Realism in Mathematics
Oxford, England and New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Prress (1990)
Abstract
Mathematicians tend to think of themselves as scientists investigating the features of real mathematical things, and the wildly successful application of mathematics in the physical sciences reinforces this picture of mathematics as an objective study. For philosophers, however, this realism about mathematics raises serious questions: What are mathematical things? Where are they? How do we know about them? Offering a scrupulously fair treatment of both mathematical and philosophical concerns, Penelope Maddy here delineates and defends a novel version of mathematical realism. She answers the traditional questions and poses a challenging new one, refocusing philosophical attention on the pressing foundational issues of contemporary mathematics.Author's Profile
Reprint years
1992, 1993
Call number
QA8.4.M33 1990
ISBN(s)
019824035X 9780198240358 0198244525 9780198244523
DOI
10.2307/2186046
My notes
Chapters
Perception and Intuition
Begins with a presentation and elaboration of Benacerraf's epistemic challenge to realism: how can we gain knowledge of an acausal world of non‐spatio‐temporal abstracts? I then outline a theory of perception based in part on neurological theories of Hebb and developmental evidence from Pi... see more
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Citations of this work
The dynamical hypothesis in cognitive science.Tim van Gelder - 1998 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (5):615-28.
An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics: Mathematics as the science of quantity and structure.James Franklin - 2014 - London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan.