Indispensability and Mathematical Explanation

• Autores: Susan Vineberg
• Localización: VII Conference of the Spanish Society for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science: Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 18-20 July 2012 / Sociedad de Lógica, Metodología y Filosofía de la Ciencia en España (aut.), Concepción Martínez Vidal (dir. congr.), José L. Falguera López (dir. congr.), José Miguel Sagüillo Fernández-Vega (dir. congr.), Víctor Martín Verdejo Aparicio (dir. congr.), Martín Pereira Fariña (dir. congr.), 2012, ISBN 978-84-9887-939-1, págs. 544-551
• Idioma: inglés
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  • Texto Completo Libro
• Resumen

  • Recently, an ‘enhanced’ version of the Indispensability Argument has been advanced which claims that we ought to accept the existence of mathematical objects because of the indispensable explanatory role that they play in science (Baker 2009). In particular, Baker argues that there are mathematical explanations of physical facts that are accepted in science, which requires accepting the mathematical objects that figure in these explanations. Baker identifies the challenge for the nominalist as that of specifying “the distinctive way in which ordinary material bodies can play an explanatory role…so that it can be said that abstracta which are mentioned in the context of scientific explanations are not explanatory in that way”. This paper addresses this challenge.