Abstract

In the past 10 years, contemporary philosophy of mathematics has seen the development of a trend that conceives mathematics as first and foremost a human activity and in particular as a kind of practice. However, only recently the need for a general framework to account for the target of the so-called philosophy of mathematical practice has emerged. The purpose of the present article is to make progress towards the definition of a more precise general framework for the philosophy of mathematical practice by exploring two strategies. A first strategy is to turn to philosophy of mind and Edwin Hutchins' view of distributed cognition in order to better understand the cognitive issues at play when considering a community of mathematicians; a second strategy is to refer to philosophy of language and focus on Robert Brandom's inferentialism and mathematical conceptual content. A possible combination of these two views, called enhanced material inferentialism, is then put forward as a promising framework to account for the philosophy of mathematical practice.