Logicism, structuralism and objectivity. (Q5950503)

This ambitious article argues for a version of mathematical structuralism that stops short of positing structures as platonic entities. Landry aligns her proposal with the semantic turn, in Coffa's sense, carried out by people like Frege and Carnap in opposition to Kant. The article continues by examining the question of how suitably clarified mathematical statements acquire their objective status. Landry argues that a focus on the structures involved in these statements is sufficient to ground their objective status. She concludes by clarifying the needed structures using category theory and contrasts this ``schematic'' approach to structuralism with the more familiar proposals of \textit{M. D. Resnik} [Noûs 15, No. 4, 529--55 (1981), see also Mathematics as a science of patterns. Oxford: Clarendon Press (1997; Zbl 0905.03004)] and \textit{S. Shapiro} [Philosophy of mathematics: structure and ontology. New York: Oxford University Press (1997; Zbl 0897.00004)].