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  1. Mathematics and Explanatory Generality: Nothing but Cognitive Salience.Juha Saatsi & Robert Knowles - 2021 - Erkenntnis 86 (5):1119-1137.
    We demonstrate how real progress can be made in the debate surrounding the enhanced indispensability argument. Drawing on a counterfactual theory of explanation, well-motivated independently of the debate, we provide a novel analysis of ‘explanatory generality’ and how mathematics is involved in its procurement. On our analysis, mathematics’ sole explanatory contribution to the procurement of explanatory generality is to make counterfactual information about physical dependencies easier to grasp and reason with for creatures like us. This gives precise content to key (...)
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  • Metaphysical grounding.Ricki Bliss & Kelly Trogdon - 2021 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    General discussion of grounding, including its formal features, relations to other notions, and applications. (Originally published 2014; revised 2021).
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  • Nominalistic content, grounding, and covering generalizations: Reply to ‘Grounding and the indispensability argument’.Matteo Plebani - 2016 - Synthese 193 (2):549-558.
    ‘Grounding and the indispensability argument’ presents a number of ways in which nominalists can use the notion of grounding to rebut the indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objects. I will begin by considering the strategy that puts grounding to the service of easy-road nominalists. I will give some support to this strategy by addressing a worry some may have about it. I will then consider a problem for the fast-lane strategy and a problem for easy-road nominalists willing to (...)
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  • (1 other version)Mathematical platonism meets ontological pluralism?Matteo Plebani - 2020 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63 (6):655-673.
    Mathematical platonism is the view that abstract mathematical objects exist. Ontological pluralism is the view that there are many modes of existence. This paper examines the prospects for plural platonism, the view that results from combining mathematical platonism and ontological pluralism. I will argue that some forms of platonism are in harmony with ontological pluralism, while other forms of platonism are in tension with it. This shows that there are some interesting connections between the platonism–antiplatonism dispute and recent debates over (...)
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  • The Epistemic Indispensability Argument.Cristian Soto - 2019 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 50 (1):145-161.
    This article elaborates the epistemic indispensability argument, which fully embraces the epistemic contribution of mathematics to science, but rejects the contention that such a contribution is a reason for granting reality to mathematicalia. Section 1 introduces the distinction between ontological and epistemic readings of the indispensability argument. Section 2 outlines some of the main flaws of the first premise of the ontological reading. Section 3 advances the epistemic indispensability argument in view of both applied and pure mathematics. And Sect. 4 (...)
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  • Mathematics and the world: explanation and representation.John-Hamish Heron - 2017 - Dissertation, King’s College London
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  • The indispensability argument and the nature of mathematical objects.Matteo Plebani - 2018 - Theoria : An International Journal for Theory, History and Fundations of Science 33 (2):249-263.
    I will contrast two conceptions of the nature of mathematical objects: the conception of mathematical objects as preconceived objects, and heavy duty platonism. I will argue that friends of the indispensability argument are committed to some metaphysical theses and that one promising way to motivate such theses is to adopt heavy duty platonism. On the other hand, combining the indispensability argument with the conception of mathematical objects as preconceived objects yields an unstable position. The conclusion is that the metaphysical commitments (...)
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