Oxford, England: Oxford University Press (1997)
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Abstract |
Do numbers, sets, and so forth, exist? What do mathematical statements mean? Are they literally true or false, or do they lack truth values altogether? Addressing questions that have attracted lively debate in recent years, Stewart Shapiro contends that standard realist and antirealist accounts of mathematics are both problematic. As Benacerraf first noted, we are confronted with the following powerful dilemma. The desired continuity between mathematical and, say, scientific language suggests realism, but realism in this context suggests seemingly intractable epistemic problems. As a way out of this dilemma, Shapiro articulates a structuralist approach. On this view, the subject matter of arithmetic, for example, is not a fixed domain of numbers independent of each other, but rather is the natural number structure, the pattern common to any system of objects that has an initial object and successor relation satisfying the induction principle. Using this framework, realism in mathematics can be preserved without troublesome epistemic consequences. Shapiro concludes by showing how a structuralist approach can be applied to wider philosophical questions such as the nature of an "object" and the Quinean nature of ontological commitment. Clear, compelling, and tautly argued, Shapiro's work, noteworthy both in its attempt to develop a full-length structuralist approach to mathematics and to trace its emergence in the history of mathematics, will be of deep interest to both philosophers and mathematicians.
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Keywords | Mathematics Philosophy |
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Reprint years | 2000 |
Buy this book | Amazon page |
Call number | QA8.4.S533 1997 |
ISBN(s) | 0195094522 9780195094527 9780195139303 0195139305 |
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What is a (Social) Structural Explanation?Sally Haslanger - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (1):113-130.
An Inferential Conception of the Application of Mathematics.Otávio Bueno & Mark Colyvan - 2011 - Noûs 45 (2):345-374.
An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics: Mathematics as the Science of Quantity and Stucture.James Franklin - 2014 - London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
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