The Indispensability of Mathematics

The Indispensability of Mathematics PDF Author: Mark Colyvan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198031440
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Quine-Putnam indispensability argument in the philosophy of mathematics urges us to place mathematical entities on the same ontological footing as other theoretical entities essential to our best scientific theories. Recently, the argument has come under serious scrutiny, with many influential philosophers unconvinced of its cogency. This book not only outlines the indispensability argument in considerable detail but also defends it against various challenges.

The Indispensability of Mathematics

The Indispensability of Mathematics PDF Author: Mark Colyvan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198031440
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Quine-Putnam indispensability argument in the philosophy of mathematics urges us to place mathematical entities on the same ontological footing as other theoretical entities essential to our best scientific theories. Recently, the argument has come under serious scrutiny, with many influential philosophers unconvinced of its cogency. This book not only outlines the indispensability argument in considerable detail but also defends it against various challenges.

The Indispensability of Mathematics

The Indispensability of Mathematics PDF Author: Mark Colyvan
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195166612
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Get Book Here

Book Description
Annotation. The Quine-Putnam indispensability argument in the philosophy of mathematics urges us to place mathematical entities on the same ontological footing as other theoretical entities essential to our best scientific theories. Recently, the argument has come under serious scrutiny, with manyinfluential philosophers unconvinced of its cogency. This book not only outlines the indispensability argument in considerable detail but also defends it against various challenges.

Indispensability

Indispensability PDF Author: A. C. Paseau
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009090712
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 111

Get Book Here

Book Description
Our best scientific theories explain a wide range of empirical phenomena, make accurate predictions, and are widely believed. Since many of these theories make ample use of mathematics, it is natural to see them as confirming its truth. Perhaps the use of mathematics in science even gives us reason to believe in the existence of abstract mathematical objects such as numbers and sets. These issues lie at the heart of the Indispensability Argument, to which this Element is devoted. The Element's first half traces the evolution of the Indispensability Argument from its origins in Quine and Putnam's works, taking in naturalism, confirmational holism, Field's program, and the use of idealisations in science along the way. Its second half examines the explanatory version of the Indispensability Argument, and focuses on several more recent versions of easy-road and hard-road fictionalism respectively.

Autonomy Platonism and the Indispensability Argument

Autonomy Platonism and the Indispensability Argument PDF Author: Russell Marcus
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739173138
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mathematical platonism is the view that mathematical statements are true of real mathematical objects like numbers, shapes, and sets. One central problem with platonism is that numbers, shapes, sets, and the like are not perceivable by our senses. In contemporary philosophy, the most common defense of platonism uses what is known as the indispensability argument. According to the indispensabilist, we can know about mathematics because mathematics is essential to science. Platonism is among the most persistent philosophical views. Our mathematical beliefs are among our most entrenched. They have survived the demise of millennia of failed scientific theories. Once established, mathematical theories are rarely rejected, and never for reasons of their inapplicability to empirical science. Autonomy Platonism and the Indispensability Argument is a defense of an alternative to indispensability platonism. The autonomy platonist believes that mathematics is independent of empirical science: there is purely mathematical evidence for purely mathematical theories which are even more compelling to believe than empirical science. Russell Marcus begins by contrasting autonomy platonism and indispensability platonism. He then argues against a variety of indispensability arguments in the first half of the book. In the latter half, he defends a new approach to a traditional platonistic view, one which includes appeals to a priori but fallible methods of belief acquisition, including mathematical intuition, and a natural adoption of ordinary mathematical methods. In the end, Marcus defends his intuition-based autonomy platonism against charges that the autonomy of mathematics is viciously circular. This book will be useful to researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates with interests in the philosophy of mathematics or in the connection between science and mathematics.

The indispensability of former West African people to the Caribbean culture

The indispensability of former West African people to the Caribbean culture PDF Author: Lena Groß
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656652031
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 19

Get Book Here

Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, language: English, abstract: A central theme in Caribbean literature is the absence of regional or national identity (Povey 275). Also Edward Kamau Brathwaite, one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon, focuses on transcending and healing the fragmented culture of the dispossessed people, mainly the descendants of West African slaves, living in the Caribbean region. In his poetry, he reexamines the history of the black diaspora in search for cultural wholeness in present-day Caribbean life. Brathwaite’s aim thereby is to offer a corrective to these people’s problems of dispossession of history and of language. In his first major work The Arrivants, Brathwaite’s overall goal is to enact a trajectory from the slave experience in the Caribbean colonies to Africa and back again to the islands, and thereby explore the African roots as well as the contemporary situation of the African diaspora in the Caribbean. Thus, he is able to illustrate some important African values, considered to be long-lost, in today’s Caribbean society and moreover, he is able to portray the affiliation of these black people to the Caribbean culture. Accordingly, based on Edward Brathwaite’s poetry volume The Arrivants, the importance of West African people to the Caribbean culture and especially their imported African elements, such as language, dance, song, and ritual-artistic expressions, will be outlined in this paper to depict their strong influence in the Caribbean and to support their strong survival identities. Therefore, first of all, the social and cultural history as well as the languages of the Caribbean are described to help the reader better understand the contemporary historical background to which Brathwaite’s poetry refers. Subsequently, a brief overview of The Arrivants is given, to later on go into more detail by interpreting two of its poems, namely New World A-Coming and Caliban. In these poems, Brathwaite points out the brutal reality of historical deprivation in the New World and thus, the search of identity of African slaves for almost 300 years. But against this background, he later on emphasizes the desire for self-determination and the resistance of these black people, their newly developed African rituals and hence, their great influence on all aspects of Caribbean culture.

The Indispensability of Metaphysical Realism

The Indispensability of Metaphysical Realism PDF Author: John D. Mariana
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Metaphysics
Languages : en
Pages : 390

Get Book Here

Book Description


Water Is...: The Indispensability Of Water In Society And Life

Water Is...: The Indispensability Of Water In Society And Life PDF Author: Seth B Darling
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9813271418
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
People are increasingly aware of the role that water has in shaping society and how it impacts quality of life. This is the first book to provide a holistic perspective on water, capturing the full breadth of the science, technology, policy, history, and future outlook for the most important substance on earth — written at a level accessible to non-experts in each of these areas.Water is shockingly bizarre in its properties and of unsurpassed importance throughout human history, yet so mundane as to often be invisible in our daily lives. In Water Is ..., the two Seths (Darling and Snyder) walk the reader through all of the diverse perspectives on water. The journey begins with an exploration of the mysteries of water's properties on the molecular level, zooming out through its central role at biological and geological scales. Next, the Seths travel through the history of human civilization, highlighting the fundamental part water has played throughout, including the complexities of water policy, privatization, and pricing in today's world. Attention then turns to technology and innovation, emphasizing the daunting challenges dictated by increasing water stress and a changing climate as well as the enticing opportunities to achieve a secure global water future.Water is arguably the single most interdisciplinary topic. Students in business, policy, history, science, and engineering can best position themselves to make an impact by learning about the entire range of diverse, unexpected, and fascinating angles on water.Related Link(s)

A Treatise on the Law of Intercorporate Relations

A Treatise on the Law of Intercorporate Relations PDF Author: Walter Chadwick Noyes
Publisher: Boston : Little, Brown
ISBN:
Category : Antitrust law
Languages : en
Pages : 762

Get Book Here

Book Description


Taking Morality Seriously

Taking Morality Seriously PDF Author: David Enoch
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019161856X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism David Enoch develops, argues for, and defends a strongly realist and objectivist view of ethics and normativity more broadly. This view—according to which there are perfectly objective, universal, moral and other normative truths that are not in any way reducible to other, natural truths—is familiar, but this book is the first in-detail development of the positive motivations for the view into reasonably precise arguments. And when the book turns defensive—defending Robust Realism against traditional objections—it mobilizes the original positive arguments for the view to help with fending off the objections. The main underlying motivation for Robust Realism developed in the book is that no other metaethical view can vindicate our taking morality seriously. The positive arguments developed here—the argument from the deliberative indispensability of normative truths, and the argument from the moral implications of metaethical objectivity (or its absence)—are thus arguments for Robust Realism that are sensitive to the underlying, pre-theoretical motivations for the view.

Oxford Studies in Metaethics

Oxford Studies in Metaethics PDF Author: Russ Shafer-Landau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description