Ontology of Mathematics

Edited by Rafal Urbaniak (Uniwersytetu Gdanskiego, Uniwersytetu Gdanskiego)
Assistant editors: Sam Roberts, Pawel Pawlowski
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  1. Objects are (not) ...Friedrich Wilhelm Grafe - manuscript
    My goal in this paper is, to tentatively sketch and try defend some observations regarding the ontological dignity of object references, as they may be used from within in a formalized language. -/- Hence I try to explore, what properties objects are presupposed to have, in order to enter the universe of discourse of an interpreted formalized language. -/- First I review Frege′s analysis of the logical structure of truth value definite sentences of scientific colloquial language, to draw suggestions from (...)
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  2. A Conventionalist Account of Distinctively Mathematical Explanation.Mark Povich - forthcoming - Philosophical Problems in Science.
    Distinctively mathematical explanations (DMEs) explain natural phenomena primarily by appeal to mathematical facts. One important question is whether there can be an ontic account of DME. An ontic account of DME would treat the explananda and explanantia of DMEs as ontic structures and the explanatory relation between them as an ontic relation (e.g., Pincock 2015, Povich 2021). Here I present a conventionalist account of DME, defend it against objections, and argue that it should be considered ontic. Notably, if indeed it (...)
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  3. Rules to Infinity: The Normative Role of Mathematics in Scientific Explanation.Mark Povich - forthcoming - Oxford University Press.
    [EDIT: This book will be published open access. Check back around April 2024 to access the entire book.] One central aim of science is to provide explanations of natural phenomena. What role(s) does mathematics play in achieving this aim? How does mathematics contribute to the explanatory power of science? Rules to Infinity defends the thesis, common though perhaps inchoate among many members of the Vienna Circle, that mathematics contributes to the explanatory power of science by expressing conceptual rules, rules which (...)
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  4. Ontologies of Common Sense, Physics and Mathematics.Jobst Landgrebe & Barry Smith - 2023 - Archiv.
    The view of nature we adopt in the natural attitude is determined by common sense, without which we could not survive. Classical physics is modelled on this common-sense view of nature, and uses mathematics to formalise our natural understanding of the causes and effects we observe in time and space when we select subsystems of nature for modelling. But in modern physics, we do not go beyond the realm of common sense by augmenting our knowledge of what is going on (...)
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  5. A Controvérsia em Torno do Estatuto dos Entes Matemáticos.Vasco Mano - manuscript
    Neste breve ensaio, exploramos alguns caminhos de uma controvérsia milenar em torno do estatuto dos entes matemáticos e apresentamos alguns argumentos a favor de uma posição platonista, aproximadamente clássica, sobre o tema. Este trabalho foi realizado no âmbito da disciplina de Filosofia das Ciências II, parte do curso de Filosofia da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, Portugal.
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  6. “In Nature as in Geometry”: Du Châtelet and the Post-Newtonian Debate on the Physical Significance of Mathematical Objects.Aaron Wells - 2023 - In Wolfgang Lefèvre (ed.), Between Leibniz, Newton, and Kant: Philosophy and Science in the Eighteenth Century. Springer Verlag. pp. 69-98.
    Du Châtelet holds that mathematical representations play an explanatory role in natural science. Moreover, she writes that things proceed in nature as they do in geometry. How should we square these assertions with Du Châtelet’s idealism about mathematical objects, on which they are ‘fictions’ dependent on acts of abstraction? The question is especially pressing because some of her important interlocutors (Wolff, Maupertuis, and Voltaire) denied that mathematics informs us about the properties of material things. After situating Du Châtelet in this (...)
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  7. Nothing Infinite: A Summary of Forever Finite.Kip Sewell - 2023 - Rond Media Library.
    In 'Forever Finite: The Case Against Infinity' (Rond Books, 2023), the author argues that, despite its cultural popularity, infinity is not a logical concept and consequently cannot be a property of anything that exists in the real world. This article summarizes the main points in 'Forever Finite', including its overview of what debunking infinity entails for conceptual thought in philosophy, mathematics, science, cosmology, and theology.
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  8. Matematyka a Ontologiczna Estetyka Ingardena.Barry Smith - 1976 - Studia Filozoficzne 1 (122):51-56.
    This paper applies the ontological framework developed by Roman Ingarden in his Controversy over the Existence of the World to the domain of mathematics, concluding with some remarks on parallels between the mode of existence of mathematical entities on the one hand and of values on the other.
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  9. The Paradigm Shift in the 19th-century Polish Philosophy of Mathematics.Paweł Polak - 2022 - Studia Historiae Scientiarum 21:217-235.
    The Polish philosophy of mathematics in the 19th century had its origins in the Romantic period under the influence of the then-predominant idealist philosophies. The decline of Romantic philosophy precipitated changes in general philosophy, but what is less well known is how it triggered changes in the philosophy of mathematics. In this paper, we discuss how the Polish philosophy of mathematics evolved from the metaphysical approach that had been formed during the Romantic era to the more modern positivistic paradigm. These (...)
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  10. Knowledge and the Philosophy of Number. [REVIEW]Richard Lawrence - 2022 - History and Philosophy of Logic 43 (4):404-406.
    Hossack’s project in this book is to provide a new foundation for the philosophy of number inspired by the traditional idea that numbers are magnitudes.
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  11. Calculus of Qualia: Introduction to Qualations 7 2 2022.Paul Merriam - manuscript
    The basic idea is to put qualia into equations (broadly understood) to get what might as well be called qualations. Qualations arguably have different truth behaviors than the analogous equations. Thus ‘black’ has a different behavior than ‘ █ ’. This is a step in the direction of a ‘calculus of qualia’. It might help clarify some issues.
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  12. David Armstrong on the Metaphysics of Mathematics.Thomas Donaldson - 2020 - Dialectica 74 (4):113-136.
    This paper has two components. The first, longer component (sec. 1-6) is a critical exposition of Armstrong’s views about the metaphysics of mathematics, as they are presented in Truth and Truthmakers and Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics. In particular, I discuss Armstrong’s views about the nature of the cardinal numbers, and his account of how modal truths are made true. In the second component of the paper (sec. 7), which is shorter and more tentative, I sketch an alternative account of (...)
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  13. Mathematics embodied: Merleau-Ponty on geometry and algebra as fields of motor enaction.Jan Halák - 2022 - Synthese 200 (1):1-28.
    This paper aims to clarify Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to an embodied-enactive account of mathematical cognition. I first identify the main points of interest in the current discussions of embodied higher cognition and explain how they relate to Merleau-Ponty and his sources, in particular Husserl’s late works. Subsequently, I explain these convergences in greater detail by more specifically discussing the domains of geometry and algebra and by clarifying the role of gestalt psychology in Merleau-Ponty’s account. Beyond that, I explain how, for Merleau-Ponty, (...)
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  14. Hofweber’s Nominalist Naturalism.Eric Snyder, Richard Samuels & Stewart Shapiro - 2022 - In Gianluigi Oliveri, Claudio Ternullo & Stefano Boscolo (eds.), Objects, Structures, and Logics. Cham, Switzerland: pp. 31-62.
    In this paper, we outline and critically evaluate Thomas Hofweber’s solution to a semantic puzzle he calls Frege’s Other Puzzle. After sketching the Puzzle and two traditional responses to it—the Substantival Strategy and the Adjectival Strategy—we outline Hofweber’s proposed version of Adjectivalism. We argue that two key components—the syntactic and semantic components—of Hofweber’s analysis both suffer from serious empirical difficulties. Ultimately, this suggests that an altogether different solution to Frege’s Other Puzzle is required.
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  15. Time as Relevance: Gendlin's Phenomenology of Radical Temporality.Joshua Soffer - manuscript
    In this paper, I discuss Eugene Gendlin’s contribution to radically temporal discourse , situating it in relation to Husserl and Heidegger’s analyses of time, and contrasting it with a range of interlinked approaches in philosophy and psychology that draw inspiration from, but fall short in their interpretation of the phenomenological work of Husserl and Heidegger. Gendlin reveals the shortcomings of these approaches with regard to the understanding of the relation between affect, motivation and intention, intersubjectivity, attention , reflective and pre-reflective (...)
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  16. What the Tortoise Said to Achilles: Lewis Carroll’s paradox in terms of Hilbert arithmetic.Vasil Penchev - 2021 - Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics eJournal (Elsevier: SSRN) 13 (22):1-32.
    Lewis Carroll, both logician and writer, suggested a logical paradox containing furthermore two connotations (connotations or metaphors are inherent in literature rather than in mathematics or logics). The paradox itself refers to implication demonstrating that an intermediate implication can be always inserted in an implication therefore postponing its ultimate conclusion for the next step and those insertions can be iteratively and indefinitely added ad lib, as if ad infinitum. Both connotations clear up links due to the shared formal structure with (...)
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  17. Mathematics, isomorphism, and the identity of objects.Graham White - 2021 - Journal of Knowledge Structures and Systems 2 (2):56-58.
    We compare the medieval projects of commentaries and disputations with the modern projects of formal ontology and of mathematics.
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  18. Natural Cybernetics and Mathematical History: The Principle of Least Choice in History.Vasil Penchev - 2020 - Cultural Anthropology (Elsevier: SSRN) 5 (23):1-44.
    The paper follows the track of a previous paper “Natural cybernetics of time” in relation to history in a research of the ways to be mathematized regardless of being a descriptive humanitarian science withal investigating unique events and thus rejecting any repeatability. The pathway of classical experimental science to be mathematized gradually and smoothly by more and more relevant mathematical models seems to be inapplicable. Anyway quantum mechanics suggests another pathway for mathematization; considering the historical reality as dual or “complimentary” (...)
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  19. Rez. „Adam Drozdek: In the Beginning Was the Apeiron: Infinity in Greek Philosophy, Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008“. [REVIEW]Sergiusz Kazmierski - 2010 - Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2010.
    Es ist das Verdienst der Arbeit von Adam Drozdek, in einem noch grösseren historischen Umfang sowie mit einer noch stärkeren thematischen Gewichtung und Stringenz als dies bereits Sinnige getan hat, nicht nur die entscheidendste Phase der griechischen Philosophie, sondern auch der Mathematik, ausgehend vom physikalischen und mathematischen Infinitätsgedanken dargestellt zu haben.
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  20. Mathematics - an imagined tool for rational cognition.Boris Culina - manuscript
    Analysing several characteristic mathematical models: natural and real numbers, Euclidean geometry, group theory, and set theory, I argue that a mathematical model in its final form is a junction of a set of axioms and an internal partial interpretation of the corresponding language. It follows from the analysis that (i) mathematical objects do not exist in the external world: they are our internally imagined objects, some of which, at least approximately, we can realize or represent; (ii) mathematical truths are not (...)
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  21. Numbers, Empiricism and the A Priori.Olga Ramírez Calle - 2020 - Logos and Episteme 11 (2):149-177.
    The present paper deals with the ontological status of numbers and considers Frege ́s proposal in Grundlagen upon the background of the Post-Kantian semantic turn in analytical philosophy. Through a more systematic study of his philosophical premises, it comes to unearth a first level paradox that would unset earlier still than it was exposed by Russell. It then studies an alternative path, that departin1g from Frege’s initial premises, drives to a conception of numbers as synthetic a priori in a more (...)
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  22. Maddy On The Multiverse.Claudio Ternullo - 2019 - In Deniz Sarikaya, Deborah Kant & Stefania Centrone (eds.), Reflections on the Foundations of Mathematics. Berlin: Springer Verlag. pp. 43-78.
    Penelope Maddy has recently addressed the set-theoretic multiverse, and expressed reservations on its status and merits ([Maddy, 2017]). The purpose of the paper is to examine her concerns, by using the interpretative framework of set-theoretic naturalism. I first distinguish three main forms of 'multiversism', and then I proceed to analyse Maddy's concerns. Among other things, I take into account salient aspects of multiverse-related mathematics , in particular, research programmes in set theory for which the use of the multiverse seems to (...)
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  23. Forms of Structuralism: Bourbaki and the Philosophers.Jean-Pierre Marquis - 2020 - Structures Meres, Semantics, Mathematics, and Cognitive Science.
    In this paper, we argue that, contrary to the view held by most philosophers of mathematics, Bourbaki’s technical conception of mathematical structuralism is relevant to philosophy of mathematics. In fact, we believe that Bourbaki has captured the core of any mathematical structuralism.
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  24. The Ontological Import of Adding Proper Classes.Alfredo Roque Freire & Rodrigo de Alvarenga Freire - 2019 - Manuscrito 42 (2):85-112.
    In this article, we analyse the ontological import of adding classes to set theories. We assume that this increment is well represented by going from ZF system to NBG. We thus consider the standard techniques of reducing one system to the other. Novak proved that from a model of ZF we can build a model of NBG (and vice versa), while Shoenfield have shown that from a proof in NBG of a set-sentence we can generate a proof in ZF of (...)
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  25. The tension between the mathematical and metaphysical strands of Maupertuis' Principle of Least Action.Yannick Van den Abbeel - 2017 - Noctua 4 (1-2):56-90.
    Without doubt, the principle of least action is a fundamental principle in classical mechanics. Contemporary physicists, however, consider the PLA as a purely mathematical principle – even an axiom which they cannot completely justify. Such an account stands in sharp contrast with the historical meaning of the PLA. When the principle was introduced in the 1740s, by Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, its meaning was much more versatile. For Maupertuis the principle of least action signified that nature is thrifty or economical (...)
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  26. Mathematical Models of Abstract Systems: Knowing abstract geometric forms.Jean-Pierre Marquis - 2013 - Annales de la Faculté des Sciences de Toulouse 22 (5):969-1016.
    Scientists use models to know the world. It i susually assumed that mathematicians doing pure mathematics do not. Mathematicians doing pure mathematics prove theorems about mathematical entities like sets, numbers, geometric figures, spaces, etc., they compute various functions and solve equations. In this paper, I want to exhibit models build by mathematicians to study the fundamental components of spaces and, more generally, of mathematical forms. I focus on one area of mathematics where models occupy a central role, namely homotopy theory. (...)
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  27. Physical Foundations of Mathematics (In Russian).Andrey Smirnov - manuscript
    The physical foundations of mathematics in the theory of emergent space-time-matter were considered. It is shown that mathematics, including logic, is a consequence of equation which describes the fundamental field. If the most fundamental level were described not by mathematics, but something else, then instead of mathematics there would be consequences of this something else.
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  28. Access Problems and explanatory overkill.Silvia Jonas - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (11):2731-2742.
    I argue that recent attempts to deflect Access Problems for realism about a priori domains such as mathematics, logic, morality, and modality using arguments from evolution result in two kinds of explanatory overkill: the Access Problem is eliminated for contentious domains, and realist belief becomes viciously immune to arguments from dispensability, and to non-rebutting counter-arguments more generally.
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  29. ¿ES LA MATEMÁTICA LA NOMOGONÍA DE LA CONCIENCIA? REFLEXIONES ACERCA DEL ORIGEN DE LA CONCIENCIA Y EL PLATONISMO MATEMÁTICO DE ROGER PENROSE / Is Mathematics the “nomogony” of Consciousness? Reflections on the origin of consciousness and mathematical Platonism of Roger Penrose.Miguel Acosta - 2016 - Naturaleza y Libertad. Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinares 7:15-39.
    Al final de su libro “La conciencia inexplicada”, Juan Arana señala que la nomología, explicación según las leyes de la naturaleza, requiere de una nomogonía, una consideración del origen de las leyes. Es decir, que el orden que observamos en el mundo natural requiere una instancia previa que ponga ese orden específico. Sabemos que desde la revolución científica la mejor manera de explicar dicha nomología ha sido mediante las matemáticas. Sin embargo, en las últimas décadas se han presentado algunas propuestas (...)
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  30. Les Principes des mathématiques et le problème des ensembles.Jules Richard - 1905 - Revue Générale des Sciences Pures Et Appliquées 12 (16):541-543.
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  31. Ortega y Gasset on Georg Cantor’s Theory of Transfinite Numbers.Lior Rabi - 2016 - Kairos (15):46-70.
    Ortega y Gasset is known for his philosophy of life and his effort to propose an alternative to both realism and idealism. The goal of this article is to focus on an unfamiliar aspect of his thought. The focus will be given to Ortega’s interpretation of the advancements in modern mathematics in general and Cantor’s theory of transfinite numbers in particular. The main argument is that Ortega acknowledged the historical importance of the Cantor’s Set Theory, analyzed it and articulated a (...)
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  32. Reid, Constance. Hilbert (a Biography). Reviewed by Corcoran in Philosophy of Science 39 (1972), 106–08.John Corcoran - 1972 - Philosophy of Science 39 (1):106-108.
    Reid, Constance. Hilbert (a Biography). Reviewed by Corcoran in Philosophy of Science 39 (1972), 106–08. -/- Constance Reid was an insider of the Berkeley-Stanford logic circle. Her San Francisco home was in Ashbury Heights near the homes of logicians such as Dana Scott and John Corcoran. Her sister Julia Robinson was one of the top mathematical logicians of her generation, as was Julia’s husband Raphael Robinson for whom Robinson Arithmetic was named. Julia was a Tarski PhD and, in recognition of (...)
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  33. Corcoran recommends Hambourger on the Frege-Russell number definition.John Corcoran - 1978 - MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS 56.
    It is widely agreed by philosophers that the so-called “Frege-Russell definition of natural number” is actually an assertion concerning the nature of the numbers and that it cannot be regarded as a definition in the ordinary mathematical sense. On the basis of the reasoning in this paper it is clear that the Frege-Russell definition contradicts the following three principles (taken together): (1) each number is the same entity in each possible world, (2) each number exists in each possible world, (3) (...)
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  34. The Construction of Logical Space, by Augustin Rayo. [REVIEW]S. Berry - 2015 - Mind 124 (496):1375-1379.
    Review of "The Construction of Logical Space", by Augustin Rayo. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2013. Pp. xix+220. H/b$35.00.
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  35. Normativity and Mathematics: A Wittgensteinian Approach to the Study of Number.J. Robert Loftis - 1999 - Dissertation, Northwestern University
    I argue for the Wittgensteinian thesis that mathematical statements are expressions of norms, rather than descriptions of the world. An expression of a norm is a statement like a promise or a New Year's resolution, which says that someone is committed or entitled to a certain line of action. A expression of a norm is not a mere description of a regularity of human behavior, nor is it merely a descriptive statement which happens to entail a norms. The view can (...)
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  36. Dialectics and Catastrophe.Martin Zwick - 1978 - In F. Geyer & J. Van der Zouwen (ed.), Sociocybernetics. Martinus Nijhoff. pp. 129-154.
    The Catastrophe Theory of Rene Thom and E. C. Zeeman suggests a mathematical interpretation of certain aspects of Hegelian and Marxist dialectics. Specifically, the three 'classical' dialectical principles, (1) the transformation of quantity into quality, (2) the unity and struggle of opposites, and (3) the negation of negation, can be modeled with the seven 'elementary catastrophes' given by Thorn, especially the catastrophes known as the 'cusp' and the 'butterfly'. Far from being empty metaphysics or scholasticism, as critics have argued, the (...)
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  37. Historicity, Value and Mathematics.Barry Smith - 1975 - In A. T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, vol. 4. Dordrecht: Reidel. pp. 219-239.
    At the beginning of the present century, a series of paradoxes were discovered within mathematics which suggested a fundamental unclarity in traditional mathemati­cal methods. These methods rested on the assumption of a realm of mathematical idealities existing independently of our thinking activity, and in order to arrive at a firmly grounded mathematics different attempts were made to formulate a conception of mathematical objects as purely human constructions. It was, however, realised that such formulations necessarily result in a mathematics which lacks (...)
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  38. Stanislaw Leśniewski's Logical Systems.John T. Sanders - 1996 - Axiomathes 7 (3):407-415.
    Stanislaw Lesniewski’s interests were, for the most part, more philosophical than mathematical. Prior to taking his doctorate at Jan Kazimierz University in Lvov, Lesniewski had spent time at several continental universities, apparently becoming relatively attached to the philosophy of one of his teachers, Hans Comelius, to the chapters of John Stuart Mill’s System of Logic that dealt specifically with semantics, and, in general, to studies of general grammar and philosophy of language. In these several early interests are already to be (...)
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  39. Parts: a study in ontology.Peter M. Simons - 1987 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Although the relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is, this is the first full-length study of this key concept. Showing that mereology, or the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology, Simons surveys and critiques previous theories--especially the standard extensional view--and proposes a new account that encompasses both temporal and modal considerations. Simons's revised theory not only allows him to offer fresh solutions to long-standing problems, but also has far-reaching consequences for (...)
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  40. Logic and formal ontology.B. Smith - 1989 - In J. N. Mohanty & W. McKenna (eds.), Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook. Lanham: University Press of America. pp. 29-67.
    The current resurgence of interest in cognition and in the nature of cognitive processing has brought with it also a renewed interest in the early work of Husserl, which contains one of the most sustained attempts to come to grips with the problems of logic from a cognitive point of view. Logic, for Husserl, is a theory of science; but it is a theory which takes seriously the idea that scientific theories are constituted by the mental acts of cognitive subjects. (...)
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Mathematical Fictionalism
  1. Introdução à perspectiva ficcionalista na filosofia da matemática.Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves & José Henrique Fonseca Franco - 2022 - Perspectivas 7 (2):330-346.
    O ficcionalismo, geralmente classificado como um tipo de nominalismo, apresenta como perspectiva precípua a tese de que os entes matemáticos são ficções. Para o ficcionalista, o discurso matemático é desprovido de conteúdo. Hartry Field, que é o principal defensor dessa concepção ontológica da matemática, contesta, em Science Without Numbers, a utilização de entes matemáticos na redação de teorias da física, alegando que a defesa mais plausível do realismo ontológico matemático é o argumento da indispensabilidade de Quine-Putnam. O ficcionalismo defendido por (...)
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  2. Safety first: making property talk safe for nominalists.Jack Himelright - 2022 - Synthese 200 (3):1-26.
    Nominalists are confronted with a grave difficulty: if abstract objects do not exist, what explains the success of theories that invoke them? In this paper, I make headway on this problem. I develop a formal language in which certain platonistic claims about properties and certain nominalistic claims can be expressed, develop a formal language in which only certain nominalistic claims can be expressed, describe a function mapping sentences of the first language to sentences of the second language, and prove some (...)
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  3. Principal Doctrines of Epicurus.Irfan Ajvazi - manuscript
    Epicurean philosophy, as Epicurus's teachings became known, was used as the basis for how the community lived and worked. At the time, founding a school and teaching a community of students was the main way philosophical ideas were developed and transmitted. Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE), for instance, founded a school in Athens called the Lyceum. Epicurus and his disciples believed either there were no gods or, if there were, the gods were so remote from humans that they were not (...)
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  4. Embracing Scientific Realism.Seungbae Park - 2022 - Cham: Springer.
    This book provides philosophers of science with new theoretical resources for making their own contributions to the scientific realism debate. Readers will encounter old and new arguments for and against scientific realism. They will also be given useful tips for how to provide influential formulations of scientific realism and antirealism. Finally, they will see how scientific realism relates to scientific progress, scientific understanding, mathematical realism, and scientific practice.
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  5. Mathematical anti-realism and explanatory structure.Bruno Whittle - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):6203-6217.
    Plausibly, mathematical claims are true, but the fundamental furniture of the world does not include mathematical objects. This can be made sense of by providing mathematical claims with paraphrases, which make clear how the truth of such claims does not require the fundamental existence of mathematical objects. This paper explores the consequences of this type of position for explanatory structure. There is an apparently straightforward relationship between this sort of structure, and the logical sort: i.e. logically complex claims are explained (...)
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  6. Fictionalist Strategies in Metaphysics.Lukas Skiba & Richard Woodward - 2020 - In Ricki Bliss & James Miller (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics. New York, NY, USA:
    This paper discusses the nature of, problems for, and benefits delivered by fictionalist strategies in metaphysics.
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  7. Mathematical surrealism as an alternative to easy-road fictionalism.Kenneth Boyce - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (10):2815-2835.
    Easy-road mathematical fictionalists grant for the sake of argument that quantification over mathematical entities is indispensable to some of our best scientific theories and explanations. Even so they maintain we can accept those theories and explanations, without believing their mathematical components, provided we believe the concrete world is intrinsically as it needs to be for those components to be true. Those I refer to as “mathematical surrealists” by contrast appeal to facts about the intrinsic character of the concrete world, not (...)
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  8. Bunge’s Mathematical Structuralism Is Not a Fiction.Jean-Pierre Marquis - 2019 - In Michael Robert Matthews (ed.), Mario Bunge: A Centenary Festschrift. New York, NY, USA: Springer Verlag. pp. 587-608.
    In this paper, I explore Bunge’s fictionism in philosophy of mathematics. After an overview of Bunge’s views, in particular his mathematical structuralism, I argue that the comparison between mathematical objects and fictions ultimately fails. I then sketch a different ontology for mathematics, based on Thomasson’s metaphysical work. I conclude that mathematics deserves its own ontology, and that, in the end, much work remains to be done to clarify the various forms of dependence that are involved in mathematical knowledge, in particular (...)
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  9. Optimal representations and the Enhanced Indispensability Argument.Manuel Barrantes - 2019 - Synthese 196 (1):247-263.
    The Enhanced Indispensability Argument appeals to the existence of Mathematical Explanations of Physical Phenomena to justify mathematical Platonism, following the principle of Inference to the Best Explanation. In this paper, I examine one example of a MEPP—the explanation of the 13-year and 17-year life cycle of magicicadas—and argue that this case cannot be used defend the EIA. I then generalize my analysis of the cicada case to other MEPPs, and show that these explanations rely on what I will call ‘optimal (...)
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  10. Conversational Exculpature.Daniel Hoek - 2018 - Philosophical Review 127 (2):151-196.
    Conversational exculpature is a pragmatic process whereby information is subtracted from, rather than added to, what the speaker literally says. This pragmatic content subtraction explains why we can say “Rob is six feet tall” without implying that Rob is between 5'0.99" and 6'0.01" tall, and why we can say “Ellen has a hat like the one Sherlock Holmes always wears” without implying Holmes exists or has a hat. This article presents a simple formalism for understanding this pragmatic mechanism, specifying how, (...)
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