Indispensability Arguments and Their Quinean Heritage

Disputatio 4 (32):343 - 360 (2012)
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Abstract

Indispensability arguments for mathematical realism are commonly traced back to Quine. We identify two different Quinean strands in the interpretation of IA, what we label the ‘logical point of view’ and the ‘theory-contribution’ point of view. Focusing on each of the latter, we offer two minimal versions of IA. These both dispense with a number of theoretical assumptions commonly thought to be relevant to IA. We then show that the attribution of both minimal arguments to Quine is controversial, and stress the extent to which this is so in both cases, in order to attain a better appreciation of the Quinean heritage of IA.

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Author Profiles

Andrea Sereni
Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS Pavia
Jacob Busch
University of Aarhus

Citations of this work

Frege, Indispensability, and the Compatibilist Heresy.Andrea Sereni - 2015 - Philosophia Mathematica 23 (1):11-30.

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References found in this work

From a Logical Point of View.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1953 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Science Without Numbers: A Defence of Nominalism.Hartry H. Field - 1980 - Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.
The scientific image.C. Van Fraassen Bas - 1980 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 17 (2):278-279.
The Indispensability of Mathematics.Mark Colyvan - 2001 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

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