How Not to Enhance the Indispensability Argument

Philosophia Mathematica 22 (3):345-360 (2014)
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Abstract

The new explanatory or enhanced indispensability argument alleges that our mathematical beliefs are justified by their indispensable appearances in scientific explanations. This argument differs from the standard indispensability argument which focuses on the uses of mathematics in scientific theories. I argue that the new argument depends for its plausibility on an equivocation between two senses of explanation. On one sense the new argument is an oblique restatement of the standard argument. On the other sense, it is vulnerable to an instrumentalist response. Either way, the explanatory indispensability argument is no improvement on the standard one

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Russell Marcus
Hamilton College

References found in this work

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Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 17 (2):278-279.

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