The Limits of Subtraction

Australasian Philosophical Review 1 (2):168-172 (2017)
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Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the target article ‘If-Thenism’, Stephen Yablo develops a novel form of if-thenism, that appeals to the notion of logical subtraction. In this commentary, I explore the limits of Yablo's proposed subtraction procedure, by leaning on an analogy with photographic subtraction. In particular, I will argue that there will be cases when there's nothing interesting left after the subtraction and, as a consequence, there are serious limits to the applicability of the subtraction procedure.

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10.1080/24740500.2017.1346411

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Mark Colyvan
University of Sydney

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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.
Aboutness.Stephen Yablo - 2014 - Oxford: Princeton University Press.
The Indispensability of Mathematics.Mark Colyvan - 2001 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
A subject with no object: strategies for nominalistic interpretation of mathematics.John P. Burgess & Gideon Rosen - 1997 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Gideon A. Rosen.
Mathematics and Reality.Mary Leng - 2010 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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