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  1. Neo-Fregeanism: An Embarrassment of Riches.Alan Weir - 2003 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 44 (1):13-48.
    Neo-Fregeans argue that substantial mathematics can be derived from a priori abstraction principles, Hume's Principle connecting numerical identities with one:one correspondences being a prominent example. The embarrassment of riches objection is that there is a plurality of consistent but pairwise inconsistent abstraction principles, thus not all consistent abstractions can be true. This paper considers and criticizes various further criteria on acceptable abstractions proposed by Wright settling on another one—stability—as the best bet for neo-Fregeans. However, an analogue of the embarrassment of (...)
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  • More trouble for functionalism.Alan Weir - 2001 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 101 (3):267-293.
    In this paper I highlight certain logical and metaphysical issues which arise in the characterisation of functionalism-in particular its ready coherence with a physicalist ontology, its structuralism and the impredicativity of functionalist specifications. I then utilise these points in an attempt to demonstrate fatal flaws in the functionalist programme. I argue that the brand of functionalism inspired by David Lewis fails to accommodate multiple realisability though such accommodation was vaunted as a key improvement over the identity theory. More standard accounts (...)
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  • Honest Toil or Sheer Magic?Alan Weir - 2007 - Dialectica 61 (1):89-115.
    In this article I discuss the 'procedural postulationist' view of mathematics advanced by Kit Fine in a recent paper. I argue that he has not shown that this view provides an avenue to knowledge of mathematical truths, at least if such truths are objective truths. In particular, more needs to be said about the criteria which constrain which types of entities can be postulated. I also argue that his reliance on second-order quantification means that his background logic is not free (...)
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