers exist. Van Bendegem set out to solve the 'general problem' for finitism: how can one recast finite fragments of classical mathematics in finitist terms? To solve this problem Van Bendegem comes up with a new brand of finitism, namely so-called 'apophatic finitism'. In this article it will be argued that apophatic finitism is unable to represent (...)
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  15. Deflationary Nominalism and Puzzle Avoidance.David Mark Kovacs - 2019 - Philosophia Mathematica 27 (1):88-104.
    In a series of works, Jody Azzouni has defended deflationary nominalism, the view that certain sentences quantifying over mathematical objects are literally true, although such objects do not exist. One alleged attraction of this view is that it avoids various philosophical puzzles about mathematical objects. I argue that this thought is misguided. I first develop an ontologically neutral counterpart of Field’s reliability challenge and argue that deflationary nominalism offers no distinctive answer to it. I then show how this reasoning generalizes (...)
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  16. Maths, Logic and Language.Tetsuaki Iwamoto - 2018 - Geneva: Logic Forum.
    A work on the philosophy of mathematics (2017) -/- ‘Number’, such a simple idea, and yet it fascinated and absorbed the greatest proportion of human geniuses over centuries, not to mention the likes of Pythagoras, Euclid, Newton, Leibniz, Descartes and countless maths giants like Euler, Gauss and Hilbert, etc.. Einstein thought of pure maths as the poetry of logical ideas, the exactitude of which, although independent of experience, strangely seems to benefit the study of the objects of reality. And, interestingly (...)
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  17. Arbitrary reference, numbers, and propositions.Michele Palmira - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 26 (3):1069-1085.
    Reductionist realist accounts of certain entities, such as the natural numbers and propositions, have been taken to be fatally undermined by what we may call the problem of arbitrary identification. The problem is that there are multiple and equally adequate reductions of the natural numbers to sets (see Benacerraf, 1965), as well as of propositions to unstructured or structured entities (see, e.g., Bealer, 1998; King, Soames, & Speaks, 2014; Melia, 1992). This paper sets out to solve the problem by canvassing (...)
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  18. What we talk about when we talk about numbers.Richard Pettigrew - 2018 - Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 169 (12):1437-1456.
    In this paper, I describe and motivate a new species of mathematical structuralism, which I call Instrumental Nominalism about Set-Theoretic Structuralism. As the name suggests, this approach takes standard Set-Theoretic Structuralism of the sort championed by Bourbaki and removes its ontological commitments by taking an instrumental nominalist approach to that ontology of the sort described by Joseph Melia and Gideon Rosen. I argue that this avoids all of the problems that plague other versions of structuralism.
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  19. Beyond Witches, Angels and Unicorns. The Possibility of Expanding Russell´s Existential Analysis.Olga Ramirez - 2018 - E-Logos Electronic Journal for Philosophy 25 (1):4-15.
    This paper attempts to be a contribution to the epistemological project of explaining complex conceptual structures departing from more basic ones. The central thesis of the paper is that there are what I call “functionally structured concepts”, these are non-harmonic concepts in Dummett’s sense that might be legitimized if there is a function that justifies the tie between the inferential connection the concept allows us to trace. Proving this requires enhancing the russellian existential analysis of definite descriptions to apply to (...)
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  20. Our Incorrigible Ontological Relations and Categories of Being.Julian M. Galvez Bunge (ed.) - 2017 - USA: Amazon.
    The purpose of this book is to address the controversial issues of whether we have a fixed set of ontological categories and if they have some epistemic value at all. Which are our ontological categories? What determines them? Do they play a role in cognition? If so, which? What do they force to presuppose regarding our world-view? If they constitute a limit to possible knowledge, up to what point is science possible? Does their study make of philosophy a science? Departing (...)
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  21. Number words as number names.Friederike Moltmann - 2017 - Linguistics and Philosophy 40 (4):331-345.
    This paper criticizes the view that number words in argument position retain the meaning they have on an adjectival or determiner use, as argued by Hofweber :179–225, 2005) and Moltmann :499–534, 2013a, 2013b). In particular the paper re-evaluates syntactic evidence from German given in Moltmann to that effect.
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  22. The Circular Theory.Ilexa Yardley - 2017 - Https://Medium.Com/the-Circular-Theory/.
    Zero and one is circumference and diameter. Literally. And, figuratively.
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  23. Structure and Categoricity: Determinacy of Reference and Truth Value in the Philosophy of Mathematics.Tim Button & Sean Walsh - 2016 - Philosophia Mathematica 24 (3):283-307.
    This article surveys recent literature by Parsons, McGee, Shapiro and others on the significance of categoricity arguments in the philosophy of mathematics. After discussing whether categoricity arguments are sufficient to secure reference to mathematical structures up to isomorphism, we assess what exactly is achieved by recent ‘internal’ renditions of the famous categoricity arguments for arithmetic and set theory.
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  24. Speaks’s Reduction of Propositions to Properties: A Benacerraf Problem.T. Scott Dixon & Cody Gilmore - 2016 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 5 (3):275-284.
    Speaks defends the view that propositions are properties: for example, the proposition that grass is green is the property being such that grass is green. We argue that there is no reason to prefer Speaks's theory to analogous but competing theories that identify propositions with, say, 2-adic relations. This style of argument has recently been deployed by many, including Moore and King, against the view that propositions are n-tuples, and by Caplan and Tillman against King's view that propositions are facts (...)
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  25. Number and Reality: Sources of Scientific Knowledge.Alex V. Halapsis - 2016 - ScienceRise 23 (6):59-64.
    Pythagoras’s number doctrine had a great effect on the development of science. Number – the key to the highest reality, and such approach allowed Pythagoras to transform mathematics from craft into science, which continues implementation of its project of “digitization of being”. Pythagoras's project underwent considerable transformation, but it only means that the plan in knowledge is often far from result.
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  26. Visa to Heaven: Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Immortality.Alex V. Halapsis - 2016 - ScienceRise 25 (8):60-65.
    The article deals with the doctrines of Orpheus and Pythagoras about the immortality of the soul in the context of the birth of philosophy in ancient Greece. Orpheus demonstrated the closeness of heavenly (divine) and earthly (human) worlds, and Pythagoras mathematically proved their fundamental identity. Greek philosophy was “an investment in the afterlife future”, being the product of the mystical (Orpheus) and rationalist (Pythagoras) theology.
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  27. The Number of Planets, a Number-Referring Term?Friederike Moltmann - 2016 - In Philip A. Ebert & Marcus Rossberg (eds.), Abstractionism: Essays in Philosophy of Mathematics. Oxford University Press. pp. 113-129.
    The question whether numbers are objects is a central question in the philosophy of mathematics. Frege made use of a syntactic criterion for objethood: numbers are objects because there are singular terms that stand for them, and not just singular terms in some formal language, but in natural language in particular. In particular, Frege (1884) thought that both noun phrases like the number of planets and simple numerals like eight as in (1) are singular terms referring to numbers as abstract (...)
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  28. Aristotelian finitism.Tamer Nawar - 2015 - Synthese 192 (8):2345-2360.
    It is widely known that Aristotle rules out the existence of actual infinities but allows for potential infinities. However, precisely why Aristotle should deny the existence of actual infinities remains somewhat obscure and has received relatively little attention in the secondary literature. In this paper I investigate the motivations of Aristotle’s finitism and offer a careful examination of some of the arguments considered by Aristotle both in favour of and against the existence of actual infinities. I argue that Aristotle has (...)
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  29. Fourteen Arguments in Favour of a Formalist Philosophy of Real Mathematics.Karlis Podnieks - 2015 - Baltic Journal of Modern Computing 3 (1):1-15.
    The formalist philosophy of mathematics (in its purest, most extreme version) is widely regarded as a “discredited position”. This pure and extreme version of formalism is called by some authors “game formalism”, because it is alleged to represent mathematics as a meaningless game with strings of symbols. Nevertheless, I would like to draw attention to some arguments in favour of game formalism as an appropriate philosophy of real mathematics. For the most part, these arguments have not yet been used or (...)
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  30. An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics: Mathematics as the science of quantity and structure.James Franklin - 2014 - London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
    An Aristotelian Philosophy of Mathematics breaks the impasse between Platonist and nominalist views of mathematics. Neither a study of abstract objects nor a mere language or logic, mathematics is a science of real aspects of the world as much as biology is. For the first time, a philosophy of mathematics puts applied mathematics at the centre. Quantitative aspects of the world such as ratios of heights, and structural ones such as symmetry and continuity, are parts of the physical world and (...)
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  31. Plato’s Philosophy of Cognition by Mathematical Modelling.Roman S. Kljujkov & Sergey F. Kljujkov - 2014 - Dialogue and Universalism 24 (3):110-115.
    By the end of his life Plato had rearranged the theory of ideas into his teaching about ideal numbers, but no written records have been left. The Ideal mathematics of Plato is present in all his dialogues. It can be clearly grasped in relation to the effective use of mathematical modelling. Many problems of mathematical modelling were laid in the foundation of the method by cutting the three-level idealism of Plato to the single-level “ideism” of Aristotle. For a long time, (...)
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  32. Wide Sets, ZFCU, and the Iterative Conception.Christopher Menzel - 2014 - Journal of Philosophy 111 (2):57-83.
    The iterative conception of set is typically considered to provide the intuitive underpinnings for ZFCU (ZFC+Urelements). It is an easy theorem of ZFCU that all sets have a definite cardinality. But the iterative conception seems to be entirely consistent with the existence of “wide” sets, sets (of, in particular, urelements) that are larger than any cardinal. This paper diagnoses the source of the apparent disconnect here and proposes modifications of the Replacement and Powerset axioms so as to allow for the (...)
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  33. Musil’s Imaginary Bridge.Achille C. Varzi - 2014 - The Monist 97 (1):30-46.
    In a calculation involving imaginary numbers, we begin with real numbers that represent concrete measures and we end up with numbers that are equally real, but in the course of the operation we find ourselves walking “as if on a bridge that stands on no piles”. How is that possible? How does that work? And what is involved in the as-if stance that this metaphor introduces so beautifully? These are questions that bother Törless deeply. And that Törless is bothered by (...)
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  34. Frege, Carnap, and Explication: ‘Our Concern Here Is to Arrive at a Concept of Number Usable for the Purpose of Science’.Gregory Lavers - 2013 - History and Philosophy of Logic 34 (3):225-41.
    This paper argues that Carnap both did not view and should not have viewed Frege's project in the foundations of mathematics as misguided metaphysics. The reason for this is that Frege's project was to give an explication of number in a very Carnapian sense — something that was not lost on Carnap. Furthermore, Frege gives pragmatic justification for the basic features of his system, especially where there are ontological considerations. It will be argued that even on the question of the (...)
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  35. Non-symbolic halving in an amazonian indigene group.Koleen McCrink, Elizabeth Spelke, Stanislas Dehaene & Pierre Pica - 2013 - Developmental Science 16 (3):451-462.
    Much research supports the existence of an Approximate Number System (ANS) that is recruited by infants, children, adults, and non-human animals to generate coarse, non-symbolic representations of number. This system supports simple arithmetic operations such as addition, subtraction, and ordering of amounts. The current study tests whether an intuition of a more complex calculation, division, exists in an indigene group in the Amazon, the Mundurucu, whose language includes no words for large numbers. Mundurucu children were presented with a video event (...)
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  36. Chapter 6: Reifying Terms.Friederike Moltmann - 2013 - In Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    This chapter develops a semantics for 'reifying terms' of the sort 'the proposition that S', 'the fact that S', 'the property of being P', 'the number eight', 'the concept horse', 'the truth value true', 'the kind humane being'. This semantics is developed within the broader perspective of the ontology of natural language involving abstract objects only at its periphery, not its core.
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  37. Reference to numbers in natural language.Friederike Moltmann - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 162 (3):499 - 536.
    A common view is that natural language treats numbers as abstract objects, with expressions like the number of planets, eight, as well as the number eight acting as referential terms referring to numbers. In this paper I will argue that this view about reference to numbers in natural language is fundamentally mistaken. A more thorough look at natural language reveals a very different view of the ontological status of natural numbers. On this view, numbers are not primarily treated abstract objects, (...)
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  38. Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language.Friederike Moltmann - 2013 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    This book pursues the question of how and whether natural language allows for reference to abstract objects in a fully systematic way. By making full use of contemporary linguistic semantics, it presents a much greater range of linguistic generalizations than has previously been taken into consideration in philosophical discussions, and it argues for an ontological picture is very different from that generally taken for granted by philosophers and semanticists alike. Reference to abstract objects such as properties, numbers, propositions, and degrees (...)
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  39. Education Enhances the Acuity of the Nonverbal Approximate Number System.Manuela Piazza, Pierre Pica, Véronique Izard, Elizabeth Spelke & Stanislas Dehaene - 2013 - Psychological Science 24 (4):p.
    All humans share a universal, evolutionarily ancient approximate number system (ANS) that estimates and combines the numbers of objects in sets with ratio-limited precision. Interindividual variability in the acuity of the ANS correlates with mathematical achievement, but the causes of this correlation have never been established. We acquired psychophysical measures of ANS acuity in child and adult members of an indigene group in the Amazon, the Mundurucú, who have a very restricted numerical lexicon and highly variable access to mathematics education. (...)
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  40. The Philosophical Significance of Tennenbaum’s Theorem.T. Button & P. Smith - 2012 - Philosophia Mathematica 20 (1):114-121.
    Tennenbaum's Theorem yields an elegant characterisation of the standard model of arithmetic. Several authors have recently claimed that this result has important philosophical consequences: in particular, it offers us a way of responding to model-theoretic worries about how we manage to grasp the standard model. We disagree. If there ever was such a problem about how we come to grasp the standard model, then Tennenbaum's Theorem does not help. We show this by examining a parallel argument, from a simpler model-theoretic (...)
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  41. Frege's Changing Conception of Number.Kevin C. Klement - 2012 - Theoria 78 (2):146-167.
    I trace changes to Frege's understanding of numbers, arguing in particular that the view of arithmetic based in geometry developed at the end of his life (1924–1925) was not as radical a deviation from his views during the logicist period as some have suggested. Indeed, by looking at his earlier views regarding the connection between numbers and second-level concepts, his understanding of extensions of concepts, and the changes to his views, firstly, in between Grundlagen and Grundgesetze, and, later, after learning (...)
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  42. Frege, the complex numbers, and the identity of indiscernibles.Wenzel Christian Helmut - 2010 - Logique Et Analyse 53 (209):51-60.
    There are mathematical structures with elements that cannot be distinguished by the properties they have within that structure. For instance within the field of complex numbers the two square roots of −1, i and −i, have the same algebraic properties in that field. So how do we distinguish between them? Imbedding the complex numbers in a bigger structure, the quaternions, allows us to algebraically tell them apart. But a similar problem appears for this larger structure. There seems to be always (...)
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  43. On 'Average'.Christopher Kennedy & Jason Stanley - 2009 - Mind 118 (471):583 - 646.
    This article investigates the semantics of sentences that express numerical averages, focusing initially on cases such as 'The average American has 2.3 children'. Such sentences have been used both by linguists and philosophers to argue for a disjuncture between semantics and ontology. For example, Noam Chomsky and Norbert Hornstein have used them to provide evidence against the hypothesis that natural language semantics includes a reference relation holding between words and objects in the world, whereas metaphysicians such as Joseph Melia and (...)
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  44. Reducing Arithmetic to Set Theory.A. C. Paseau - 2009 - In Øystein Linnebo & Otavio Bueno (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Mathematics. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 35-55.
    The revival of the philosophy of mathematics in the 60s following its post-1931 slump left us with two conflicting positions on arithmetic’s ontological relationship to set theory. W.V. Quine’s view, presented in 'Word and Object' (1960), was that numbers are sets. The opposing view was advanced in another milestone of twentieth-century philosophy of mathematics, Paul Benacerraf’s 'What Numbers Could Not Be' (1965): one of the things numbers could not be, it explained, was sets; the other thing numbers could not be, (...)
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  45. Exact equality and successor function: Two key concepts on the path towards understanding exact numbers.Véronique Izard, Pierre Pica, Elizabeth S. Spelke & Stanislas Dehaene - 2008 - Philosophical Psychology 21 (4):491 – 505.
    Humans possess two nonverbal systems capable of representing numbers, both limited in their representational power: the first one represents numbers in an approximate fashion, and the second one conveys information about small numbers only. Conception of exact large numbers has therefore been thought to arise from the manipulation of exact numerical symbols. Here, we focus on two fundamental properties of the exact numbers as prerequisites to the concept of EXACT NUMBERS : the fact that all numbers can be generated by (...)
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  46. The mapping of numbers on space : Evidence for a logarithmic Intuition.Véronique Izard, Pierre Pica, Elizabeth Spelke & Stanislas Dehaene - 2008 - Médecine/Science 24 (12):1014-1016.
    Des branches entières des mathématiques sont fondées sur des liens posés entre les nombres et l’espace : mesure de longueurs, définition de repères et de coordonnées, projection des nombres complexes sur le plan… Si les nombres complexes, comme l’utilisation de repères, sont apparus relativement récemment (vers le XVIIe siècle), la mesure des longueurs est en revanche un procédé très ancien, qui remonte au moins au 3e ou 4e millénaire av. J-C. Loin d’être fortuits, ces liens entre les nombres et l’espace (...)
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  47. On the Reality of the Continuum Discussion Note: A Reply to Ormell, ‘Russell's Moment of Candour’, Philosophy.Anne Newstead - 2008 - Philosophy 83 (1):117-127.
    In a recent article, Christopher Ormell argues against the traditional mathematical view that the real numbers form an uncountably infinite set. He rejects the conclusion of Cantor’s diagonal argument for the higher, non-denumerable infinity of the real numbers. He does so on the basis that the classical conception of a real number is mys- terious, ineffable, and epistemically suspect. Instead, he urges that mathematics should admit only ‘well-defined’ real numbers as proper objects of study. In practice, this means excluding as (...)
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  48. Theoretical implications of the study of numbers and numerals in mundurucu.Pierre Pica & Alain Lecomte - 2008 - Philosophical Psychology 21 (4):507 – 522.
    Developing earlier studies of the system of numbers in Mundurucu, this paper argues that the Mundurucu numeral system is far more complex than usually assumed. The Mundurucu numeral system provides indirect but insightful arguments for a modular approach to numbers and numerals. It is argued that distinct components must be distinguished, such as a system of representation of numbers in the format of internal magnitudes, a system of representation for individuals and sets, and one-to-one correspondences between the numerosity expressed by (...)
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  49. Review of Oppy's Philosophical Perspectives on Infinity. [REVIEW]Anne Newstead - 2007 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (4):679-695.
    This is a book review of Oppy's "Philosophical Perspectives on Infinity", which is of interest to those in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, mathematics, and philosophy of religion.
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  50. Exact and Approximate Arithmetic in an Amazonian Indigene Group.Pierre Pica, Cathy Lemer, Véronique Izard & Stanislas Dehaene - 2004 - Science 306 (5695):499-503.
    Is calculation possible without language? Or is the human ability for arithmetic dependent on the language faculty? To clarify the relation between language and arithmetic, we studied numerical cognition in speakers of Mundurukú, an Amazonian language with a very small lexicon of number words. Although the Mundurukú lack words for numbers beyond 5, they are able to compare and add large approximate numbers that are far beyond their naming range. However, they fail in exact arithmetic with numbers larger than 4 (...)
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