Empiricism, Conservativeness and Quasi-Truth
نویسنده
چکیده
A first step is taken towards articulating a constructive empiricist philosophy of mathematics, thus extending van Fraassen's account to this domain. In order to do so, I adapt Field's nominalisation programme, making it compatible with an empiricist stance. Two changes are introduced: (a) Instead of taking conservativeness as the norm of mathematics, the empiricist countenances the weaker notion of quasi-truth (as formulated by da Costa and French), from which the formal properties of conservativeness are derived. (b) Instead of quantifying over space-time regions, the empiricist only admits quantification over occupied regions, since this is enough for his or her needs.
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