[FOM] Advertising an approach to the philosophy of mathematics (with some logical technical work)
Robbie Lindauer
rlindauer at gmail.com
Sat Sep 8 19:46:26 EDT 2007
Feng writes here:
"Human minds are functions of human brains as parts of the physical
world and results of evolution."
- http://www.phil.pku.edu.cn/cllc/people/fengye/
introductionToANaturalisticPhilosophyOfMathematics.html
He goes on to characterize mathematics as an outgrowth of human
cognitive function:
"For the philosophy of mathematics, this means that human
mathematical practices are human brains’ cognitive activities. "
I take this to be a classical statement of Naturalism.
I have found in my experience of philosophers of mind/mathematics in
American philosophy that this is the dominant attitude, that
something like that is true despite there being differences of
opinion about what the "physical world" "really is".
Is there any research that gives measure of what percentage of
philosophers/mathematicians/logicians work within that basic
assumption or consider it true (perhaps provably...)?
Is there any research on the sociological/psychological significance
of the meaning of those statistics (assuming they exist...)?
If humans are "social creatures" - meaning our interaction with
others in our language group significantly determine our opinions -
shouldn't this be relevant to our evaluation of our grounds for
understanding given meta-theoretical statements of the kind (again,
on the assumption that it's true)?
Thanks,
Robbie Lindauer
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