Related papers: Naive Philosophical Foundations
This essay considers the special character of mathematical reasoning, and draws on observations from interactive theorem proving and the history of mathematics to clarify the nature of formal and informal mathematical language. It proposes…
The aim of this essay is to propose a conception of mathematics that is fully consonant with naturalism. By that I mean the hypothesis that everything that exists is part of the natural world, which makes up a unitary whole.
This talk presents foundations of mathematics as a historically variable set of principles appealing to various modes of human intuition and devoid of any prescriptive/prohibitive power. At each turn of history, foundations crystallize the…
In this note some philosophical thoughts and observations about mathematics are expressed, arranged as challenges to some common claims.
This is an explanation and defense of "mathematical conceptualism" for a general mathematical and philosophical audience. I make a case that it is cogent, rigorous, attractive, and better suited to ordinary mathematical practice than all…
This book invites readers to see mathematics not just as formulas and rules, but as the deepest expression of human thought. It begins by exploring the timeless idea of mathematics as a universal language, contrasting its precision with the…
We show a possibility to apply certain philosophical concepts to the analysis of concrete mathematical structures. Such application gives a clear justification of topological and geometric properties of considered mathematical objects.
This paper presents mathematics as a general science of computation in a way different from the tradition. It is based on the radical philosophical standpoint according to which the content, meaning and justification of experience lies in…
One of the outstanding problems of philosophy of science and mathematics today is whether there is just "one" unique mathematics or the same can be bifurcated into "pure" and "applied" categories. A novel solution for this problem is…
Mathematics is one of the ways our species makes sense of this world and I believe that it is inherent in our thinking machinery. The mathematics we do in turn is dependent on the way we view our universe and ourselves. Lakoff and Nunez…
There are different meanings of foundation of mathematics: philosophical, logical, and mathematical. Here foundations are considered as a theory that provides means (concepts, structures, methods etc.) for the development of whole…
We claim that human mathematics is only a limited part of the consequences of the chosen basic axioms. Properly human mathematics varies with time but appears to have universal features which we try to analyze. In particular the functioning…
Formal logic has often been seen as uniquely placed to analyze mathematical argumentation. While formal logic is certainly necessary for a complete understanding of mathematical practice, it is not sufficient. Important aspects of…
Mathematical research is often motivated by the desire to reach a beautiful result or to prove it in an elegant way. Mathematician's work is thus strongly influenced by his aesthetic judgments. However, the criteria these judgments are…
The purpose of this essay is to bring out the unique role of Mathematics in providing a base to the diverse sciences which conform to its rigid structure. Of these the physical and economic sciences are so intimately linked with…
As the etymology of the word shows, logic is intimately related to language, as exemplified by the work of philosophers from Antiquity and from the Middle-Age. At the beginning of the XX century, the crisis of the foundations of mathematics…
The fundamentals of formal logic, theory of sets and mathematical structures are narrated in terms of relations language.
In this essay, I argue that mathematics is a natural science---just like physics, chemistry, or biology---and that this can explain the alleged "unreasonable" effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences. The main challenge for…
Mathematics cannot anymore be assimilated to a linguistic game, where formal proofs are strongly differentiated with conjectural thinking, without building any category of knowledge to understand the passage (Wittgenstein's gist). Nowadays,…
We state the defining characteristic of mathematics as a type of symmetry where one can change the connotation of a mathematical statement in a certain way when the statement's truth value remains the same. This view of mathematics as…