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Naturalism in mathematics

New York: Oxford University Press (1997)

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  1. The Story About Propositions.Bradley Armour-Garb & James A. Woodbridge - 2010 - Noûs 46 (4):635-674.
    It is our contention that an ontological commitment to propositions faces a number of problems; so many, in fact, that an attitude of realism towards propositions—understood the usual “platonistic” way, as a kind of mind- and language-independent abstract entity—is ultimately untenable. The particular worries about propositions that marshal parallel problems that Paul Benacerraf has raised for mathematical platonists. At the same time, the utility of “proposition-talk”—indeed, the apparent linguistic commitment evident in our use of 'that'-clauses (in offering explanations and making (...)
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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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  • Mirror Symmetry and Other Miracles in Superstring Theory.Dean Rickles - 2013 - Foundations of Physics 43 (1):54-80.
    The dominance of string theory in the research landscape of quantum gravity physics (despite any direct experimental evidence) can, I think, be justified in a variety of ways. Here I focus on an argument from mathematical fertility, broadly similar to Hilary Putnam’s ‘no miracles argument’ that, I argue, many string theorists in fact espouse in some form or other. String theory has generated many surprising, useful, and well-confirmed mathematical ‘predictions’—here I focus on mirror symmetry and the mirror theorem. These predictions (...)
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  • The applicability of mathematics as a scientific and a logical problem.Feng Ye - 2010 - Philosophia Mathematica 18 (2):144-165.
    This paper explores how to explain the applicability of classical mathematics to the physical world in a radically naturalistic and nominalistic philosophy of mathematics. The applicability claim is first formulated as an ordinary scientific assertion about natural regularity in a class of natural phenomena and then turned into a logical problem by some scientific simplification and abstraction. I argue that there are some genuine logical puzzles regarding applicability and no current philosophy of mathematics has resolved these puzzles. Then I introduce (...)
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  • Mathematical Knowledge and the Interplay of Practices.Jose Ferreiros - 2009 - In Mauricio Suárez, Mauro Dorato & Miklós Rédei (eds.), EPSA Philosophical Issues in the Sciences: Launch of the European Philosophy of Science Association. Dordrecht, Netherland: Springer. pp. 55--64.
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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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  • 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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  • 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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  • Toward a topic-specific logicism? Russell's theory of geometry in the principles of mathematics.Sébastien Gandon - 2009 - Philosophia Mathematica 17 (1):35-72.
    Russell's philosophy is rightly described as a programme of reduction of mathematics to logic. Now the theory of geometry developed in 1903 does not fit this picture well, since it is deeply rooted in the purely synthetic projective approach, which conflicts with all the endeavours to reduce geometry to analytical geometry. The first goal of this paper is to present an overview of this conception. The second aim is more far-reaching. The fact that such a theory of geometry was sustained (...)
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  • (1 other version)Contemporary debates in philosophy of science.Christopher Hitchcock (ed.) - 2004 - Malden, MA: Blackwell.
    Showcasing original arguments for well-defined positions, as well as clear and concise statements of sophisticated philosophical views, this volume is an ...
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  • On three arguments against categorical structuralism.Makmiller Pedroso - 2009 - Synthese 170 (1):21 - 31.
    Some mathematicians and philosophers contend that set theory plays a foundational role in mathematics. However, the development of category theory during the second half of the twentieth century has encouraged the view that this theory can provide a structuralist alternative to set-theoretical foundations. Against this tendency, criticisms have been made that category theory depends on set-theoretical notions and, because of this, category theory fails to show that set-theoretical foundations are dispensable. The goal of this paper is to show that these (...)
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  • ¿qué Tan Matemática Es La Lógica Matemática?Axel Barceló Aspeitia - 2003 - Dianoia 48 (51):3-28.
    La lógica matemática es matemática en cuanto que usa herramientas matemáticas. En este sentido, la lógica matemática es matemática en el mismo sentido que lo es, digamos, la mecánica newtoniana. En ambos casos, el método es matemático, pero las ciencias mismas no lo son, pues su objeto de estudio pertenece a una realidad objetiva e independiente. En particular, las herramientas matemáticas que usa la lógica simbólica contemporánea —tanto en su simbolismo como en su cálculo— se crearon originalmente para el desarrollo (...)
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  • Against Fantology.Barry Smith - 2005 - In Johann C. Marek Maria E. Reicher (ed.), Experience and Analysis. HPT&ÖBV. pp. 153-170.
    The analytical philosophy of the last hundred years has been heavily influenced by a doctrine to the effect that the key to the correct understanding of reality is captured syntactically in the ‘Fa’ (or, in more sophisticated versions, in the ‘Rab’) of standard first order predicate logic. Here ‘F’ stands for what is general in reality and ‘a’ for what is individual. Hence “f(a)ntology”. Because predicate logic has exactly two syntactically different kinds of referring expressions—‘F’, ‘G’, ‘R’, etc., and ‘a’, (...)
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  • Philosophy of mathematics.Leon Horsten - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    If mathematics is regarded as a science, then the philosophy of mathematics can be regarded as a branch of the philosophy of science, next to disciplines such as the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of biology. However, because of its subject matter, the philosophy of mathematics occupies a special place in the philosophy of science. Whereas the natural sciences investigate entities that are located in space and time, it is not at all obvious that this is also the case (...)
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  • Indispensability arguments in the philosophy of mathematics.Mark Colyvan - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    One of the most intriguing features of mathematics is its applicability to empirical science. Every branch of science draws upon large and often diverse portions of mathematics, from the use of Hilbert spaces in quantum mechanics to the use of differential geometry in general relativity. It's not just the physical sciences that avail themselves of the services of mathematics either. Biology, for instance, makes extensive use of difference equations and statistics. The roles mathematics plays in these theories is also varied. (...)
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  • Indispensability argument and anti-realism in philosophy of mathematics.Feng Ye - 2007 - Frontiers of Philosophy in China 2 (4):614-628.
    The indispensability argument for abstract mathematical entities has been an important issue in the philosophy of mathematics. The argument relies on several assumptions. Some objections have been made against these assumptions, but there are several serious defects in these objections. Ameliorating these defects leads to a new anti-realistic philosophy of mathematics, mainly: first, in mathematical applications, what really exist and can be used as tools are not abstract mathematical entities, but our inner representations that we create in imagining abstract mathematical (...)
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  • Naturalism in mathematics and the authority of philosophy.Alexander Paseau - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (2):377-396.
    Naturalism in the philosophy of mathematics is the view that philosophy cannot legitimately gainsay mathematics. I distinguish between reinterpretation and reconstruction naturalism: the former states that philosophy cannot legitimately sanction a reinterpretation of mathematics (i.e. an interpretation different from the standard one); the latter that philosophy cannot legitimately change standard mathematics (as opposed to its interpretation). I begin by showing that neither form of naturalism is self-refuting. I then focus on reinterpretation naturalism, which comes in two forms, and examine the (...)
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  • Go figure: A path through fictionalism.Stephen Yablo - 2001 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 25 (1):72–102.
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  • Parts and theories in compositional biology.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther - 2006 - Biology and Philosophy 21 (4):471-499.
    I analyze the importance of parts in the style of biological theorizing that I call compositional biology. I do this by investigating various aspects, including partitioning frames and explanatory accounts, of the theoretical perspectives that fall under and are guided by compositional biology. I ground this general examination in a comparative analysis of three different disciplines with their associated compositional theoretical perspectives: comparative morphology, functional morphology, and developmental biology. I glean data for this analysis from canonical textbooks and defend the (...)
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  • What are sets and what are they for?Alex Oliver & Timothy Smiley - 2006 - Philosophical Perspectives 20 (1):123–155.
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  • Mathematics and conceptual analysis.Antony Eagle - 2008 - Synthese 161 (1):67–88.
    Gödel argued that intuition has an important role to play in mathematical epistemology, and despite the infamy of his own position, this opinion still has much to recommend it. Intuitions and folk platitudes play a central role in philosophical enquiry too, and have recently been elevated to a central position in one project for understanding philosophical methodology: the so-called ‘Canberra Plan’. This philosophical role for intuitions suggests an analogous epistemology for some fundamental parts of mathematics, which casts a number of (...)
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  • Quine, Putnam, and the ‘Quine–Putnam’ Indispensability Argument.David Liggins - 2008 - Erkenntnis 68 (1):113 - 127.
    Much recent discussion in the philosophy of mathematics has concerned the indispensability argument—an argument which aims to establish the existence of abstract mathematical objects through appealing to the role that mathematics plays in empirical science. The indispensability argument is standardly attributed to W. V. Quine and Hilary Putnam. In this paper, I show that this attribution is mistaken. Quine's argument for the existence of abstract mathematical objects differs from the argument which many philosophers of mathematics ascribe to him. Contrary to (...)
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  • Again, what the philosophy of biology is not.Werner Callebaut - 2005 - Acta Biotheoretica 53 (2):93-122.
    There are many things that philosophy of biology might be. But, given the existence of a professional philosophy of biology that is arguably a progressive research program and, as such, unrivaled, it makes sense to define philosophy of biology more narrowly than the totality of intersecting concerns biologists and philosophers (let alone other scholars) might have. The reasons for the success of the “new” philosophy of biology remain poorly understood. I reflect on what Dutch and Flemish, and, more generally, European (...)
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  • The indispensability argument – a new chance for empiricism in mathematics?Tomasz Bigaj - 2003 - Foundations of Science 8 (2):173-200.
    In recent years, the so-calledindispensability argument has been given a lotof attention by philosophers of mathematics.This argument for the existence of mathematicalobjects makes use of the fact, neglected inclassical schools of philosophy of mathematics,that mathematics is part of our best scientifictheories, and therefore should receive similarsupport to these theories. However, thisobservation raises the question about the exactnature of the alleged connection betweenexperience and mathematics (for example: is itpossible to falsify empirically anymathematical theorems?). In my paper I wouldlike to address this (...)
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  • Introduction: An Incomplete Guide to Ontology of Divinity.Mirosław Szatkowski - 2024 - In Ontology of Divinity. Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 1-36.
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  • Ontology of Divinity.Mirosław Szatkowski (ed.) - 2024 - Boston: De Gruyter.
    This volume announces a new era in the philosophy of God. Many of its contributions work to create stronger links between the philosophy of God, on the one hand, and mathematics or metamathematics, on the other hand. It is about not only the possibilities of applying mathematics or metamathematics to questions about God, but also the reverse question: Does the philosophy of God have anything to offer mathematics or metamathematics? The remaining contributions tackle stereotypes in the philosophy of religion. The (...)
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  • Logical Realism: A Tale of Two Theories.Gila Sher - 2024 - In Sophia Arbeiter & Juliette Kennedy (eds.), The Philosophy of Penelope Maddy. Springer.
    The paper compares two theories of the nature of logic: Penelope Maddy's and my own. The two theories share a significant element: they both view logic as grounded not just in the mind (language, concepts, conventions, etc.), but also, and crucially, in the world. But the two theories differ in significant ways as well. Most distinctly, one is an anti-holist, "austere naturalist" theory while the other is a non-naturalist "foundational-holistic" theory. This methodological difference affects their questions, goals, orientations, the scope (...)
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  • Mathematical Explanations in Evolutionary Biology or Naturalism? A Challenge for the Statisticalist.Fabio Sterpetti - 2021 - Foundations of Science 27 (3):1073-1105.
    This article presents a challenge that those philosophers who deny the causal interpretation of explanations provided by population genetics might have to address. Indeed, some philosophers, known as statisticalists, claim that the concept of natural selection is statistical in character and cannot be construed in causal terms. On the contrary, other philosophers, known as causalists, argue against the statistical view and support the causal interpretation of natural selection. The problem I am concerned with here arises for the statisticalists because the (...)
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  • Aspectos metafísicos na física de Newton: Deus.Bruno Camilo de Oliveira - 2011 - In Luiz Henrique de Araújo Dutra & Alexandre Meyer Luz (eds.), Coleção rumos da epistemologia. pp. 186-201.
    CAMILO, Bruno. Aspectos metafísicos na física de Newton: Deus. In: DUTRA, Luiz Henrique de Araújo; LUZ, Alexandre Meyer (org.). Temas de filosofia do conhecimento. Florianópolis: NEL/UFSC, 2011. p. 186-201. (Coleção rumos da epistemologia; 11). Através da análise do pensamento de Isaac Newton (1642-1727) encontramos os postulados metafísicos que fundamentam a sua mecânica natural. Ao deduzir causa de efeito, ele acreditava chegar a uma causa primeira de todas as coisas. A essa primeira causa de tudo, onde toda a ordem e leis (...)
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  • Anti-Scientism, Conceptual Analysis, Naturalism.Filip Tvrdý - 2018 - Pro-Fil 19 (1):49-61.
    Filozofie ve 20. století ztratila velkou část svých kompetencí a pro svou údajnou neužitečnost se stala terčem kritiky ze strany přírodních vědců. Vztah mezi filozofií a vědou lze řešit pomocí tří stanovisek, kterými jsou antiscientismus, konceptuální analýza a naturalismus. Obsahem článku je charakteristika jednotlivých přístupů a identifikace problémů, s nimiž se musí jejich zastánci potýkat. Autorovi se jako nejslibnější jeví Quinem inspirovaný naturalismus, podle něhož má veškeré poznání povahu syntetických aposteriorních výroků, a filozofie je proto kontinuální s přírodní vědou. Není (...)
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  • Abolishing Platonism in Multiverse Theories.Stathis Livadas - 2022 - Axiomathes 32 (2):321-343.
    A debated issue in the mathematical foundations in at least the last two decades is whether one can plausibly argue for the merits of treating undecidable questions of mathematics, e.g., the Continuum Hypothesis (CH), by relying on the existence of a plurality of set-theoretical universes except for a single one, i.e., the well-known set-theoretical universe V associated with the cumulative hierarchy of sets. The multiverse approach has some varying versions of the general concept of multiverse yet my intention is to (...)
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  • Methodology in the ontology of artworks: exploring hermeneutic fictionalism.Elisa Caldarola - 2020 - In Concha Martinez Vidal & José Luis Falguera Lopez (ed.), Abstract Objects: For and Against.
    There is growing debate about what is the correct methodology for research in the ontology of artworks. In the first part of this essay, I introduce my view: I argue that semantic descriptivism is a semantic approach that has an impact on meta-ontological views and can be linked with a hermeneutic fictionalist proposal on the meta-ontology of artworks such as works of music. In the second part, I offer a synthetic presentation of the four main positive meta-ontological views that have (...)
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  • Set-theoretic justification and the theoretical virtues.John Heron - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):1245-1267.
    Recent discussions of how axioms are extrinsically justified have appealed to abductive considerations: on such accounts, axioms are adopted on the basis that they constitute the best explanation of some mathematical data, or phenomena. In the first part of this paper, I set out a potential problem caused by the appeal made to the notion of mathematical explanation and suggest that it can be remedied once it is noted that all the justificatory work is done by appeal to the theoretical (...)
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  • Proof, Explanation, and Justification in Mathematical Practice.Moti Mizrahi - 2020 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 51 (4):551-568.
    In this paper, I propose that applying the methods of data science to “the problem of whether mathematical explanations occur within mathematics itself” (Mancosu 2018) might be a fruitful way to shed new light on the problem. By carefully selecting indicator words for explanation and justification, and then systematically searching for these indicators in databases of scholarly works in mathematics, we can get an idea of how mathematicians use these terms in mathematical practice and with what frequency. The results of (...)
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  • On Logical and Scientific Strength.Luca Incurvati & Carlo Nicolai - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-23.
    The notion of strength has featured prominently in recent debates about abductivism in the epistemology of logic. Following Williamson and Russell, we distinguish between logical and scientific strength and discuss the limits of the characterizations they employ. We then suggest understanding logical strength in terms of interpretability strength and scientific strength as a special case of logical strength. We present applications of the resulting notions to comparisons between logics in the traditional sense and mathematical theories.
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  • Explanatory Consolidation: From ‘Best’ to ‘Good Enough’.Finnur Dellsén - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (1):157-177.
    In science and everyday life, we often infer that something is true because it would explain some set of facts better than any other hypothesis we can think of. But what if we have reason to believe that there is a better way to explain these facts that we just haven't thought of? Wouldn't that undermine our warrant for believing the best available explanation? Many philosophers have assumed that we can solve such underconsideration problems by stipulating that a hypothesis should (...)
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  • (1 other version)Regressive Analysis.Volker Peckhaus - 2002 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 5 (1):97-110.
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  • Computing, Modelling, and Scientific Practice: Foundational Analyses and Limitations.Philippos Papayannopoulos - 2018 - Dissertation,
    This dissertation examines aspects of the interplay between computing and scientific practice. The appropriate foundational framework for such an endeavour is rather real computability than the classical computability theory. This is so because physical sciences, engineering, and applied mathematics mostly employ functions defined in continuous domains. But, contrary to the case of computation over natural numbers, there is no universally accepted framework for real computation; rather, there are two incompatible approaches --computable analysis and BSS model--, both claiming to formalise algorithmic (...)
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  • (1 other version)Maddy On The Multiverse.Claudio Ternullo - 2019 - In Stefania Centrone, Deborah Kant & Deniz Sarikaya (eds.), Reflections on the Foundations of Mathematics: Univalent Foundations, Set Theory and General Thoughts. 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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  • 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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  • Mathematical application and the no confirmation thesis.Kenneth Boyce - 2020 - Analysis 80 (1):11-20.
    Some proponents of the indispensability argument for mathematical realism maintain that the empirical evidence that confirms our best scientific theories and explanations also confirms their pure mathematical components. I show that the falsity of this view follows from three highly plausible theses, two of which concern the nature of mathematical application and the other the nature of empirical confirmation. The first is that the background mathematical theories suitable for use in science are conservative in the sense outlined by Hartry Field. (...)
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  • (1 other version)Quine, Ontology, and Physicalism.Frederique Janssen-Lauret - 2019 - In Robert Sinclair (ed.), Science and Sensibilia by W. V. Quine: The 1980 Immanuel Kant Lectures. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 181-204.
    Quine's views on ontology and naturalism are well-known but rarely considered in tandem. According to my interpretation the connection between them is vital. I read Quine as a global epistemic structuralist. Quine thought we only ever know objects qua solutions to puzzles about significant intersections in observations. Objects are always accessed descriptively, via their roles in our best theory. Quine's Kant lectures contain an early version of epistemic structuralism with uncharacteristic remarks about the mental. Here Quine embraces mitigated anomalous monism, (...)
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  • A Formal Apology for Metaphysics.Samuel Baron - 2018 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5.
    There is an old meta-philosophical worry: very roughly, metaphysical theories have no observational consequences and so the study of metaphysics has no value. The worry has been around in some form since the rise of logical positivism in the early twentieth century but has seen a bit of a renaissance recently. In this paper, I provide an apology for metaphysics in the face of this kind of concern. The core of the argument is this: pure mathematics detaches from science in (...)
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  • Why inference to the best explanation doesn’t secure empirical grounds for mathematical platonism.Kenneth Boyce - 2018 - Synthese 198 (1):1-13.
    Proponents of the explanatory indispensability argument for mathematical platonism maintain that claims about mathematical entities play an essential explanatory role in some of our best scientific explanations. They infer that the existence of mathematical entities is supported by way of inference to the best explanation from empirical phenomena and therefore that there are the same sort of empirical grounds for believing in mathematical entities as there are for believing in concrete unobservables such as quarks. I object that this inference depends (...)
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  • Predicativity and Feferman.Laura Crosilla - 2017 - In Gerhard Jäger & Wilfried Sieg (eds.), Feferman on Foundations: Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy. Cham: Springer. pp. 423-447.
    Predicativity is a notable example of fruitful interaction between philosophy and mathematical logic. It originated at the beginning of the 20th century from methodological and philosophical reflections on a changing concept of set. A clarification of this notion has prompted the development of fundamental new technical instruments, from Russell's type theory to an important chapter in proof theory, which saw the decisive involvement of Kreisel, Feferman and Schütte. The technical outcomes of predica-tivity have since taken a life of their own, (...)
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  • Indispensability, causation and explanation.Sorin Bangu - 2018 - Theoria : An International Journal for Theory, History and Fundations of Science 33 (2):219-232.
    When considering mathematical realism, some scientific realists reject it, and express sympathy for the opposite view, mathematical nominalism; moreover, many justify this option by invoking the causal inertness of mathematical objects. The main aim of this note is to show that the scientific realists’ endorsement of this causal mathematical nominalism is in tension with another position some of them also accept, the doctrine of methodological naturalism. By highlighting this conflict, I intend to tip the balance in favor of a rival (...)
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  • Quantification and Paradox.Edward Ferrier - 2018 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
    I argue that absolutism, the view that absolutely unrestricted quantification is possible, is to blame for both the paradoxes that arise in naive set theory and variants of these paradoxes that arise in plural logic and in semantics. The solution is restrictivism, the view that absolutely unrestricted quantification is not possible. -/- It is generally thought that absolutism is true and that restrictivism is not only false, but inexpressible. As a result, the paradoxes are blamed, not on illicit quantification, but (...)
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  • Working from Within: The Nature and Development of Quine's Naturalism.Sander Verhaegh - 2018 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    During the past few decades, a radical shift has occurred in how philosophers conceive of the relation between science and philosophy. A great number of analytic philosophers have adopted what is commonly called a ‘naturalistic’ approach, arguing that their inquiries ought to be in some sense continuous with science. Where early analytic philosophers often relied on a sharp distinction between science and philosophy—the former an empirical discipline concerned with fact, the latter an a priori discipline concerned with meaning—philosophers today largely (...)
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  • Ipotesi del Continuo.Claudio Ternullo - 2017 - Aphex 16.
    L’Ipotesi del Continuo, formulata da Cantor nel 1878, è una delle congetture più note della teoria degli insiemi. Il Problema del Continuo, che ad essa è collegato, fu collocato da Hilbert, nel 1900, fra i principali problemi insoluti della matematica. A seguito della dimostrazione di indipendenza dell’Ipotesi del Continuo dagli assiomi della teoria degli insiemi, lo status attuale del problema è controverso. In anni più recenti, la ricerca di una soluzione del Problema del Continuo è stata anche una delle ragioni (...)
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  • (2 other versions)The Search for New Axioms in the Hyperuniverse Programme.Claudio Ternullo & Sy-David Friedman - 2016 - In Francesca Boccuni & Andrea Sereni (eds.), Objectivity, Realism, and Proof. FilMat Studies in the Philosophy of Mathematics. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. pp. 165-188.
    The Hyperuniverse Programme, introduced in Arrigoni and Friedman (2013), fosters the search for new set-theoretic axioms. In this paper, we present the procedure envisaged by the programme to find new axioms and the conceptual framework behind it. The procedure comes in several steps. Intrinsically motivated axioms are those statements which are suggested by the standard concept of set, i.e. the `maximal iterative concept', and the programme identi fies higher-order statements motivated by the maximal iterative concept. The satisfaction of these statements (...)
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