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Author: Mark Colyvan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 172
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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 indispenable to certain scientific theories. This text examines the issues.
Author: Mark Colyvan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 172
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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 indispenable to certain scientific theories. This text examines the issues.
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Author: Mark Colyvan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 182
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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 indispenable to certain scientific theories. This text examines the issues.
Author: Mark Colyvan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521826020
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 199
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Book Description
A fascinating journey through intriguing mathematical and philosophical territory - a lively introduction to this contemporary topic.
Author: Mary Leng
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191576247
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
Mary Leng offers a defense of mathematical fictionalism, according to which we have no reason to believe that there are any mathematical objects. Perhaps the most pressing challenge to mathematical fictionalism is the indispensability argument for the truth of our mathematical theories (and therefore for the existence of the mathematical objects posited by those theories). According to this argument, if we have reason to believe anything, we have reason to believe that the claims of our best empirical theories are (at least approximately) true. But since claims whose truth would require the existence of mathematical objects are indispensable in formulating our best empirical theories, it follows that we have good reason to believe in the mathematical objects posited by those mathematical theories used in empirical science, and therefore to believe that the mathematical theories utilized in empirical science are true. Previous responses to the indispensability argument have focussed on arguing that mathematical assumptions can be dispensed with in formulating our empirical theories. Leng, by contrast, offers an account of the role of mathematics in empirical science according to which the successful use of mathematics in formulating our empirical theories need not rely on the truth of the mathematics utilized.
Author: Joel David Hamkins
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262542234
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
An introduction to the philosophy of mathematics grounded in mathematics and motivated by mathematical inquiry and practice. In this book, Joel David Hamkins offers an introduction to the philosophy of mathematics that is grounded in mathematics and motivated by mathematical inquiry and practice. He treats philosophical issues as they arise organically in mathematics, discussing such topics as platonism, realism, logicism, structuralism, formalism, infinity, and intuitionism in mathematical contexts. He organizes the book by mathematical themes--numbers, rigor, geometry, proof, computability, incompleteness, and set theory--that give rise again and again to philosophical considerations.
Author: Christopher Pincock
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190208570
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
Mathematics plays a central role in much of contemporary science, but philosophers have struggled to understand what this role is or how significant it might be for mathematics and science. In this book Christopher Pincock tackles this perennial question in a new way by asking how mathematics contributes to the success of our best scientific representations. In the first part of the book this question is posed and sharpened using a proposal for how we can determine the content of a scientific representation. Several different sorts of contributions from mathematics are then articulated. Pincock argues that each contribution can be understood as broadly epistemic, so that what mathematics ultimately contributes to science is best connected with our scientific knowledge. In the second part of the book, Pincock critically evaluates alternative approaches to the role of mathematics in science. These include the potential benefits for scientific discovery and scientific explanation. A major focus of this part of the book is the indispensability argument for mathematical platonism. Using the results of part one, Pincock argues that this argument can at best support a weak form of realism about the truth-value of the statements of mathematics. The book concludes with a chapter on pure mathematics and the remaining options for making sense of its interpretation and epistemology. Thoroughly grounded in case studies drawn from scientific practice, this book aims to bring together current debates in both the philosophy of mathematics and the philosophy of science and to demonstrate the philosophical importance of applications of mathematics.
Author: S. Bangu
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780230285200
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
This examination of a series of philosophical issues arising from the applicability of mathematics to science consists of scientifically-informed philosophical analysis and argument. One distinctive feature of this project is that it proposes to look at issues in philosophy of mathematics within the larger context of philosophy of science.
Author: Mark Balaguer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195143980
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
In this book, Balaguer demonstrates that there are no good arguments for or against mathematical platonism. He does this by establishing that both platonism and anti-platonism are defensible. (Philosophy)
Author: Mark Colyvan
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0195166612
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 183
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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.
Author: A. C. Paseau
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009090712
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 111
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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.
