Fictionalism, theft, and the story of mathematics

Philosophia Mathematica 17 (2):131-162 (2009)
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Abstract

This paper develops a novel version of mathematical fictionalism and defends it against three objections or worries, viz., (i) an objection based on the fact that there are obvious disanalogies between mathematics and fiction; (ii) a worry about whether fictionalism is consistent with the fact that certain mathematical sentences are objectively correct whereas others are incorrect; and (iii) a recent objection due to John Burgess concerning “hermeneuticism” and “revolutionism”

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Mark Balaguer
California State University, Los Angeles

Citations of this work

Modal Idealism.David Builes - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind.
Platonism in Metaphysics.Markn D. Balaguer - 2016 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1 (1):1.
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References found in this work

Science Without Numbers: A Defence of Nominalism.Hartry H. Field - 1980 - Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.
Models and reality.Hilary Putnam - 1980 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 45 (3):464-482.
Mathematics and Reality.Mary Leng - 2010 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Constructibility and mathematical existence.Charles S. Chihara - 1990 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Go figure: A path through fictionalism.Stephen Yablo - 2001 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 25 (1):72–102.

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