[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




More information about the FOM mailing list