Mathematics and Its Logics
Philosophical Essays
Published on 4. February 2021
Book
Hardback
296 pages
978-1-108-49418-2 (ISBN)
Description
In these essays Geoffrey Hellman presents a strong case for a healthy pluralism in mathematics and its logics, supporting peaceful coexistence despite what appear to be contradictions between different systems, and positing different frameworks serving different legitimate purposes. The essays refine and extend Hellman's modal-structuralist account of mathematics, developing a height-potentialist view of higher set theory which recognizes indefinite extendability of models and stages at which sets occur. In the first of three new essays written for this volume, Hellman shows how extendability can be deployed to derive the axiom of Infinity and that of Replacement, improving on earlier accounts; he also shows how extendability leads to attractive, novel resolutions of the set-theoretic paradoxes. Other essays explore advantages and limitations of restrictive systems - nominalist, predicativist, and constructivist. Also included are two essays, with Solomon Feferman, on predicative foundations of arithmetic.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
552 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-108-49418-2 (9781108494182)
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Book
11/2022
Cambridge University Press
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E-Book
01/2021
Cambridge University Press
€25.99
Available for download
Person
Geoffrey Hellman is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His publications include Mathematics without Numbers: Towards a Modal-Structural Interpretation (1989), Varieties of Continua: From Regions to Points and Back (with Stewart Shapiro, 2018), and Mathematical Structuralism, Cambridge Elements in Philosophy of Mathematics (with Stewart Shapiro, Cambridge, 2018).
Content
Introduction; Part I. Structuralism, Extendability, and Nominalism: 1. Structuralism without Structures?; 2. What Is Categorical Structuralism?; 3. On the Significance of the Burali-Forti Paradox; 4. Extending the Iterative Conception of Set: A Height-Potentialist Perspective; 5. On Nominalism; 6. Maoist Mathematics? Critical Study of John Burgess and Gideon Rosen, A Subject with No Object: Strategies for Nominalistic Interpretation of Mathematics (Oxford, 1997); Part II. Predicative Mathematics and Beyond: 7. Predicative Foundations of Arithmetic (with Solomon Feferman); 8. Challenges to Predicative Foundations of Arithmetic (with Solomon Feferman); 9. Predicativism as a Philosophical Position; 10. On the Goedel-Friedman Program; Part III. Logics of Mathematics: 11. Logical Truth by Linguistic Convention; 12. Never Say 'Never'! On the Communication Problem between Intuitionism and Classicism; 13. Constructive Mathematics and Quantum Mechanics: Unbounded Operators and the Spectral Theorem; 14. If 'If-Then' Then What?; 15. Mathematical Pluralism: The Case of Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis.