Philosophy of mathematics (Q5902321)

The book under review provides a presentation and an analysis of various positions in the field of the philosophy of mathematics. It consists of a Preface by the editor and of 15 papers. The book begins with the overview by W. D. Hart ``Les Liaisons Dangereuses'' speaking about the dangerous liaisons between mathematics and philosophy. M. Balaguer discusses in his paper ``Realism and Anti-Realism in Mathematics'' various versions of realism and anti-realism and claims that full-blooded platonism and fictionalism are the only versions of them, resp., that survive all objections. On the other hand he argues that one can never have any good reason for favouring one of them over the other. A non-Platonist version of realism called Aristotelianism claiming that mathematical entities are somehow a part of the natural (or physical) world is analysed in the paper by J. Franklin. D. Bostock discusses in his paper ``Empiricism an the Philosophy of Mathematics'' empirical tendencies, in particular conceptions of Aristotle, Mill, Kitcher, maddy, Quine, Putnam and Field. Kant's ideas concerning mathematics are presented and analysed in M. Tile's paper ``A Kantian Perspective on the Philosophy of Mathematics''. The main three doctrines, namely logicism, formalism and constructivism are presented in three following papers by, resp., J. Hintikka, P. Simons and Ch. McCarty. Hintikka discusses theories of Frege, Russell and Whitehead considering their understanding of logic. Simons considers Hilbert's formalism, its critique by Frege as well as the legacy of formalism. The paper by McCarty presents constructivism of Du Bois-Reymond, Kronecker, intuitionism of Brouwer and Heyting, Markovian and Russian constructivism, Bishop's conceptions, predicativism and finitism. The next paper by D. Bonevac is devoted to fictionalism -- the view that mathematics is in an important sense dispensable. The author considers various kinds of fictionalism, asks for motivations behind this tende3ncy, presents a brief history of fictionalism (beginning with William of Ockham) and discusses doctrines of Field, Yablo, Balaguer. Two papers are devoted to set theory. A. Kanamori writes about set theory from Cantor to Cohen discussing the origins of it by Cantor, further the period of its mathematization (Zermelo, paradoxes, Baire, Borel, Lebesgue, Hausdorff, analytic and projective sets), of consolidation (von Neumann, Mirimanoff, cumulative hierarchy, first-order logic and extensionalism, Gödel and relative consistency, combinatorics, model-theoretic methods) and he finishes by discussing forcing and the independence results of Cohen. The second paper written by P. Apostoli, R. Hinnon, A. Kanda and Th. Libert on set theory is devoted to alternative set theories. Its aim not to cover all the aspects of the subject but to give an idea of some lines of research. In the paper ``Philosophies of Probability'' J. Williamson discusses three types of domain on which probability functions are defined: variables, events and sentences. Further the predominant interpretations of probability: the frequence, propensity, chance and Bayesian interpretations are discussed. Some lessons for the philosophy of mathematics in general are drawn as well. Philosophical problems of computability are discussed in the paper by W. Sieg. The author speaks about decidability and calculability, recursiveness and Church's Thesis, computations and combinatorial processes, axioms for computability, the problems concerning machines and mind. The paper ``Inconsistent Mathematics'' by Ch. Mortensen gives a characterization of developments in the theory of inconsistent mathematics. The volume is closed by a paper by M. Colyvan devoted to one of the fundamental problems of relations between abstract mathematical theories and their applicability to the description of the real world, hence to the problem of applied mathematics. The author considers the indispensability argument of Quine-Putnam, naturalism and holism, Field's project, rejection of holism (Maddy, Sober) as well as the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. The volume is an interesting and comprehensive overview of the doctrines and tendencies in the philosophy of mathematics. It gives an account not only of the historical developments and traditional theories but presents also current researches and theories. The theories are analysed and evaluated. Research in related fields such as set theory, computability theory, probability theory, paraconsistency is also discussed.