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A subject with no object: strategies for nominalistic interpretation of mathematics

New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Gideon A. Rosen (1997)

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  1. How Not to Enhance the Indispensability Argument.Russell Marcus - 2014 - Philosophia Mathematica 22 (3):345-360.
    The new explanatory or enhanced indispensability argument alleges that our mathematical beliefs are justified by their indispensable appearances in scientific explanations. This argument differs from the standard indispensability argument which focuses on the uses of mathematics in scientific theories. I argue that the new argument depends for its plausibility on an equivocation between two senses of explanation. On one sense the new argument is an oblique restatement of the standard argument. On the other sense, it is vulnerable to an instrumentalist (...)
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  • (1 other version)Conceptual Ethics II.Alexis Burgess & David Plunkett - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (12):1102-1110.
    Which concepts should we use to think and talk about the world, and to do all of the other things that mental and linguistic representation facilitates? This is the guiding question of the field that we call ‘conceptual ethics’. Conceptual ethics is not often discussed as its own systematic branch of normative theory. A case can nevertheless be made that the field is already quite active, with contributions coming in from areas as diverse as fundamental metaphysics and social/political philosophy. In (...)
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  • A Cognitive Approach to Benacerraf's Dilemma.Luke Jerzykiewicz - 2009 - Dissertation, University of Western Ontario
    One of the important challenges in the philosophy of mathematics is to account for the semantics of sentences that express mathematical propositions while simultaneously explaining our access to their contents. This is Benacerraf’s Dilemma. In this dissertation, I argue that cognitive science furnishes new tools by means of which we can make progress on this problem. The foundation of the solution, I argue, must be an ontologically realist, albeit non-platonist, conception of mathematical reality. The semantic portion of the problem can (...)
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  • Handling mathematical objects: representations and context.Jessica Carter - 2013 - Synthese 190 (17):3983-3999.
    This article takes as a starting point the current popular anti realist position, Fictionalism, with the intent to compare it with actual mathematical practice. Fictionalism claims that mathematical statements do purport to be about mathematical objects, and that mathematical statements are not true. Considering these claims in the light of mathematical practice leads to questions about how mathematical objects are handled, and how we prove that certain statements hold. Based on a case study on Riemann’s work on complex functions, I (...)
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  • A verisimilitudinarian analysis of the Linda paradox.Gustavo Cevolani, Vincenzo Crupi & Roberto Festa - 2012 - VII Conference of the Spanish Society for Logic, Methodology and Philosphy of Science.
    The Linda paradox is a key topic in current debates on the rationality of human reasoning and its limitations. We present a novel analysis of this paradox, based on the notion of verisimilitude as studied in the philosophy of science. The comparison with an alternative analysis based on probabilistic confirmation suggests how to overcome some problems of our account by introducing an adequately defined notion of verisimilitudinarian confirmation.
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  • Art, Metaphysics, & the Paradox of Standards.Christy Mag Uidhir - 2013 - In Art & Abstract Objects. Oxford University Press.
    I consider the field of aesthetics to be at its most productive and engaging when adopting a broadly philosophically informative approach to its core issues (e.g., shaping and testing putative art theoretic commitments against the relevant standard models employed in philosophy of language, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind) and to be at its most impotent and bewildering when cultivating a philosophically insular character (e.g., selecting interpretative, ontological, or conceptual models solely for fit with pre-fixed art theoretic commitments). For example, when (...)
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  • Moral Epistemology: The Mathematics Analogy.Justin Clarke-Doane - 2012 - Noûs 48 (2):238-255.
    There is a long tradition comparing moral knowledge to mathematical knowledge. In this paper, I discuss apparent similarities and differences between knowledge in the two areas, realistically conceived. I argue that many of these are only apparent, while others are less philosophically significant than might be thought. The picture that emerges is surprising. There are definitely differences between epistemological arguments in the two areas. However, these differences, if anything, increase the plausibility of moral realism as compared to mathematical realism. It (...)
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  • Stevin Numbers and Reality.Karin Usadi Katz & Mikhail G. Katz - 2012 - Foundations of Science 17 (2):109-123.
    We explore the potential of Simon Stevin’s numbers, obscured by shifting foundational biases and by 19th century developments in the arithmetisation of analysis.
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  • Indexing and Mathematical Explanation.Alan Baker & Mark Colyvan - 2011 - Philosophia Mathematica 19 (3):323-334.
    We discuss a recent attempt by Chris Daly and Simon Langford to do away with mathematical explanations of physical phenomena. Daly and Langford suggest that mathematics merely indexes parts of the physical world, and on this understanding of the role of mathematics in science, there is no need to countenance mathematical explanation of physical facts. We argue that their strategy is at best a sketch and only looks plausible in simple cases. We also draw attention to how frequently Daly and (...)
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  • Deferentialism.Chris Daly & David Liggins - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 156 (3):321-337.
    There is a recent and growing trend in philosophy that involves deferring to the claims of certain disciplines outside of philosophy, such as mathematics, the natural sciences, and linguistics. According to this trend— deferentialism , as we will call it—certain disciplines outside of philosophy make claims that have a decisive bearing on philosophical disputes, where those claims are more epistemically justified than any philosophical considerations just because those claims are made by those disciplines. Deferentialists believe that certain longstanding philosophical problems (...)
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  • Abstract Entities in the Causal Order.M. J. Cresswell - 2010 - Theoria 76 (3):249-265.
    This article discusses the argument we cannot have knowledge of abstract entities because they are not part of the causal order. The claim of this article is that the argument fails because of equivocation. Assume that the “causal order” is concerned with contingent facts involving time and space. Even if the existence of abstract entities is not contingent and does not involve time or space it does not follow that no truths about abstract entities are contingent or involve time or (...)
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  • Epistemological objections to platonism.David Liggins - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (1):67-77.
    Many philosophers posit abstract entities – where something is abstract if it is acausal and lacks spatio-temporal location. Theories, types, characteristics, meanings, values and responsibilities are all good candidates for abstractness. Such things raise an epistemological puzzle: if they are abstract, then how can we have any epistemic access to how they are? If they are invisible, intangible and never make anything happen, then how can we ever discover anything about them? In this article, I critically examine epistemological objections to (...)
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  • What anti-realism in philosophy of mathematics must offer.Feng Ye - 2010 - Synthese 175 (1):13 - 31.
    This article attempts to motivate a new approach to anti-realism (or nominalism) in the philosophy of mathematics. I will explore the strongest challenges to anti-realism, based on sympathetic interpretations of our intuitions that appear to support realism. I will argue that the current anti-realistic philosophies have not yet met these challenges, and that is why they cannot convince realists. Then, I will introduce a research project for a new, truly naturalistic, and completely scientific approach to philosophy of mathematics. It belongs (...)
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  • On the Interplay between Logic and Metaphysics.Achille C. Varzi - 2009 - Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations 8:13-36.
    On the one hand, logic has (or ought to have) nothing to do with metaphysics; it ought to have nothing to do with questions concerning what there is, or whether there is anything at all. On the other hand, metaphysics can hardly get off the ground without the help of logical analysis; to be is to be a truth-maker, and the search for truth-makers requires that we lay open the logical structure of our language. So something’s gotta give: either logical (...)
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  • A Novel Category of Vague Abstracta.Jeffrey Goodman - 2007 - Metaphysica 8 (1):79-96.
    Much attention has been given to the question of ontic vagueness, and the issues usually center around whether certain paradigmatically concrete entities – cats, clouds, mountains, etc. – are vague in the sense of having indeterminate spatial boundaries. In this paper, however, I wish to focus on a way in which some abstracta seem to be locationally vague. To begin, I will briefly cover some territory already covered regarding certain types of “traditional” abstracta and the ways they are currently alleged (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Nominalism.Zoltan Szabo - 2003 - In Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford handbook of metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press.
    …entities? 2. How to be a nominalist 2.1. “Speak with the vulgar …” 2.2. “…think with the learned” 3. Arguments for nominalism 3.1. Intelligibility, physicalism, and economy 3.2. Causal..
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  • Intrinsic Explanation and Field’s Dispensabilist Strategy.Russell Marcus - 2013 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 21 (2):163-183.
    Philosophy of mathematics for the last half-century has been dominated in one way or another by Quine’s indispensability argument. The argument alleges that our best scientific theory quantifies over, and thus commits us to, mathematical objects. In this paper, I present new considerations which undermine the most serious challenge to Quine’s argument, Hartry Field’s reformulation of Newtonian Gravitational Theory.
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  • Empty names, fictional names, mythical names.David Braun - 2005 - Noûs 39 (4):596–631.
    John Stuart Mill (1843) thought that proper names denote individuals and do not connote attributes. Contemporary Millians agree, in spirit. We hold that the semantic content of a proper name is simply its referent. We also think that the semantic content of a declarative sentence is a Russellian structured proposition whose constituents are the semantic contents of the sentence’s constituents. This proposition is what the sentence semantically expresses. Therefore, we think that sentences containing proper names semantically express singular propositions, which (...)
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  • A Role for Mathematics in the Physical Sciences.Chris Pincock - 2007 - Noûs 41 (2):253-275.
    Conflicting accounts of the role of mathematics in our physical theories can be traced to two principles. Mathematics appears to be both (1) theoretically indispensable, as we have no acceptable non-mathematical versions of our theories, and (2) metaphysically dispensable, as mathematical entities, if they existed, would lack a relevant causal role in the physical world. I offer a new account of a role for mathematics in the physical sciences that emphasizes the epistemic benefits of having mathematics around when we do (...)
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  • Rehabilitating relationalism.Gordon Belot - 1999 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13 (1):35 – 52.
    I argue that the conviction, widespread among philosophers, that substantivalism enjoys a clear superiority over relationalism in both Newtonian and relativistic physics is ill-founded. There are viable relationalist approaches to understanding these theories, and the substantival-relational debate should be of interest to philosophers and physicists alike, because of its connection with questions about the correct space of states for various physical theories.
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  • Fictionalism and Meinongianism.Nathaniel Gan - 2021 - Theoria : An International Journal for Theory, History and Fundations of Science 36 (1):49-62.
    Fictionalism about a kind of disputed object is often motivated by the fact that the view interprets discourse about those objects literally without an ontological commitment to them. This paper argues that this motivation is inadequate because some viable alternatives to fictionalism have similar attractions. Meinongianism—the view that there are true statements about non-existent objects—is one such view. Meinongianism bears significant similarity to fictionalism, so intuitive doubts about its viability are difficult to sustain for fictionalists. Moreover, Meinongianism avoids some of (...)
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  • Thin Objects: An Abstractionist Account, by Øystein Linnebo. [REVIEW]J. P. Studd - 2020 - Mind 129 (514):646-656.
    Thin Objects: Anionist Account, by LinneboØystein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xviii + 238.
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  • Hartry Field. Science Without Numbers: A Defense of Nominalism 2nd ed. [REVIEW]Geoffrey Hellman & Mary Leng - 2019 - Philosophia Mathematica 27 (1):139-148.
    FieldHartry. Science Without Numbers: A Defense of Nominalism 2nd ed.Oxford University Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-19-877792-2. Pp. vi + 56 + vi + 111.
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  • Mathematical Abstraction, Conceptual Variation and Identity.Jean-Pierre Marquis - 2014 - In Peter Schroeder-Heister, Gerhard Heinzmann, Wilfred Hodges & Pierre Edouard Bour (eds.), Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Proceedings of the 14th International Congress. London, UK: pp. 299-322.
    One of the key features of modern mathematics is the adoption of the abstract method. Our goal in this paper is to propose an explication of that method that is rooted in the history of the subject.
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  • Logical Consequence for Nominalists.Marcus Rossberg & Daniel Cohnitz - 2009 - Theoria 24 (2):147-168.
    It is often claimed that nominalistic programmes to reconstruct mathematics fail, since they will at some point involve the notion of logical consequence which is unavailable to the nominalist. In this paper we use an idea of Goodman and Quine to develop a nominalistically acceptable explication of logical consequence.
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  • Dummett on abstract objects.George Duke - 2012 - New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    This book offers an historically-informed critical assessment of Dummett's account of abstract objects, examining in detail some of the Fregean presuppositions whilst also engaging with recent work on the problem of abstract entities.
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  • Non‐Factualism Versus Nominalism.Matteo Plebani - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (3).
    The platonism/nominalism debate in the philosophy of mathematics concerns the question whether numbers and other mathematical objects exist. Platonists believe the answer to be in the positive, nominalists in the negative. According to non-factualists, the question is ‘moot’, in the sense that it lacks a correct answer. Elaborating on ideas from Stephen Yablo, this article articulates a non-factualist position in the philosophy of mathematics and shows how the case for non-factualism entails that standard arguments for rival positions fail. In particular, (...)
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  • Explanatory Indispensability Arguments in Metaethics and Philosophy of Mathematics.Debbie Roberts - 2016 - In Uri D. Leibowitz & Neil Sinclair (eds.), Explanation in Ethics and Mathematics: Debunking and Dispensability. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press UK.
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  • Epistemological Challenges to Mathematical Platonism.Øystein Linnebo - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 129 (3):545-574.
    Since Benacerraf’s “Mathematical Truth” a number of epistemological challenges have been launched against mathematical platonism. I first argue that these challenges fail because they unduely assimilate mathematics to empirical science. Then I develop an improved challenge which is immune to this criticism. Very roughly, what I demand is an account of how people’s mathematical beliefs are responsive to the truth of these beliefs. Finally I argue that if we employ a semantic truth-predicate rather than just a deflationary one, there surprisingly (...)
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  • The Objectivity of Mathematics.Stewart Shapiro - 2007 - Synthese 156 (2):337-381.
    The purpose of this paper is to apply Crispin Wright’s criteria and various axes of objectivity to mathematics. I test the criteria and the objectivity of mathematics against each other. Along the way, various issues concerning general logic and epistemology are encountered.
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  • The Role of Axioms in Mathematics.Kenny Easwaran - 2008 - Erkenntnis 68 (3):381-391.
    To answer the question of whether mathematics needs new axioms, it seems necessary to say what role axioms actually play in mathematics. A first guess is that they are inherently obvious statements that are used to guarantee the truth of theorems proved from them. However, this may neither be possible nor necessary, and it doesn’t seem to fit the historical facts. Instead, I argue that the role of axioms is to systematize uncontroversial facts that mathematicians can accept from a wide (...)
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  • To bridge Gödel’s gap.Eileen S. Nutting - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (8):2133-2150.
    In “Mathematical Truth,” Paul Benacerraf raises an epistemic challenge for mathematical platonists. In this paper, I examine the assumptions that motivate Benacerraf’s original challenge, and use them to construct a new causal challenge for the epistemology of mathematics. This new challenge, which I call ‘Gödel’s Gap’, appeals to intuitive insights into mathematical knowledge. Though it is a causal challenge, it does not rely on any obviously objectionable constraints on knowledge. As a result, it is more compelling than the original challenge. (...)
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  • The Magic of Holes.Achille C. Varzi - 2019 - In Pina Marsico & Luca Tateo (eds.), (eds.), Ordinary Things and Their Extraordinary Meanings, Charlotte (NC),. Information Age Publishing. pp. 21-33.
    There is no doughnut without a hole, the saying goes. And that’s true. If you think you can come up with an exception, it simply wouldn’t be a doughnut. Holeless doughnuts are like extensionless color, or durationless sound—nonsense. Does it follow, then, that when we buy a doughnut we really purchase two sorts of thing—the edible stuff plus the little chunk of void in the middle? Surely we cannot just take the doughnut and leave the hole at the grocery store, (...)
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  • Naturalizing Badiou: mathematical ontology and structural realism.Fabio Gironi - 2014 - New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
    This thesis offers a naturalist revision of Alain Badiou’s philosophy. This goal is pursued through an encounter of Badiou’s mathematical ontology and theory of truth with contemporary trends in philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. I take issue with Badiou’s inability to elucidate the link between the empirical and the ontological, and his residual reliance on a Heideggerian project of fundamental ontology, which undermines his own immanentist principles. I will argue for both a bottom-up naturalisation of Badiou’s philosophical approach (...)
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  • The Way of Actuality.Sam Cowling - 2014 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (2):231-247.
    In this paper, I defend an indexical analysis of the abstract-concrete distinction within the framework of modal realism. This analysis holds the abstract-concrete distinction to be conceptually inseparable from the distinction between the actual and the merely possible, which is assumed to be indexical in nature. The resulting view contributes to the case for modal realism by demonstrating how its distinctive resources provide a reductive analysis of the abstract-concrete distinction. This indexical analysis also provides a solution to a sceptical problem (...)
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  • The Iterative Conception of Set: a (Bi-)Modal Axiomatisation.J. P. Studd - 2013 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 42 (5):1-29.
    The use of tensed language and the metaphor of set ‘formation’ found in informal descriptions of the iterative conception of set are seldom taken at all seriously. Both are eliminated in the nonmodal stage theories that formalise this account. To avoid the paradoxes, such accounts deny the Maximality thesis, the compelling thesis that any sets can form a set. This paper seeks to save the Maximality thesis by taking the tense more seriously than has been customary (although not literally). A (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Ontological Nihilism.Jason Turner - 2008 - In Dean W. Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics. Oxford University Press. pp. 3-54.
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  • Fictionalism in Metaphysics.Frederick Kroon - 2011 - Philosophy Compass 6 (11):786-803.
    This is a survey of contemporary work on ‘fictionalism in metaphysics’, a term that is taken to signify both the place of fictionalism as a distinctive anti‐realist metaphysics in which usefulness rather than truth is the norm of acceptance, and the fact that philosophers have given fictionalist treatments of a range of specifically metaphysical notions.
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  • Pragmatic antirealism: a new antirealist strategy.Michael Scott & Philip Brown - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 161 (3):349-366.
    In everyday speech we seem to refer to such things as abstract objects, moral properties, or propositional attitudes that have been the target of metaphysical and/or epistemological objections. Many philosophers, while endorsing scepticism about some of these entities, have not wished to charge ordinary speakers with fundamental error, or recommend that the discourse be revised or eliminated. To this end a number of non-revisionary antirealist strategies have been employed, including expressivism, reductionism and hermeneutic fictionalism. But each of these theories faces (...)
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  • A Burgessian Critique of Nominalistic Tendencies in Contemporary Mathematics and its Historiography.Karin Usadi Katz & Mikhail G. Katz - 2012 - Foundations of Science 17 (1):51-89.
    We analyze the developments in mathematical rigor from the viewpoint of a Burgessian critique of nominalistic reconstructions. We apply such a critique to the reconstruction of infinitesimal analysis accomplished through the efforts of Cantor, Dedekind, and Weierstrass; to the reconstruction of Cauchy’s foundational work associated with the work of Boyer and Grabiner; and to Bishop’s constructivist reconstruction of classical analysis. We examine the effects of a nominalist disposition on historiography, teaching, and research.
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  • Abstraction and Intuition in Peano's Axiomatizations of Geometry.Davide Rizza - 2009 - History and Philosophy of Logic 30 (4):349-368.
    Peano's axiomatizations of geometry are abstract and non-intuitive in character, whereas Peano stresses his appeal to concrete spatial intuition in the choice of the axioms. This poses the problem of understanding the interrelationship between abstraction and intuition in his geometrical works. In this article I argue that axiomatization is, for Peano, a methodology to restructure geometry and isolate its organizing principles. The restructuring produces a more abstract presentation of geometry, which does not contradict its intuitive content but only puts it (...)
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  • Of Numbers and Electrons.Cian Dorr - 2010 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110 (2pt2):133-181.
    According to a tradition stemming from Quine and Putnam, we have the same broadly inductive reason for believing in numbers as we have for believing in electrons: certain theories that entail that there are numbers are better, qua explanations of our evidence, than any theories that do not. This paper investigates how modal theories of the form ‘Possibly, the concrete world is just as it in fact is and T’ and ‘Necessarily, if standard mathematics is true and the concrete world (...)
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  • Eliminativism and the challenge from folk belief.Daniel Z. Korman - 2009 - Noûs 43 (2):242-264.
    Virtually everyone agrees that, even after having presented the arguments for their positions, proponents of revisionary philosophical theories are required to provide some sort of account of the conflict between their theories and what the folk believe. I examine various strategies for answering the challenge from folk belief. The examination proceeds as a case study, whose focus is eliminativism about ordinary material objects. I critically assess eliminativist attempts to explain folk belief by appeal to paraphrase, experience, and intuition.
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  • Plural quantification logic: A critical appraisal.Hanoch Ben-Yami - 2009 - Review of Symbolic Logic 2 (1):208-232.
    I first show that most authors who developed Plural Quantification Logic (PQL) argued it could capture various features of natural language better than can other logic systems. I then show that it fails to do so: it radically departs from natural language in two of its essential features; namely, in distinguishing plural from singular quantification and in its use of an relation. Next, I sketch a different approach that is more adequate than PQL for capturing plural aspects of natural language (...)
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  • The Ontological Innocence of Schematic Logic.Oliver William Tatton-Brown - forthcoming - Logic and Logical Philosophy:1.
    This paper gives a semantics for schematic logic, proving soundness and completeness. The argument for soundness is carried out in ontologically innocent fashion, relying only on the existence of formulae which are actually written down in the course of a derivation in the logic. This makes the logic available to a nominalist, even a nominalist who does not wish to rely on modal notions, and who accepts the possibility that the universe may in fact be finite.
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  • Fictionalism and mathematical explanations.Pamela Ann Jose Boongaling - 2019 - Filosofia Unisinos 20 (3).
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  • Think about the Consequences! Nominalism and the Argument from the Philosophy of Logic.Torsten Wilholt - 2006 - Dialectica 60 (2):115-133.
    Nominalism faces the task of explaining away the ontological commitments of applied mathematical statements. This paper reviews an argument from the philosophy of logic that focuses on this task and which has been used as an objection to certain specific formulations of nominalism. The argument as it is developed in this paper aims to show that nominalism in general does not have the epistemological advantages its defendants claim it has. I distinguish between two strategies that are available to the nominalist: (...)
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  • Epistemology versus Non-Causal Realism.Jared Warren - 2017 - Synthese 194 (5).
    This paper formulates a general epistemological argument against what I call non-causal realism, generalizing domain specific arguments by Benacerraf, Field, and others. First I lay out the background to the argument, making a number of distinctions that are sometimes missed in discussions of epistemological arguments against realism. Then I define the target of the argument—non-causal realism—and argue that any non-causal realist theory, no matter the subject matter, cannot be given a reasonable epistemology and so should be rejected. Finally I discuss (...)
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  • (1 other version)Abstract Objects: A Case Study.Stephen Yablo - 2002 - Noûs 36 (s1):220 - 240.
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  • On Naturalizing the Epistemology of Mathematics.Jeffrey W. Roland - 2009 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (1):63-97.
    In this paper, I consider an argument for the claim that any satisfactory epistemology of mathematics will violate core tenets of naturalism, i.e. that mathematics cannot be naturalized. I find little reason for optimism that the argument can be effectively answered.
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