Abstract

Recently Colin Cheyne and Charles Pigden have challenged supporters of mathematical indispensability arguments to give an account of how causally inert mathematical entities could be indispensable to science. Failing to meet this challenge, claim Cheyne and Pigden, would place Platonism in a no win situation: either there is no good reason to believe in mathematical entities or mathematical entities are not causally inert. The present paper argues that Platonism is well equipped to meet this challenge