The eleatic and the indispensabilist

• Marcus, Russell ^[1]
  1. [1] Hamilton College

     Hamilton College

     Town of Kirkland, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Theoria: an international journal for theory, history and foundations of science, ISSN 0495-4548, Vol. 30, Nº 3, 2015 (Ejemplar dedicado a: History and Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics), págs. 415-429
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen

  • The debate over whether we should believe that mathematical objects exist quickly leads to the question of how to determine what we should believe.  Indispensabilists claim that we should believe in the existence of mathematical objects because of their ineliminable roles in scientific theory.  Eleatics argue that only objects with causal properties exist.  Mark Colyvan’s recent defenses of Quine’s indispensability argument against some contemporary eleatics attempt to provide reasons to favor the indispensabilist’s criterion.  I show that Colyvan’s argument is not decisive against the eleatic and sketch a way to capture the important intuitions behind both views.