In Jakub Mácha & Herbert Hrachovec (eds.),
PLATONISM: Contributions of the 43rd International Wittgenstein Symposium. Kirchberg am Wechsel: Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. pp. 159-161 (
2022)
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Abstract
Taking mathematics as a language based on empirical experience, I argue for an account of mathematics in which its objects are abstracta that describe and communicate the structure of reality based on some of our ancestral interactions with their environment. I argue that mathematics as a language is mostly invented. Nonetheless, in being a general description of reality it cannot be said that it is fictional; and as an intersubjective reality, mathematical objects can exist independent of any one person’s mind.