Fictionalism in the Philosophy of

Mathematics
First published Tue Apr 22, 2008

Mathematical fictionalism (or as I'll call it, fictionalism) is best thought of as a reaction to
mathematical platonism. Platonism is the view that (a) there exist abstract mathematical
objects (i.e., nonspatiotemporal mathematical objects), and (b) our mathematical
sentences and theories provide true descriptions of such objects. So, for instance, on the
platonist view, the sentence ‘3 is prime’ provides a straightforward description of a
certain object—namely, the number 3—in much the same way that the sentence ‘Mars is
red’ provides a description of Mars. But whereas Mars is a physical object, the number 3
is (according to platonism) an abstract object. And abstract objects, platonists tell us, are
wholly nonphysical, nonmental, nonspatial, nontemporal, and noncausal. Thus, on this
view, the number 3 exists independently of us and our thinking, but it does not exist in
space or time, it is not a physical or mental object, and it does not enter into causal
relations with other objects. This view has been endorsed by Plato, Frege (1884, 1893-
1903, 1919), Gödel (1964), and in some of their writings, Russell (1912) and Quine
(1948, 1951), not to mention numerous more recent philosophers of mathematics, e.g.,
Putnam (1971), Parsons (1971), Steiner (1975), Resnik (1997), Shapiro (1997), Hale
(1987), Wright (1983), Katz (1998), Zalta (1988), and Colyvan (2001).

Fictionalism, on the other hand, is the view that (a) our mathematical sentences and
theories do purport to be about abstract mathematical objects, as platonism suggests, but
(b) there are no such things as abstract objects, and so (c) our mathematical theories are
not true. Thus, the idea is that sentences like ‘3 is prime’ are false, or untrue, for the same
reason that, say, ‘The tooth fairy is generous’ is false or untrue—because just as there is
no such person as the tooth fairy, so too there is no such thing as the number 3. It is
important to note, however, that despite the name of the view, fictionalism does not
involve any very strong claims about the analogy between mathematics and fiction. For
instance, there is no claim here that mathematical discourse is a kind of fictional
discourse or anything like that. Thus, fictionalists are not committed to the thesis that
there are no important disanalogies between mathematics and fiction. (We will return to
this issue below, in section 2.4.) Finally, it should also be noted at the start that
fictionalism is a version of mathematical nominalism, the view that there are no such
things as mathematical objects.

Fictionalism was first introduced by Field (1980, 1989, 1998). Since then, the view has
been developed—in a few different ways—by Balaguer (1996a, 1996b, 1998a, 2001),
Rosen (2001), Yablo (2002a, 2002b, 2005), and Leng (2005, forthcoming), though as will
become clear below, one might question whether Yablo's view is best interpreted as a
version of fictionalism. Finally, one might also interpret Melia (2000) as defending a
fictionalist view, though he doesn't really commit to this.
(It's worth noting that Hoffman (2004) also endorses a view that is a kind of fictionalism.
Her view is very different from the fictionalist view defined above, however, because it
doesn't involve a commitment to thesis (a). She reinterprets mathematics along the lines
of Kitcher (1984), and then endorses a fictionalist view of this reinterpretation; i.e., she
maintains that once mathematics is reinterpreted in this way, it's singular terms fail to
refer and its sentences are not true. (It's not clear how much this view differs from
Kitcher's view; one might interpret Kitcher as endorsing a very similar view.) In any
event, it is important to note that Hoffman's rejection of thesis (a) makes her view
radically different from the standard fictionalist view. As will become clear below, thesis
(a) is very plausible, and its plausibility is one of the main reasons for the popularity of
platonism. Thus, one of the main selling points of fictionalism—i.e., the standard sort of
fictionalism defined above—is that it combines an acceptance of thesis (a) with an anti-
platonistic ontology.)

When one first hears the fictionalist hypothesis, it can seem a bit crazy. Are we really
supposed to believe that sentences like ‘3 is prime’ and ‘2 + 2 = 4’ are false? But the
appeal of fictionalism starts to emerge when we realize what the alternatives are. By
thinking carefully about the issues surrounding the interpretation of mathematical
discourse, it can start to seem that fictionalism is actually very plausible, and indeed, that
it might just be the least crazy view out there.

Section 1 provides a formulation of what might be thought of as the central argument for
fictionalism. Section 2 provides a discussion of a number of different objections to
fictionalism, as well as a number of different versions of fictionalism. These two things
go together very naturally, because the different versions of fictionalism have emerged in
connection with the responses that different philosophers have given to the various
objections to fictionalism.

 1. The Argument For Fictionalism

o 1.1 The Main Argument
o 1.2 Premise (1) and Paraphrase Nominalism
o 1.3 Premise (2) and Neo-Meinongianism
o 1.4 Premise (4) and Physicalism and Psychologism
o 1.5 Premise (5) and Platonism
 2. Objections to Fictionalism and Responses
o 2.1 The Quine-Putnam Indispensability Argument
o 2.2 Objectivity
o 2.3 Revolutionism and Hermeneuticism
o 2.4 Similarity to Fiction
o 2.5 Other Objections
 3. Conclusion
 Bibliography
 Other Internet Resources
 Related Entries
1. The Argument For Fictionalism
1.1 The Main Argument

The main argument for fictionalism proceeds essentially by trying to eliminate all of the
alternatives. The argument can be put like this:

1. Mathematical sentences like ‘4 is even’ should be read at face value; that is, they
should be read as being of the form ‘Fa’ and, hence, as making straightforward
claims about the nature of certain objects; e.g., ‘4 is even’ should be read as
making a straightforward claim about the nature of the number 4. But
2. If sentences like ‘4 is even’ should be read at face value, and if moreover they are
true, then there must actually exist objects of the kinds that they're about; for
instance, if ‘4 is even’ makes a straightforward claim about the nature of the
number 4, and if this sentence is literally true, then there must actually exist such
a thing as the number 4. Therefore, from (1) and (2), it follows that
3. If sentences like ‘4 is even’ are true, then there are such things as mathematical
objects. But
4. If there are such things as mathematical objects, then they are abstract objects,
i.e., nonspatiotemporal objects; for instance, if there is such a thing as the number
4, then it is an abstract object, not a physical or mental object. But
5. There are no such things as abstract objects. Therefore, from (4) and (5) by modus
tollens, it follows that
6. There are no such things as mathematical objects. And so, from (3) and (6) by
modus tollens, it follows that
7. Sentences like ‘4 is even’ are not true (indeed, they're not true for the reason that
fictionalists give, and so it follows that fictionalism is true).

The three inferences in this argument are all pretty clearly valid, and so the only question
is whether the four basic premises—(1), (2), (4), and (5)—are true. And the nice thing
about the way this argument is set up is that each of these premises is supposed to get rid
of a different alternative to fictionalism. So the argument in (1)-(7) is actually a shell of a
much longer argument that includes subarguments in favor of the basic premises and,
hence, against the various alternatives to fictionalism.

Given this, we can say that there are five alternatives (or if you'd rather, five categories of
alternatives) to fictionalism. Those who reject (1) can be called paraphrase nominalists;
those who reject (2) can be called neo-Meinongians; those who reject (4) are either
physicalists or psychologists; and those who reject (5) are platonists. In order to motivate
their view, fictionalists need to provide arguments against all of these views.

The easiest part of the fictionalist's job here is arguing against the various anti-platonist
views. All of these views—paraphrase nominalism, neo-Meinongianism, physicalism,
and psychologism—can be understood (as fictionalism can) as reactions to platonism.
Platonism is a very attractive view because it provides an extremely natural and pleasing
account of mathematical practice and mathematical discourse. But despite this, many
philosophers do not endorse platonism, because they cannot bring themselves to accept
its ontology. In other words, they simply don't believe that there are any such things as
abstract objects. Because of this, much of the work that's been done in the philosophy of
mathematics has been dedicated to attempts to avoid platonism. In particular, paraphrase
nominalism, neo-Meinongianism, physicalism, and psychologism can all be understood
in these terms. They all attempt to undermine the platonistic view of the truth conditions
of mathematical sentences. But as will become clear below, there are serious problem
with all of these views. And this is where fictionalism comes in: it grants the platonistic
view of the truth conditions of mathematical sentences but still denies the platonist's
ontological thesis that there exist abstract objects. This makes fictionalism very different
from other anti-platonist views. We can appreciate this by noting that platonism involves
two different theses, one semantic and the other ontological. The semantic thesis is an
empirical hypothesis about the truth conditions of ordinary mathematical utterances, and
the ontological thesis is a deeply metaphysical hypothesis about the existence of abstract
objects. Every version of anti-platonism rejects the platonist's ontological hypothesis, and
all of the non-fictionalistic versions of anti-platonism reject the semantic thesis as well.
Fictionalism is the only anti-platonistic view that doesn't reject the semantic thesis. And
this is why fictionalism can seem more attractive than the other versions of anti-
platonism—because the platonist's semantic hypothesis is extremely plausible and well-
motivated. Thus, the versions of anti-platonism that reject this hypothesis can seem
implausible and unmotivated.

So, again, the easy part of the argument for fictionalism (or at any rate, the easier part) is
carried out by providing arguments for premises (1), (2), and (4)—or equivalently, by
providing arguments against the various non-fictionalistic versions of anti-platonism, i.e.,
paraphrase nominalism, neo-Meinongianism, physicalism, and psychologism. The next
three subsections (1.2-1.4) discuss these four views as well as some arguments that
fictionalists might mount against them. Section 1.5 covers the more difficult part of the
fictionalist's argument—i.e., premise (5) and the question of how fictionalists might argue
against platonism.

1.2 Premise (1) and Paraphrase Nominalism

Paraphrase nominalism is the view that ordinary mathematical sentences like ‘3 is prime’
should not be read at face value—or more specifically, that they should not be read as
being of the form ‘Fa’ and making claims about mathematical objects. There are a few
different versions of this view. Perhaps the most famous is if-thenism. On this view, ‘3 is
prime’ is best interpreted as expressing a conditional claim, such as ‘If there were
numbers, then 3 would be prime’, or perhaps ‘Necessarily, if there are numbers, then 3 is
prime.’ (Versions of if-thenism have been developed by Putnam (1967a,b) and Hellman
(1989); moreover, a precursor to this view was endorsed by the early Hilbert (see his
1899 and his letters to Frege in Frege 1980). Finally, other versions of paraphrase
nominalism have been endorsed by Wittgenstein (1956) and Chihara (1990).)

The problem with paraphrase nominalist views is very simple: they involve empirical
hypotheses about the meanings of ordinary mathematical utterances that are extremely
implausible. For instance, in connection with if-thenism, it's just really hard to believe
that the best interpretation of what ordinary speakers of mathematical discourse (ordinary
mathematicians and ordinary folk) are saying when they utter, e.g., ‘3 is prime’ is that if
there were numbers then 3 would be prime. This just seems to get wrong what people
actually mean when they utter sentences like this. Indeed, it seems that a more general
point can be made here. There is a good interpretive principle that says something like
this: we should interpret people's utterances at face value unless there's evidence that they
have a positive intention to be interpreted nonliterally. Given this, and given (what seems
obvious) that ordinary people don't have a positive intention for their mathematical
utterances to be interpreted nonliterally—e.g., as expressing conditional propositions or
anything like that—it seems to follow that we ought to interpret our mathematical
utterances at face value. But this means that we ought to accept premise (1) and reject
paraphrase nominalism.

Paraphrase nominalists might try to respond to this argument by denying that they are
committed to the thesis that their paraphrases fit with the intentions of ordinary
mathematicians and ordinary folk. In other words, they might claim that their view
concerns not what ordinary people actually mean by their mathematical utterances, but
rather how these utterances should be understood, or some such thing (Chihara makes
such a claim in his (2004)). But paraphrase nominalists cannot endorse this stance, for if
they do, their view will collapse into a version of fictionalism. If paraphrase nominalists
admit that platonists and fictionalists are right about the meanings of real mathematical
utterances—i.e., the utterances of actual mathematicians—then (since they also want to
maintain that there are no such things as abstract objects) they will be committed to the
claim that the utterances of actual mathematicians are untrue. Thus, if paraphrase
nominalists don't claim that their paraphrases capture the actual meanings of ordinary
mathematical sentences, then their view won't provide a genuine alternative to
fictionalism. It will collapse into a version of fictionalism. More specifically, a
paraphrase nominalist would just be a fictionalist who thinks that we ought to alter our
mathematical language, or what we mean by our mathematical utterances; or perhaps the
claim would simply be that we could alter our mathematical language if we wanted to
and that this fact provides fictionalists with a way of responding to certain objections.

1.3 Premise (2) and Neo-Meinongianism

Neo-Meinongianism is the view that (a) as platonists and fictionalists maintain, ordinary
mathematical sentences like ‘3 is prime’ should be read at face value, i.e., as being of the
form ‘Fa’ and hence as making claims about mathematical objects, and (b) there are no
such things as mathematical objects, but (c) our mathematical sentences are still true.
Views of this kind have been endorsed by Routley (1980), Azzouni (1994, 2004), Priest
(2003, 2005), and Bueno (2005).

Before describing the problems with neo-Meinongianism, it's important to note that the
central claim behind that view is an empirical hypothesis about ordinary discourse. In
particular, it's a claim about the meaning of ‘true’, or the concept of truth. When neo-
Meinongians say that, e.g., ‘3 is prime’ could be true even if there were no such thing as
the number 3, they are making a claim about the ordinary concept of truth. They are
saying that that concept applies in certain situations that most of us—platonists and
fictionalists and just about everyone else—think it doesn't apply in. If neo-Meinongians
try to deny that they are making a claim about the ordinary concept of truth, then their
view will collapse into a version of fictionalism. For since they agree with fictionalists
that ‘3 is prime’ purports to be about a certain abstract object, and since they also agree
that there are no such things as abstract objects, it follows that if they endorsed a standard
view of truth—i.e., a platonist-fictionalist view according to which a sentence of the form
‘Fa’ could not be true unless ‘a’ referred to an actually existing object—then they would
have to admit that ‘3 is prime’ is untrue. Now, they might go on to argue that these
sentences are true*—where this is defined in such a way that sentences of the form ‘Fa’
can be true* even if there is no such thing as a—but, of course, fictionalists would agree
with this. So if neo-Meinongianism is to be genuinely distinct from fictionalism, it has to
involve a thesis about the meaning of the ordinary word ‘true’; in particular, the claim has
to be that sentences of the form ‘Fa’ can be true, in the ordinary sense of the term, even if
the singular term ‘a’ doesn't refer to anything.

Given this, most fictionalists would probably say that the problem with Neo-
Meinongianism is that it's empirically implausible. In other words, the objection would
be that neo-Meinongianism flies badly in the face of our intuitions about the meaning of
‘true’. And there does seem to be some justification for this claim. For instance, it just
seems intuitively obvious that the sentence ‘Mars is a planet’ could not be literally true
unless there really existed such a thing as Mars. If this is right—if the neo-Meinongian
semantic thesis runs counter to our semantic intuitions—then this provides strong
evidence for thinking it's false.

But there is also a second problem with neo-Meinongianism: it's supposed to provide us
with a way of avoiding platonism, but in fact, it doesn't. Prima facie, it might seem that
neo-Meinongianism does deliver a way of avoiding platonism, because the argument for
platonism might seem to rely upon premise (2) above—i.e., it might seem to rely upon
the anti-neo-Meinongian claim that if sentences like ‘4 is even’ should be read at face
value, i.e., as being of the form ‘Fa’, and if these sentence are literally true, then we are
committed to believing in the objects that they're about, e.g., the number 4. But, in fact,
platonists can formulate their argument so that it doesn't rely upon this anti-neo-
Meinongian premise. To bring this point out, let's begin by introducing two new terms of
art—‘true1’ and ‘true2’—and stipulating that ‘true1’ is to be taken as expressing the
platonist-fictionalist concept of truth, so that a sentence of the form ‘Fa’ cannot be true1
unless ‘a’ actually refers to something, whereas ‘true2’ expresses a neo-Meinongian
concept of truth, so that a sentence of the form ‘Fa’ can be true2 even if ‘a’ doesn't refer
to anything. Given this, platonists can say the following:

We just don't care whether the word ‘true’, as it's used in ordinary English, expresses
truth1 or truth2 (or whether it's ambiguous and sometimes expresses the one concept and
sometimes the other). It's true that standard formulations of the argument for platonism
involve claims to the effect that ordinary mathematical sentences like ‘3 is prime’ are
true. But we could just as easily base our argument on the claim that sentences like this
are ‘true1’. In doing this, we wouldn't weaken our argument in any way. For the
arguments we use to motivate the truth of mathematics—most notably, the Quine-Putnam
indispensability argument discussed below—are already arguments for the truth1 of
mathematics. And this shouldn't be surprising; for when we say that ordinary
mathematical sentences like ‘3 is prime’ are true, what we mean is that they're true1; so,
of course, the arguments that we give for the truth of mathematics are already supposed
to be arguments for the truth1 of mathematics.

Given that platonists can proceed in this way, it seems that the question of whether the
neo-Meinongian semantic thesis is right—i.e., the question of whether the English word
‘true’ expresses the concept of truth1 or truth2—is simply a red herring. The real question
is whether platonists have any good arguments for the truth1 of mathematics (and, of
course, whether anti-platonists have any good arguments against the truth1 of
mathematics). In other words, if we assume that premises (1) and (4) are true, so that we
have to read our mathematical claims as being about (or at least purporting to be about)
abstract objects, then the real question is whether there are any good reasons for choosing
between platonism and fictionalism.

1.4 Premise (4) and Physicalism and Psychologism

Physicalism is the view that our mathematical sentences and theories are about ordinary
physical objects. John Stuart Mill (1843) developed a view of this kind. On his view,
mathematics is just a very general natural science. Thus, for instance, according to Mill,
the sentence ‘2 + 3 = 5’ is not a claim about abstract objects (the numbers 2, 3, and 5);
rather, it's a claim about piles of physical objects (in particular, it tells us that if we push a
pile of two objects together with a pile of three objects, we'll get a pile of five objects.
(Phillip Kitcher (1984) and the early Penelope Maddy (1990) have also endorsed views
with “physicalistic leanings”, but in the end, neither is plausibly interpreted as falling into
this camp. Maddy's early view is better thought of as a non-traditional sort of platonism,
because according to this view, mathematics is about nonphysical objects that exist in
space and time; and Kitcher's view is best thought of as a kind of paraphrase nominalism,
because on his view, mathematical utterances turn out not to be about any actually
existing objects.)

There are numerous problems with physicalistic views of mathematics. To mention just
one of these problems, physicalism seems completely incapable of accounting for various
kinds of claims about infinities that we find in mathematics. For instance, it is a theorem
of set theory that there are infinitely many transfinite cardinal numbers that keep getting
bigger and bigger without end. Thus, set theory is committed to the existence of infinite
sets that are so huge that they simply dwarf garden variety infinite sets, like the set of all
the natural numbers. There is just no plausible way to interpret this talk of gigantic
infinite sets as being about physical objects.

Psychologism is the view that mathematical sentences and theories are about mental
objects. Probably the most common version of this view holds that numbers are
something like ideas in our heads, and ordinary mathematical sentences like ‘3 is prime’
provide descriptions of these ideas. This view was popular in the late 19th Century; it was
endorsed by, e.g., the early Husserl (1891), as well as the intuitionists, Brouwer (1912,
1948) and Heyting (1956). But Frege (1884, 1893-1903) provided a host of arguments
against the view and essentially buried it. To give just one argument here, it seems that
psychologism is just as incapable as physicalism is of dealing with the huge infinities in
mathematics. As was just seen, standard set theories entail that there actually exist huge
infinities of mathematical objects. But it's just not believable that there are that many
ideas in our heads. Indeed, it seems clear that there are only finitely many ideas in our
heads. Therefore, it is not plausible to maintain that the claims of set theory are made true
by mental objects.

In response, one might claim that even if there aren't infinitely many ideas in our heads, it
seems likely that we have ideas of infinities in our heads. This is no doubt true—there are
such ideas in our heads—but this does not save psychologism from the above objection.
For our mathematical theories entail that there actually exist infinitely many different
mathematical objects. E.g., standard theories of arithmetic entail that there is such a thing
as 1, and that there is such a thing as 2 (and that it's distinct from 1), and that there is such
a thing as 3 (and that it's distinct from both 1 and 2), and so on. So our mathematical
theories are true descriptions of ideas in our heads only if there actually exist infinitely
many different ideas in our heads. Thus, since there aren't that many ideas in our heads,
we cannot maintain that our mathematical theories are true descriptions of such things.

Alternatively, one might respond to the above argument against psychologism by moving
to a view according to which mathematical claims are about ideas that we could
construct, or possible mental objects, or some such thing. But this would not be a
psychologistic view, because on this view, the objects of mathematics would not be actual
mental objects; they would be possible objects, which, presumably, are either abstract
objects or objects of some other metaphysically dubious kind.

Finally, one might object to both of the arguments in this subsection—i.e., the arguments
against physicalism and psychologism—by saying something like this:

The arguments given here are supposed to motivate the idea that ordinary mathematical
sentences like ‘4 is even’ are not plausibly interpreted as being about physical or mental
objects—or more specifically, that they are better interpreted as being about (or at least
purporting to be about) abstract objects. But one might object here that, as an
interpretation of ordinary mathematical discourse, the platonist/fictionalist view is no
more plausible than physicalism or psychologism. For one might find it implausible to
suppose that when ordinary folk make mathematical claims, they intend to be speaking
about abstract objects.

But platonists and fictionalists are not committed to the thesis that people have positive
intentions to be talking about abstract objects. Rather, they can say the following: (i)
ordinary mathematical claims are best interpreted at face value—and, hence, as making
claims about objects—because typical mathematicians (and, indeed, typical examples of
ordinary folk) do not have positive intentions to be speaking nonliterally when they utter
mathematical sentences; and (ii) there are features of the intentions of typical
mathematicians and typical folk, with respect to their mathematical utterances, that are
inconsistent with the idea that these utterances are about physical or mental objects; and
(iii) there is nothing in the intentions of typical mathematicians or typical folk that is
inconsistent with the idea that our mathematical sentences are about abstract objects.
Thus, on this view, the platonist/fictionalist semantic theory is better than other semantic
theories of mathematical discourse because it's the only theory that's consistent with the
data—not because mathematicians and ordinary folk have positive intentions to be
speaking about abstract objects when they utter mathematical sentences.

1.5 Premise (5) and Platonism

If the arguments given so far are correct, then the only remaining views—the only
philosophies of mathematics that haven't been ruled out—are platonism and fictionalism.
Thus, to complete their argument, fictionalists need merely to provide an argument for
premise (5); in other words, they just need to argue against platonism. But this turns out
to be a lot harder than arguing against the various non-fictionalistic versions of anti-
platonism considered above. As we've seen, fictionalists can argue against those views by
simply motivating a series of empirical hypotheses about ordinary mathematical
discourse and the ordinary meaning of the word ‘true’. More specifically, fictionalists can
argue against these views by arguing that (a) ordinary mathematical utterances are best
interpreted at face value, and (b) these utterances cannot plausibly be interpreted as being
about physical or mental objects, and (c) sentences of the form ‘The object a is an F’
cannot be true, in the ordinary sense of the term, unless there really is such a thing as a.
But fictionalists cannot argue against platonism in anything like this way, because
fictionalists and platonists are in agreement about the meanings of ordinary mathematical
utterances (and the word ‘true’). Indeed, platonists and fictionalists don't disagree about
any semantic theses. Their disagreement is about an ontological thesis: platonists believe
in abstract objects, whereas fictionalists do not. Thus, if fictionalists are going to argue
against platonism, they're going to have to use a different kind of argument.

There are a few different arguments that have been brought against mathematical
platonism, but the most important—and the most famous—is what is known as the
epistemological argument against platonism. This argument goes back at least to Plato. In
contemporary times, it received its most classical statement in a paper by Paul Benacerraf
(1973), although most philosophers of mathematics agree that Benacerraf's formulation
of the argument is problematic because of its reliance on an implausible causal theory of
knowledge. A better and more standard way to formulate the argument is as follows
(Balaguer, 1995, 1998a):

i. Human beings exist entirely within spacetime.

ii. If there exist any abstract mathematical objects, then they exist outside of
spacetime. Therefore, it seems likely that
iii. If there exist any abstract mathematical objects, then human beings could not
attain knowledge of them. But
 iv. It's built into the platonistic view that there do exist abstract objects and that
human beings can acquire knowledge of them (after all, according to platonism,
mathematical knowledge just is knowledge of abstract objects). Therefore,
v. Platonism is false.

Platonists have tried to respond to this argument in a few different ways, but the most
popular (and, it can be argued, the most plausible) response is to try to undermine the
inference from (i) and (ii) to (iii) by explaining how (iii) could be false even if (i) and (ii)
are true—i.e., how human beings could acquire knowledge of abstract objects despite the
fact that they are causally isolated from such objects and, hence, do not have any
information-transferring contact with such objects. This strategy of response has been
pursued by Quine (1948, 1951), Steiner (1975), Katz (1981, 1998), Resnik (1982, 1997),
Shapiro (1989, 1997), Lewis (1986), Linsky and Zalta (1995), and Balaguer (1995,
1998a). The question of whether any of these responses succeeds is extremely
controversial among philosophers of mathematics. Moreover, anti-platonists do not have
any compelling argument for the thesis that platonists couldn't provide the required
explanation here—i.e., that they couldn't explain how human beings could acquire
knowledge of abstract objects without the aid of any information-transferring contact
with such objects. Thus, to make a very long story short, it seems fair to say that the
epistemological argument against platonism is, at best, controversial and inconclusive.

(For a more complete discussion of the epistemological argument against platonism,

including discussions of the various responses that platonists have attempted, see the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry entitled “Platonism in Metaphysics”.)

Given that the epistemological argument does not succeed in refuting platonism,
fictionalists might attempt to provide some other argument against platonism. One such
argument that has received considerable attention is the multiple-reductions argument.
The classical statement of this argument is given, once again, by Benacerraf (1965). The
argument can be run in connection with any of our mathematical theories, but the point is
usually made in connection with arithmetic. Moreover, even when we zero in on
arithmetic, there are still many different ways to formulate the argument. One way to do
this is as follows: (A) if there are any sequences of abstract objects that satisfy our
arithmetical theories, then there are infinitely many, and there is nothing “metaphysically
special” about any of these sequences that makes it stand out as the sequence of natural
numbers; but (B) platonism is committed to the thesis that there is a unique sequence of
abstract objects that is the natural numbers. Therefore, (C) platonism is false.

Platonists have offered numerous responses to this argument. Probably the most common
strategy has been to reject (A), i.e., to argue that platonists can in fact defend the claim
that there is a unique sequence that stands out as the sequence of natural numbers. This
strategy has been pursued in different ways by, e.g., Resnik (1997), Shapiro (1997),
Parsons (1990), and Linsky and Zalta (1995). Moreover, Balaguer (1998a, chapter 4)
argues that even if (A) is true, it doesn't matter, because (B) is false: platonists can simply
admit that there are numerous sequences that satisfy our arithmetical theories and that it
may be that none of them stands out as the one and only sequence of natural numbers.
There is no widespread agreement on the status of these platonistic responses, and so, as
is the case with the epistemological argument, it would be extremely controversial, if not
downright implausible, to claim that the multiple-reductions argument refutes platonism.

Aside from this, the only argument against platonism that has received much attention in
the philosophy of mathematics is an Ockham's-razor-based argument. We will return to
this argument (very briefly) in section 3; for now, we can simply note that, like the
epistemological argument and the multiple-reductions argument, the Ockham's-razor-
based argument is very controversial, and the claim that this argument refutes platonism
is (at the very least) tendentious. Thus, the overall conclusion that we seem led to here is
this: even if fictionalists can motivate the platonist/fictionalist semantics of mathematical
discourse and, thus, eliminate all of the anti-platonistic alternatives to fictionalism, they
do not have any really compelling argument against platonism, or for the conclusion that
fictionalism is superior to platonism. In other words, fictionalists don't have any
compelling argument for premise (5), and so the positive argument for their view is, at
best, incomplete.

2. Objections to Fictionalism and Responses

Given that there are no compelling arguments against platonism, the next question one
might naturally ask is whether there are any good arguments against fictionalism (and
hence, if platonism is really the only plausible alternative to fictionalism, in favor of
platonism). The present section considers four such arguments, the first three of which
can be thought of as arguments for thinking that we have to grant that our mathematical
sentences and theories are true. In going through the fictionalist responses to these
arguments, we will also see how different philosophers have developed different versions
of fictionalism.

2.1 The Quine-Putnam Indispensability Argument

By far the most important and widely discussed argument against fictionalism is what's
known as the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument (see, e.g., Quine (1948, 1951),
Putnam (1971), Resnik (1997), and Colyvan (2001)). This argument has been formulated
in a number of different ways, but the differences between these formulations won't
matter here. A very simple version of the argument can be put like this: (i) mathematical
sentences form an indispensable part of our empirical theories of the physical world—
i.e., our theories of physics, chemistry, and so on; (ii) we have good reasons for thinking
that these empirical theories are true, i.e., that they give us accurate pictures of the world;
therefore, (iii) we have good reasons to think that our mathematical sentences are true
and, hence, that fictionalism is false.

Fictionalists have developed two different kinds of responses to this argument. The first
one, due to Field (1980), can be called the nominalization response, and the version of
fictionalism it gives us can be called hard-road fictionalism. The second response, due
originally to Balaguer (1996a, 1998a, chapter 7), and developed also by Rosen (2001),
Yablo (2005), Leng (forthcoming), and Melia (2000)—if, indeed, the latter is defending a
fictionalist view—can be called the no-nominalization response, and the version of
fictionalism it gives us can be called easy-road fictionalism, or weasel fictionalism. (The
names here are due to Colyvan and Melia; the former speaks of ‘hard-road nominalism’
and ‘easy-road nominalism’, and the latter speaks of ‘weasel nominalism’.)

Field's hard-road response is based on the rejection of premise (i). He argues that
mathematics is, in fact, not indispensable to empirical science. Field tries to establish this
thesis by arguing that our empirical theories can be nominalized, i.e., reformulated in a
way that avoids reference to, and existential quantification over, abstract objects. This is
an extremely controversial claim, and it is very difficult to establish, for presumably, one
would have to actually carry out the nominalization for every one of our empirical
theories—thus, the name hard-road fictionalism. Field did not try to do this for all of our
empirical theories. Rather, he tried to motivate his position by explaining how the
nominalization would go for one empirical theory, namely, Newtonian Gravitation
Theory. Now, some people have complained that even if Field's strategy could work for
this one theory, it might not work for other theories, and in particular, Malament (1982)
has argued that his strategy would not work in connection with Quantum Mechanics.
However, Balaguer (1996b and 1998a, chapter 6) has argued that, contra Malament,
Field's strategy can be extended to the case of quantum mechanics, although it should be
noted that his argument has been questioned by Bueno (2003). In any event, there are a
number of other objections that have been raised against Field's program—see, e.g.,
Malament (1982), Shapiro (1983), Resnik (1985), and Chihara (1990, chapter 8, section
5). At present, the status of Field's response to the Quine-Putnam argument remains
controversial at best.

Balaguer's easy-road response begins by granting premise (i) of the Quine-Putnam

argument—i.e., by granting (for the sake of argument) that there do exist indispensable
applications of mathematics to empirical science. Balaguer's strategy is simply to account
for these applications from a fictionalist point of view. His argument can be summarized
as follows:

1. If there are any such things as abstract objects, then they are causally inert, and
what's more, our empirical theories don't assign any causal roles to any abstract
objects.
2. Given this, it follows that the truth of empirical science depends upon two sets of
facts that are entirely independent of one another, i.e., that hold or don't hold
independently of one another. One of these sets of facts is purely platonistic and
mathematical, and the other is purely physical (or more precisely, purely anti-
platonistic).
3. Since these two sets of facts hold or don't hold independently of one another,
fictionalists can maintain that (a) there does obtain a set of purely physical facts of
the sort required here, i.e., the sort needed to make empirical science true, but (b)
there doesn't obtain a set of purely platonistic facts of the sort required for the
truth of empirical science (because there are no such things as abstract objects).
4. Therefore, fictionalism is consistent with an essentially realistic view of empirical
science, because fictionalists can maintain that even if there are no such things as
 mathematical objects and, hence, our empirical theories aren't strictly true, these
theories still paint an essentially accurate picture of the physical world, because
the physical world is just the way it needs to be for empirical science to be true. In
other words, fictionalists can maintain that the physical world “holds up its end of
the empirical-science bargain”.
5. Finally, to provide a view of what mathematics is doing in empirical science, the
claim is that it functions as a descriptive or representational aid. In other words, it
gives us an easy way of making claims about the physical world. For instance, by
making reference to real numbers—or, better, by using terms that purport to refer
to real numbers—we give ourselves an easy way of describing the temperature
states of physical systems. And Balaguer argues that mathematics can succeed in
its role as a descriptive aid even if it isn't true; indeed, he argues that truth is
simply no help at all in this connection.

This view is developed in much more detail in Balaguer (1996a and 1998a, chapter 7).
Moreover, others have developed similar views. For instance, Melia (2000) argues that
we can assert our empirical theories and then simply take back the
platonistic/mathematical consequences of those assertions. And Rosen (2001) argues that
fictionalism is epistemically permissible because another community of scientists could
accept the very same theories that we do while endorsing—or, more to the point,
rationally endorsing—a fictionalist attitude toward the mathematical components of their
theories. And Leng (forthcoming) argues that the indispensability argument does not
refute fictionalism because fictionalists can provide an adequate account of the success of
science.

Yablo (2005, 2002a, 2002b) also develops a view like this—he claims that mathematics
appears in science as a representational aid and that it doesn't need to be true in order to
do this well. But his version of the view is a bit different, because he thinks that the
sentences of our platonistically formulated empirical theories—or at least typical
utterances of these sentences—are actually true, because their real contents are
nominalistic. To use a trivial sort of example, consider the sentence

(M) The number of Martian moons is 2.

According to Yablo, typical utterances of sentences like (M) are analogous to ordinary
instances of figurative speech, e.g., sentences like

(A) The average mum has 2.4 children.

The syntactic form of (A) seems to suggest that it's about an actual object known as the
average mum; but, of course, it isn't—to read it in this way would be to misunderstand
what people mean when they utter sentences like (A). Likewise, according to Yablo,
while it might seem that (M) is making a claim partially about an actual object known as
2, it really isn't. Rather, the real content of (M)—i.e., what typical utterances of this
sentence really say—is that there are two Martian moons. And, of course, this claim—
i.e., the claim that there are two Martian moons—is not a claim about the number 2 or
any other abstract object; it is nominalistically kosher. In sum, then, the idea here is that
fictionalists about pure mathematics can endorse a paraphrase nominalist view of mixed
mathematical sentences.

(It is worth noting that Yablo also seems to think that, at least sometimes, pure
mathematical sentences have real contents—i.e., really say things—that are nominalistic
and true. For instance, he thinks that, at least sometimes, sentences like ‘3 + 2 = 5’ say
things like if there are three Fs and two Gs, then (barring overlap) there are five F-or-Gs.
Moreover, at times, Yablo seems to at least hint at the view that, at least sometimes, when
we utter sentences like ‘3 is prime,’ what we're really saying is that ‘3 is prime’ is true or
acceptable according to the theory (or the story, or the game) of arithmetic. It's not clear
how seriously Yablo takes this idea, however; at any rate, it seems pretty clear that if he
endorses it at all, he thinks it's true in only some contexts, i.e., of only some pure
mathematical utterances. Whatever Yablo's view is, though, it's important to note that
views of this general kind—i.e., views that take pure mathematical sentences to have real
contents, or really say things, that are nominalistic and true—are not versions of
fictionalism at all, as that view has been defined here. They are rather versions of
paraphrase nominalism, and so they are subject to the argument against that view given in
section 1.2. We will return (very briefly) to the issue of whether Yablo's view is really a
version of fictionalism in section 2.3.)

Finally, it's worth noting that proponents of easy-road nominalism do not prefer their
view to Field's simply because it's “easier”, or because it doesn't involve a commitment to
the controversial claim that our empirical theories can be nominalized. Melia, Yablo, and
Balaguer all argue that the view is independently superior to Field's view because it fits
better with actual scientific practice.

2.2 Objectivity

A second objection to fictionalism is based on the idea that fictionalists cannot account
for the objectivity of mathematics. It is an obvious fact about mathematical practice that
there's some sort of objectivity at work in that practice. There's an important difference in
mathematics between sentences like ‘2 + 2 = 4’ and ‘3 is prime’ on the one hand and ‘2 +
2 = 5’ and ‘3 is composite’ on the other. There's obviously some sense in which the first
two sentences, but not the second two, are “correct”, or “right”, or “good”, or some such
thing. The most obvious thing to say here is that the first two sentence are true whereas
the latter two are false. But fictionalists cannot say this; they're committed to saying that
all four of these sentences are untrue. Thus, the question arises whether fictionalists have
any adequate account of the objectivity of mathematics—i.e., of the differences between
these two kinds of sentences.

Once again, there are two different responses that fictionalists have given to this problem.
These two responses give us versions of fictionalism that, for lack of a better pair of
terms, can be called formalistic fictionalism and intention-based fictionalism.
The formalistic view has been developed by Field (1980, 1989, 1998). On his view, the
difference between ‘3 is prime’ and ‘3 is composite’ is analogous to the difference
between, say, ‘Santa Claus wears a red suit’ and ‘Santa Claus wears a green suit’. More
specifically, Field's idea is that the difference between sentences like ‘3 is prime’ and ‘3 is
composite’ is that the former (but not the latter) are part of a certain well-known “story”,
namely, the story of mathematics, i.e., the story that's made up of our mathematical
theories. Field puts this point by saying that while ‘3 is prime’ and ‘3 is composite’ are
both strictly untrue, the former is true in the story of mathematics, whereas the latter is
not. Now, most of Field's view here is consistent with both formalistic fictionalism and
intention-based fictionalism. The difference between these two views has to do with what
fictionalists take the story of mathematics to be—or perhaps more accurately, what they
take it to be determined by. For Field, the story of mathematics consists essentially in a
bunch of formal systems, namely, the ones that we currently accept. More precisely, he
says (1998, p. 391) that a mathematical sentence is fictionalistically correct if and only if
it is “a consequence of accepted axioms [in a]…sense of consequence that goes a bit
beyond first-order consequence in including the logic of the quantifier ‘only finitely
many’”. So on this view, the difference between sentences like ‘3 is prime’ and ‘3 is
composite’—the reason the former are “correct” and the latter are not—is that the former
follow from accepted mathematical axioms. (This view has also been endorsed by Leng
(forthcoming, section 3.1); she says that mathematical acceptability comes down to
following from accepted axioms.)

The intention-based version of fictionalism is developed by Balaguer (2001). He begins

the argument for this view by attacking Field's formalistic view. His main argument here
is that the formalistic view (of what the story of mathematics consists in) cannot account
for all of the objectivity that we find in mathematics. Most importantly, the formalistic
view entails (incorrectly) that there can be no objectively correct answers to questions
that ask about the truth values of mathematical sentences that are undecidable in currently
accepted mathematical theories. The most famous example here is probably the
continuum hypothesis (CH), which is undecidable in currently accepted set theories, e.g.,
Zermelo-Frankel set theory (ZF). (In other words, ZF is consistent with both CH and
~CH; i.e., ZF+CH and ZF+~CH are both consistent set theories.) Given this, it follows
from Field's view that neither CH nor ~CH is part of the story of mathematics and, hence,
that there is no objectively correct answer to the CH question. This, however, seems
unacceptable, because it could turn out that mathematicians are going to discover an
objectively correct answer to the CH question. For instance, suppose that some
mathematician came up with a new axiom candidate AX such that (i) all mathematicians
agreed that AX was an intuitively obvious claim about sets, and (ii) ZF+AX entailed CH.
If this happened, then mathematicians would say that they had proven CH, and that they
had discovered that CH was correct, and so on. Field's view would force us to say that if
we endorsed AX, then CH would become true in the story of mathematics. But this seems
to get things wrong. Given the intuitive obviousness of AX, it seems very natural to say
that, in this scenario, mathematicians discovered that CH had been true (or “correct”, or
true in the story of mathematics, or whatever we want to call it) all along—i.e., that we
didn't just make this up by endorsing a new theory. And, again, it seems that this is what
mathematicians would say. So, Balaguer argues, Field's formalistic view of the objectivity
of mathematics is unacceptable.

Balaguer replaces Field's formalistic view with his intention-based view. The idea here is
to retain Field's thesis that mathematical “correctness” has to do with being part of the
story of mathematics—or true in the story of mathematics—but to abandon the Fieldian
view that the story of mathematics is determined by currently accepted axioms.
According to Balaguer, the so-called “story of mathematics” goes beyond our currently
accepted axiom systems; it covers what he calls the full conceptions that people have of
the objects, or purported objects, in the various branches of mathematics; that is, it covers
the sum total of the intentions that we, as a community, have regarding these objects.
Thus, on this view, a sentence is part of our story of arithmetic just in case it is inherent
in, or follows from, our full conception of the natural numbers; and a sentence is part of
our story of set theory just in case it is inherent in, or follows from, our full conception of
the universe of sets (or our notion of set); and so on. (It should be noted that this view is
consistent with the fact that mathematicians sometimes work with axioms sets without
having in mind any substantive “pretheoretic conception”. According to Balaguer's view,
when this happens, it is just a limiting case in which the so-called “full conception” is
completely exhausted by the axioms in question. Thus, the difference between Balaguer's
intention-based view and the Field-Leng formalistic view is that while both views allow
for cases in which the given axiom system completely determines the relevant
“mathematical story”, Balaguer's view also allows for cases in which the relevant “story”
goes beyond the given formal system and is determined by a pretheoretic conception that
mathematicians have in mind, behind the given set of axioms.)

If fictionalists adopt the intention-based view, then they can respond to the worry about
undecidable sentences. In particular, they can maintain that in the above scenario in
which CH is proven, mathematicians discovered that CH was “correct”, or true in the
story of mathematics; for they can claim that the fact that AX was intuitively obvious to
all mathematicians shows that it was inherent in, or followed from, our notion of set, and
hence that CH followed from our notion of set (and that it already followed from this
notion even before we discovered AX). Thus, again, fictionalists can claim in this case
that CH was part of the story of mathematics all along, even though we hadn't noticed
this. And this seems to suggest that fictionalists can provide a complete account of the
objectivity of mathematics.

Note, too, that the intention-based version of fictionalism does not entail that there
definitely is a correct answer to the CH question. For it could be that our conception of
set is not entirely precise and, in particular, that it is consistent with both CH and ~CH, so
that neither of these sentences is part of the story of mathematics. Thus, intention-based
fictionalists can maintain that it's an open mathematical question whether CH has a
determinate truth value (and if it does, what that truth value is). Now, one might think
that because this view allows for even the possibility of bivalence failures, it is
unacceptable. Indeed, one might raise this worry against just about any version of
fictionalism, certainly Field's. But Balaguer responds to this worry in his (2001); he
argues not just that it's acceptable for a philosophy of mathematics to allow for the
possibility of bivalence failures but that it's desirable.

Finally, one might think that intention-based fictionalism will collapse into a version of
platonism because talk of intentions of the above kind is best interpreted as involving a
commitment to propositions, which are presumably abstract objects. This is a special case
of a more general worry that will be discussed (very briefly) in section 2.5, namely, the
worry that it may be that fictionalism can't even be adequately formulated in a
nominalistically kosher way. As will be explained there, it would go beyond the scope of
the present essay to discuss the nominalistic acceptability of all the different versions of
fictionalism; but it is worth noting that Balaguer responds to this particular version of the
worry in his (1998b) by arguing that we can endorse a fictionalistic view of propositions
as well as mathematical objects.

2.3 Revolutionisme and Hermeneuticisme

Another objection to fictionalism is put forward by Burgess (2004)—and it should be

noted that the argument here has roots in Burgess and Rosen (1997). The argument can be
put like this:

Fictionalists face a dilemma: they have to endorse either hermeneutic fictionalism or

revolutionary fictionalism, but neither is plausible. We can define hermeneutic
fictionalism as the view that mathematicians (and perhaps ordinary folk) intend their
mathematical talk to be taken as a form of fiction; more specifically, the view here is that,
according to ordinary mathematical intentions, singular terms like ‘3’ are not supposed to
refer, and sentences like ‘3 is prime’ are not supposed to be true. But hermeneutic
fictionalism is implausible and unmotivated; as an empirical hypothesis about what
mathematicians intend, there is simply no good evidence for it, and it seems obviously
false. Revolutionary fictionalism, on the other hand, is the view that (a) mathematicians
do not intend their utterances to be taken as fiction, or as non-literal in any other way; and
so (b) we should interpret mathematicians as really asserting what their sentences say,
i.e., as making assertions that are about (or that purport to be about) mathematical
objects; but (c) since there are no such things as mathematical objects, the assertions of
mathematicians are simply mistaken. But revolutionary fictionalism is implausible as
well; given the track records of philosophers and mathematicians, it would be “comically
immodest” for philosophers to presume that they had discovered a problem with
mathematics (Burgess, 2004, p. 30).

No one has ever defended hermeneutic fictionalism, as it's defined above. Yablo (2002a)
claims that his view is a version of hermeneutic fictionalism, but the view he has in mind
is a bit different from the hermeneutic fictionalist view described above. Yablo does not
claim that mathematicians intend their utterances of sentences like ‘3 is prime’ to be
taken as fictional claims. Rather, he thinks these utterances are (at least sometimes, or
perhaps typically) analogous to ordinary examples of figurative speech, e.g., sentences
like ‘The back burner is where you put things to let them simmer.’ This sentence contains
a singular term—‘the back burner’—that seems (syntactically) to be a denoting
expression; but it's not really a denoting expression (at least in typical cases) and to
interpret it as a genuine denoting expression in sentences like the above would be to
badly misunderstand what typical speakers of sentences like this intend to be saying.
Yablo thinks that something like this is true in connection with typical utterances of (pure
and mixed) mathematical sentences, e.g., sentences like ‘3 is prime’ and ‘The number of
Martian moons is 2.’ So Yablo is certainly proposing a hermeneutic nominalist view, but
it's not clear that his view is best thought of as a kind of hermeneutic fictionalism. As was
noted above (section 2.1), the view might be better classified as a sort of paraphrase
nominalism. Yablo calls his view figuralism, and he talks as if it is a version of
fictionalism. But he seems to be using the term ‘fictionalism’ differently from how it's
been defined here. What he likely has in mind is this: on a literal reading, mathematical
sentences are untrue, as fictionalism says, but there's an alternative reading on which they
come out true (and nominalistically kosher). But what makes it awkward to take Yablo's
view as a version of fictionalism is that he seems to think that what (pure and mixed)
mathematical sentences really say—or, more precisely, what typical utterances of these
sentences really say—is true and nominalistic in content. This sounds more like
paraphrase nominalism than fictionalism.

In contrast to Yablo, Leng (2005, forthcoming) responds to Burgess's argument by

defending revolutionary fictionalism. More specifically, Leng argues that it is acceptable
for philosophers to evaluate and criticize the work of mathematicians. Of course, Leng
acknowledges that mathematics is a very successful practice and that philosophers have
to respect this, but her claim is that we can account for the success of mathematics
without supposing that it's true. And given this, she argues, we can rationally evaluate
and criticize mathematical practice from the outside, from a philosophical point of view.

2.4 Similarity to Fiction

A few people—e.g., Katz (1998), Thomas (2000 and 2002), Hoffman (2004), and
Burgess (2004)—have objected to fictionalism on the grounds that there are obvious
disanalogies between mathematics and fiction. (What exactly the disanalogies are differs
in different versions of the objection. E.g., Katz argues that consistency is an important
criterion for goodness in mathematics but not in fiction. And Burgess argues that the
question of whether mathematical objects exist is not empirically meaningful, whereas
the question of whether the (non-abstract) objects in our fictional stories exist is
empirically meaningful.)

One way that fictionalists can respond to this objection is to claim that it's simply
irrelevant, because fictionalism does not involve the claim that there are no important
disanalogies between mathematics and fiction. As it was defined above, fictionalism is
the view that (a) our mathematical sentences and theories do purport to be about abstract
mathematical objects, as platonism suggests, but (b) there are no such things as abstract
objects, and so (c) our mathematical theories are not true. There is no claim about
fictional discourse at all here, and so fictionalists can simply deny that their view entails
that there are no important disanalogies between mathematics and fiction.
Now, this does not mean that fictionalists can't claim that there are some relevant
analogies between mathematics and fiction. They can of course claim that there are; e.g.,
they might want to say that, as is the case in mathematics, there are no such things as
fictional objects and, because of this, typical fictional sentences are not literally true. But
by making such claims, fictionalists do not commit themselves to any stronger claims
about the analogy between mathematics and fiction—e.g., that mathematical discourse is
a kind of fictional discourse—and they certainly don't commit themselves to the claim
that there are no important disanalogies between the two enterprises. In short,
fictionalism is perfectly consistent with the claim that there are numerous important
disanalogies between mathematics and fiction.

Finally, it is of course true that there might be some fictionalists out there who do want to
make some stronger claims about the analogy between mathematics and fiction. Such
people might have to take objections of the above kind more seriously. But none of the
fictionalists discussed in this essay endorses any very strong claims of this kind; in
particular, none of them says anything that entails that there are no important disanalogies
between mathematics and fiction. On the other hand, it should be noted that Yablo has
made some relatively strong claims about an analogy that he thinks holds between
mathematical utterances and metaphorical utterances, or figurative utterances. Thus,
Yablo's particular version of fictionalism is open to objections to the effect that
mathematical utterances are in fact not similar or analogous to metaphorical utterances.
Some objections of this kind have been raised by Stanley (2002), and Yablo responds to
them in his (2002a). But since Yablo doesn't claim that mathematical utterances are
analogous to fictional utterances, he does not have to respond to objections of the kind
mentioned at the start of the present subsection.

2.5 Other Objections

There are, of course, other objections to fictionalism. Probably the most widely discussed
is based on the claim that fictionalism is not a genuinely nominalistic view because the
very formulation of fictionalism includes statements that involve ontological
commitments to abstract objects. It would be difficult to address this objection here,
though, because it takes a different form in connection with each different version of
fictionalism, and as the foregoing discussion makes clear, there are many different
versions of fictionalism (e.g., one can endorse either hard-road fictionalism or easy-road
fictionalism; and both of these views can be combined with either formalistic fictionalism
or intention-based fictionalism; and any of these views can be combined with
hermeneutic fictionalism or revolutionary fictionalism; and so on). It should be noted,
though, that several different defenders of fictionalism have responded to worries about
the nominalistic status of their own particular versions of fictionalism. In particular, Field
(1989) defends his version of fictionalism against the charge that it is commits to the
existence of spacetime points, which one might think are not nominalistically kosher; and
Balaguer (1998a) defends his version against the charge that it (and, indeed, Field's
version) are committed to the existence of stories, which would presumably be abstract
objects if they existed; and finally, Rosen (2001) defends his view against the charge that
it commits to theories and possible worlds. All three of these philosophers argue that their
versions of fictionalism can be adequately formulated in nominalistically kosher ways.

3. Conclusion
So there are several different objections to fictionalism out there, but fictionalists have
responses to all of them, and it is not at all obvious that any of the objections succeeds in
refuting fictionalism. Thus, at the present time, it seems at least prima facie plausible to
suppose that fictionalism can be defended. On the other hand, if the claims of section 1
are correct, then fictionalists do not have a compelling positive argument in favor of their
view. The arguments of sections 1.2-1.4 suggest that there are good reasons for rejecting
the various anti-platonistic alternatives to fictionalism and, hence, for thinking that
platonism and fictionalism are the two best views of mathematics, but there does not
seem to be any good argument for favoring fictionalism over platonism or vice versa.
Now, most fictionalists would probably say—and some have said (see, e.g., Leng,
forthcoming)—that this situation itself already gives us a good reason to favor
fictionalism over platonism. For if we take the claim that there is no good positive
argument for platonism and we combine it with Ockham's razor (i.e., the principle that
tells us that if two theories account for all the same facts, then, ceteris parabis, we ought
to endorse the more ontologically parsimonious of the two), then we seem to be led to the
result that fictionalism is superior to platonism. It should be noted, however, that this
argument is explicitly rejected by at least two of the defenders of fictionalism discussed
above. Rosen (see, e.g., Burgess and Rosen, 1997) doubts that there is any good reason to
accept Ockham's razor, and Balaguer (1998a) argues that even if we accept it, there are
reasons to think that it is not applicable in the present case. Thus, Rosen and Balaguer
both think that, at present, we do not have any good reason to endorse platonism or
fictionalism. Moreover, Balaguer (1998a, chapter 8) goes on to argue that there is actually
no fact of the matter as to whether platonism or fictionalism is true.

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 Page 1
philosophy of mathematics filsafat matematika
Encyclopædia Britannica Article Encyclopædia Britannica Pasal
· Introduction · Pendahuluan
· Mathematical Platonism · Matematika Platonisme
· Formal definition · Formal definisi
· Nontraditional versions · Versi non-tradisional
· Mathematical anti-Platonism · Matematika anti-Platonisme
· Realistic anti-Platonism · Realistis anti-Platonisme
· Nominalism · Nominalisme
· Logicism, intuitionism, and formalism · Logicism, intuisionisme, dan formalisme
· Mathematical Platonism: for and against · Matematika Platonisme: bagi dan melawan
· The Fregean argument for Platonism · The argumen Fregean untuk Platonisme
· The epistemological argument against Platonism · The argumen epistemologis terhadap
Platonisme
· Ongoing impasse · Berlangsung kebuntuan
· Additional Reading · Tambahan Membaca
branch of philosophy that is concerned with two major cabang filsafat yang berkaitan
dengan dua utama
questions: one concerning the meanings of ordinary pertanyaan: satu tentang makna biasa
mathematical sentences and the other concerning the issue matematika kalimat dan yang
lain tentang masalah
of whether abstract objects exist. apakah ada benda-benda abstrak. The first is a Yang
pertama adalah
straightforward question of interpretation: What is the best Pertanyaan langsung dari
interpretasi: Apa adalah yang terbaik
way to interpret standard mathematical sentences and cara untuk menginterpretasikan
kalimat matematika standar dan
theories? teori? In other words, what is really meant by ordinary Dengan kata lain, apa
yang sebenarnya dimaksud dengan biasa
mathematical sentences such as “3 is prime,” “2 + 2 = 4,” kalimat matematika seperti "3
adalah prima," "2 + 2 = 4,"
and “There are infinitely many prime numbers.” Thus, a dan "Ada banyak tak terhingga
bilangan prima demikian.", sebuah
central task of the philosophy of mathematics is to construct Tugas utama dari filosofi
matematika adalah untuk membangun
a semantic theory for the language of mathematics. teori semantik untuk bahasa
matematika.
Semantics is concerned with what certain expressions mean Semantik berkaitan dengan
ekspresi apa maksud tertentu
(or refer to) in ordinary discourse. (Atau lihat) dalam wacana biasa. So, for instance, the
Jadi, misalnya,
claim that in English the term Mars denotes the Mississippi menyatakan bahwa dalam
bahasa Inggris istilah Mars menunjukkan Mississippi
River is a false semantic theory; and the claim that in Sungai adalah teori semantik palsu,
dan klaim bahwa di
English Mars denotes the fourth planet from the Sun is a true Mars Inggris menunjukkan
planet keempat dari Matahari adalah benar
semantic theory. semantik teori. Thus, to say that philosophers of Jadi, untuk mengatakan
bahwa filsuf
mathematics are interested in figuring out how to interpret matematika tertarik untuk
mencari tahu bagaimana menafsirkan
mathematical sentences is just to say that they want to kalimat matematika adalah hanya
untuk mengatakan bahwa mereka ingin
provide a semantic theory for the language of mathematics. menyediakan teori semantik
untuk bahasa matematika.
Philosophers are interested in this question for two main Filsuf tertarik pada pertanyaan
ini selama dua utama

Page 2 Page 2
reasons: 1) it is not at all obvious what the right answer is, alasan: 1) itu sama sekali tidak
jelas apa jawaban yang benar,
and 2) the various answers seem to have deep philosophical dan 2) berbagai jawaban
tampaknya memiliki filosofis yang mendalam
implications. implikasi. More specifically, different interpretations of Lebih khusus lagi,
berbeda interpretasi
mathematics seem to produce different metaphysical views matematika tampaknya
menghasilkan metafisis berbeda dilihat
about the nature of reality. tentang sifat realitas. These points can be brought out Poin ini
bisa dibawa keluar
by looking at the sentences of arithmetic, which seem to dengan melihat kalimat-kalimat
aritmatika, yang tampaknya
make straightforward claims about certain objects. membuat klaim langsung tentang
obyek-obyek tertentu.
Consider, for instance, the sentence “4 is even.” This seems Perhatikan, misalnya, kalimat
"4 bahkan tampaknya." Ini
to be a simple subject-predicate sentence of the form “ S is menjadi kalimat subjek-
predikat sederhana dari bentuk "S
P ”—like, for instance, the sentence “The Moon is round.” P "-seperti, misalnya,
kalimat" Bulan bulat. "
This latter sentence makes a straightforward claim about Kalimat terakhir membuat klaim
langsung tentang
the Moon, and likewise, “4 is even” seems to make a Bulan, dan juga, "4 bahkan"
tampaknya membuat
straightforward claim about the number 4. langsung klaim tentang nomor 4. This,
however, is Ini, bagaimanapun, adalah
where philosophers get puzzled. mana filsuf mendapatkan bingung. For it is not clear
what the Karena tidak jelas apa
number 4 is supposed to be. nomor 4 seharusnya. What kind of thing is a number?
Macam apa hal yang nomor teleponnya?
Some philosophers (antirealists) have responded here with Beberapa filsuf (antirealists)
telah merespon di sini dengan
disbelief—according to them, there are simply no such things percaya-menurut mereka,
tidak hanya ada hal-hal seperti
as numbers. sebagai nomor. Others (realists) think that there are such things Lain-lain
(realis) berpikir bahwa ada hal-hal seperti
as numbers (as well as other mathematical objects). sebagai nomor (dan juga sebagai
objek matematika yang lain). Among Antara
the realists, however, there are several different views of yang realis, Namun, ada
beberapa pandangan yang berbeda
what kind of thing a number is. apa hal sebuah nomor. Some realists think that Beberapa
realis berpikir bahwa
numbers are mental objects (something like ideas in people's nomor objek mental
(sesuatu seperti ide-ide dalam masyarakat
heads). kepala). Other realists claim that numbers exist outside of realis lainnya
menyatakan bahwa angka ada di luar
people's heads, as features of the physical world. kepala orang, sebagai ciri dunia fisik.
There is, Ada,
however, a third view of the nature of numbers, known as Namun, pandangan ketiga sifat
angka, yang dikenal sebagai
Platonism or mathematical Platonism, that has been more Platonisme atau Platonisme
matematika, yang telah lebih
popular in the history of philosophy. populer dalam sejarah filsafat. This is the view that
Ini adalah pandangan bahwa
numbers are abstract objects, where an abstract object is nomor benda abstrak, di mana
sebuah objek abstrak
both nonphysical and nonmental. baik nonfisik dan nonmental. According to Platonists,
Menurut Platonis,
abstract objects exist but not anywhere in the physical benda-benda abstrak ada tapi tidak
di mana saja di fisik
world or in people's minds. dunia atau di itu pikiran orang. In fact, they do not exist in
Bahkan, mereka tidak ada dalam
space and time at all. ruang dan waktu sama sekali.
In what follows, more will be said to clarify exactly what Dalam apa yang berikut, akan
lebih banyak lagi kata untuk menjelaskan apa yang
Platonists have in mind by an abstract object. Platonis yang ada dalam pikiran oleh objek
abstrak. However, it is Namun,
important to note that many philosophers simply do not penting untuk dicatat bahwa
banyak filsuf tidak hanya
believe in abstract objects; they think that to believe in percaya pada benda abstrak,
mereka berpikir bahwa untuk percaya
abstract objects—objects that are wholly abstrak objek-objek yang sepenuhnya
nonspatiotemporal, nonphysical, and nonmental—is to nonspatiotemporal, nonfisik, dan
nonmental-adalah
believe in weird, occult entities. percaya pada aneh, entitas gaib. In fact, the question of
Bahkan, pertanyaan
whether abstract objects exist is one of the oldest and most apakah ada benda-benda
abstrak merupakan salah satu yang tertua dan paling
controversial questions of philosophy. kontroversial pertanyaan filsafat. The view that
there melihat bahwa ada
do exist such things goes back to Plato, and serious memang ada hal-hal seperti kembali
ke Plato, dan serius
resistance to the view can be traced back at least to perlawanan untuk melihat dapat
ditelusuri kembali setidaknya ke
Aristotle. Aristoteles. This ongoing controversy has survived for more Kontroversi ini
berlangsung telah bertahan selama lebih
than 2,000 years. dari 2.000 tahun.
The second major question with which the philosophy of Pertanyaan besar kedua yang
filsafat
mathematics is concerned is this: “Do abstract objects matematika yang bersangkutan
adalah ini: "Apakah benda-benda abstrak
exist?” This question is deeply related to the semantic ada? "Pertanyaan ini sangat terkait
dengan semantik

Page 3 Page 3
question about how the sentences and theories of pertanyaan tentang bagaimana kalimat
dan teori-teori
mathematics should be interpreted. matematika harus ditafsirkan. For if Platonism is right
Karena jika benar Platonisme
that the best interpretation of mathematics is that bahwa interpretasi terbaik matematika
adalah
sentences such as “4 is even” are about abstract objects kalimat-kalimat seperti "4
bahkan" adalah benda abstrak tentang
(and it will become clear below that there are some very (Dan ini akan menjadi jelas di
bawah ini bahwa ada beberapa yang sangat
good reasons for endorsing this interpretation), and if (what alasan yang baik untuk
mendukung interpretasi ini), dan jika (apa
seems pretty obvious) sentences such as “4 is even” are tampaknya cukup jelas) kalimat-
kalimat seperti "4 bahkan" adalah
true, then it would seem natural to endorse the view that benar, maka akan tampak alami
untuk mendukung pandangan bahwa
abstract objects exist. benda-benda abstrak ada.
The next section, Mathematical Platonism, provides a sketch Bagian berikutnya,
Matematika Platonisme, memberikan sketsa
of the Platonist view of mathematics and how it has pandangan Platonis matematika dan
bagaimana ia telah
developed. dikembangkan. The following section, Mathematical anti- Bagian berikut,
Matematika anti-
Platonism, provides a sketch of the alternatives to Platonisme, memberikan sketsa
alternatif
Platonism—that is, the various anti-Platonist views that are Platonisme-yaitu, pandangan
anti-Platonis berbagai yang
available to those who cannot bring themselves to believe in tersedia bagi mereka yang
tidak dapat membawa diri mereka untuk percaya
abstract objects. benda abstrak. Finally, the last section, Mathematical Akhirnya, bagian
terakhir, Matematika
Platonism: for and against, presents the best arguments for Platonisme: bagi dan
melawan, menyajikan argumen terbaik untuk
and against Platonism. dan terhadap Platonisme.
Mathematical Platonism Matematika Platonisme
Formal definition Definisi formal
Mathematical Platonism, formally defined, is the view that Matematika Platonisme,
secara formal didefinisikan, adalah pandangan bahwa
(a) there exist abstract objects—objects that are wholly (A) terdapat benda-benda abstrak
yang seluruhnya
nonspatiotemporal, nonphysical, and nonmental—and (b) nonspatiotemporal, nonfisik,
dan nonmental-dan (b)
there are true mathematical sentences that provide true ada kalimat matematis benar
bahwa memberikan informasi yang benar
descriptions of such objects. deskripsi benda-benda tersebut. The discussion of Platonism
Diskusi Platonisme
that follows will address both (a) and (b). yang berikut akan membahas baik (a) dan (b).
It is best to start with what is meant by an abstract object. Yang terbaik adalah mulai
dengan apa yang dimaksud dengan sebuah objek abstrak.
Among contemporary Platonists, the most common view is Di antara Platonis
kontemporer, tampilan yang paling umum adalah
that the really defining trait of an abstract object is yang benar-benar mendefinisikan sifat
dari suatu benda abstrak adalah
nonspatiotemporality. nonspatiotemporality. That is, abstract objects are not Artinya,
benda-benda abstrak tidak
located anywhere in the physical universe, and they are also terletak di mana saja di alam
ini, dan mereka juga
entirely nonmental, yet they have always existed and they nonmental sepenuhnya, namun
mereka selalu ada dan mereka
always will exist. selalu akan ada. This does not preclude having mental ideas Hal ini
tidak menghalangi memiliki gagasan mental
of abstract objects; according to Platonists, one can—eg, benda abstrak; menurut
Platonis, kita bisa-misalnya,
one might have a mental idea of the number 4. satu mungkin memiliki gagasan mental
dari nomor 4. It does not Tidak
follow from this, though, that the number 4 is just a mental mengikuti dari ini, meskipun,
bahwa angka 4 hanya mental
idea. ide. After all, people have ideas of the Moon in their heads Bagaimanapun, orang
memiliki ide-ide di kepala mereka Moon
too, but it does not follow from this that the Moon is just an juga, tetapi tidak mengikuti
dari ini bahwa Bulan hanya sebuah
idea, because the Moon and people's ideas of the Moon are gagasan, karena Bulan dan
ide-ide orang Bulan ini
distinct things. hal yang berbeda. Thus, when Platonists say that the number 4 Jadi, ketika
Platonis mengatakan bahwa nomor 4
is an abstract object, they mean to say that it is a real and adalah obyek abstrak, mereka
bermaksud mengatakan bahwa itu adalah nyata dan
objective thing that, like the Moon, exists independently of hal tujuan itu, seperti Bulan,
ada secara independen dari
people and their thinking but, unlike the Moon, is orang dan pemikiran mereka tetapi,
tidak seperti Bulan, adalah
nonphysical. nonfisik.
Abstract objects are also, according to Platonists, Abstrak objek juga, menurut Platonis,
unchanging and entirely noncausal. tidak berubah dan sama sekali tanpa sebab. Because
abstract objects Karena benda-benda abstrak

Page 4 Page 4
are not extended in space and not made of physical matter, tidak diperpanjang dalam
ruang dan bukan terbuat dari materi fisik,
it follows that they cannot enter into cause-and-effect maka mereka tidak dapat masuk ke
dalam sebab-akibat
relationships with other objects. hubungan dengan objek lain.
Platonists also claim that mathematical theorems provide Platonis juga mengklaim bahwa
teorema matematika memberikan
true descriptions of such objects. benar deskripsi objek tersebut. What does this claim
Apa klaim ini
amount to? sebesar? Consider the positive integers (1, 2, 3,…). Perhatikan bilangan bulat
positif (1, 2, 3, ...).
According to Platonists, the theory of arithmetic says what Menurut Platonis, teori
aritmatika mengatakan apa
this sequence of abstract objects is like. ini urutan benda abstrak seperti. Over the years,
Selama bertahun-tahun,
mathematicians have discovered all sorts of interesting facts ahli matematika telah
menemukan segala macam fakta menarik
about this sequence. tentang urutan ini. For instance, Euclid proved more than Misalnya,
terbukti lebih dari Euclid
2,000 years ago that there are infinitely many prime 2.000 tahun yang lalu bahwa ada
banyak tak terhingga perdana
numbers among the positive integers. angka antara bilangan bulat positif. Thus, according
to Jadi, menurut
Platonists, the sequence of positive integers is an object of Platonis, urutan bilangan bulat
positif adalah objek
study, just like the solar system is an object of study for studi, seperti tata surya adalah
obyek studi bagi
astronomers. astronom.
Now, so far, only one kind of mathematical object has been Sekarang, sejauh ini, hanya
satu jenis objek matematika telah
discussed, namely, numbers. dibahas, yaitu angka. But there are many different Tapi ada
banyak yang berbeda
kinds of mathematical objects—functions, sets, vectors, jenis objek-fungsi matematika,
set, vektor,
circles, and so on—and for Platonists these are all abstract lingkaran, dan seterusnya-dan
untuk Platonis ini semua abstrak
objects. objek. Moreover, Platonists also believe that there are Selain itu, Platonis juga
percaya bahwa ada
such things as set-theoretic hierarchies and that set theory hal-hal seperti-teori hierarki
menetapkan dan bahwa teori himpunan
describes these structures. menggambarkan struktur ini. And so on for all the various Dan
seterusnya untuk semua berbagai
branches of mathematics. cabang matematika. In general, according to Secara umum,
menurut
Platonists, mathematics is the study of the nature of various Platonis, matematika adalah
studi tentang berbagai sifat
mathematical structures, which are abstract in nature. struktur matematis, yang abstrak di
alam.
Platonism has been around for over two millennia, and over Platonisme telah sekitar
selama lebih dari dua milenium, dan lebih dari
the years it has been one of the most popular views among tahun itu telah menjadi salah
satu yang paling populer di kalangan dilihat
philosophers of mathematics. filsuf matematika. Yet, for most of the history of Namun,
bagi sebagian besar sejarah
philosophy, mathematical Platonism was stagnant. filsafat, matematik Platonisme
stagnan. In the Dalam
late 19th century Gottlob Frege of Germany, who founded akhir abad ke-19 Gottlob
Frege Jerman, yang mendirikan
modern mathematical logic, developed what is widely logika matematika modern,
mengembangkan apa yang secara luas
thought to be the most powerful argument in favour of dianggap sebagai argumen yang
paling kuat dalam mendukung
Platonism; but he did not alter the formulation of the view. Platonisme, tetapi ia tidak
mengubah perumusan melihat.
Likewise, in the 20th century Kurt Gödel of Austria and Demikian pula, pada abad ke-20
Kurt Gödel Austria dan
Willard Van Orman Quine of the United States introduced Willard Van Orman Quine
Amerika Serikat diperkenalkan
hypotheses in an attempt to explain how human beings hipotesis dalam upaya untuk
menjelaskan bagaimana manusia
could acquire knowledge of abstract objects—but again, bisa memperoleh pengetahuan
abstrak objek-tetapi sekali lagi,
neither of these thinkers altered the Platonist view itself. pemikir ini tidak mengubah
tampilan Platonis sendiri.
(Gödel's hypothesis was about the nature of human beings, ('s Hipotesis Gödel adalah
tentang sifat manusia,
and Quine's hypothesis was about the nature of empirical dan's hipotesis Quine adalah
tentang sifat empiris
evidence.) bukti.)
Nontraditional versions Versi non-tradisional
During the 1980s and '90s, various Americans developed Selama tahun 1980-an dan 90-
an, Amerika mengembangkan berbagai
three nontraditional versions of mathematical Platonism: tiga nontradisional versi
Platonisme matematika:
one by Penelope Maddy, a second by Mark Balaguer (the satu per Penelope Maddy, yang
kedua oleh Mark Balaguer (yang
author of this article) and Edward Zalta, and a third by penulis artikel ini) dan Edward
Zalta, dan yang ketiga oleh
Michael Resnik and Stewart Shapiro. Michael Resnik dan Stewart Shapiro. All three
versions were Semua tiga versi yang

Page 5 Halaman 5
inspired by concerns over how humans could acquire terinspirasi oleh keprihatinan atas
bagaimana manusia bisa memperoleh
knowledge of abstract objects. pengetahuan tentang benda-benda abstrak.
According to Maddy, mathematics is about abstract objects, Menurut Maddy, matematika
adalah benda-benda abstrak tentang,
and abstract objects are, in some important sense, dan benda-benda abstrak adalah, dalam
arti penting,
nonphysical and nonmental, though they are located in nonfisik dan nonmental, meskipun
mereka berada di
space and time. ruang dan waktu. Maddy developed this idea most fully in Maddy
mengembangkan ide ini yang paling penuh dalam
connection with sets. sehubungan dengan set. For her, a set of physical objects is
Baginya, satu set benda-benda fisik adalah
located right where the physical objects themselves are terletak tepat di mana benda-
benda fisik sendiri
located. terletak. For instance, if there are three eggs in a Misalnya, jika ada tiga telur
dalam
refrigerator, then the set containing those eggs is also in the kulkas, kemudian mengatur
yang mengandung telur juga di
refrigerator. kulkas. This might seem eminently sensible, and one Hal ini mungkin
tampaknya sungguh masuk akal, dan satu
might wonder why Maddy counts as a Platonist at all; that is, mungkin bertanya-tanya
mengapa Maddy dianggap sebagai seorang Platonis sama sekali, yaitu,
one might wonder why a set of eggs counts as a nonphysical satu mungkin bertanya-
tanya mengapa seperangkat telur dianggap sebagai nonfisik
object in Maddy's view. objek dalam tampilan Maddy's. In order to appreciate why
Maddy is Untuk memahami mengapa Maddy adalah
a Platonist (in some nontraditional sense), it is necessary to seorang Platonis (dalam arti
non-tradisional), maka perlu
know something about set theory—most notably, that for tahu sesuatu tentang teori
himpunan-terutama, bahwa untuk
every physical object, or pile of physical objects, there are setiap objek fisik, atau
tumpukan benda-benda fisik, ada
infinitely many sets. banyak tak terhingga set. For instance, if there are three eggs in
Misalnya, jika ada tiga telur dalam
a refrigerator, then corresponding to these eggs there exists kulkas, kemudian sesuai
dengan telur ini terdapat
the set containing the eggs, the set containing that set, the set berisi telur, himpunan yang
berisi set,
set containing that set, and so on. set berisi yang menetapkan, dan sebagainya. Moreover,
there is also a Selain itu, ada juga
set containing two different sets—namely, the set containing mengandung dua set-set
yang berbeda yaitu, set berisi
the eggs and the set containing the set containing the eggs— telur dan set berisi set yang
berisi telur-
and so on without end. dan seterusnya tanpa akhir. Thus, combining the principles of set
Dengan demikian, menggabungkan prinsip-prinsip set
theory (which Maddy wants to preserve) with Maddy's thesis teori (yang Maddy ingin
melestarikan) dengan tesis Maddy's
that sets are spatiotemporally located implies that if there yang menentukan adalah
spatiotemporally terletak menyiratkan bahwa jika ada
are three eggs in a given refrigerator, then there are also tiga telur di lemari es diberikan,
maka ada juga
infinitely many sets in the refrigerator. banyak tak terhingga set di kulkas. Of course there
is Tentu saja ada
only a finite amount of physical stuff in the refrigerator. hanya sejumlah terbatas hal fisik
dalam lemari es.
More specifically, it contains a rather small aggregate of Lebih khusus lagi, mengandung
agregat lebih kecil dari
egg-stuff. telur-barang. Thus, for Maddy the various sets built up out of Jadi, untuk
Maddy berbagai set dibangun dari
this egg-stuff are all distinct from the aggregate itself. ini telur-barang yang semua
berbeda dari agregat itu sendiri. In Di
order to avoid contradicting the principles of set theory, Untuk menghindari bertentangan
dengan prinsip-prinsip teori himpunan,
Maddy has to say that the sets are distinct from the egg- Maddy telah mengatakan bahwa
set yang berbeda dari telur
aggregate, and so even though she wants to maintain that agregat, dan sehingga meskipun
ia ingin mempertahankan bahwa
all these sets are located in the refrigerator, she has to say semua perangkat ini terletak di
lemari es, dia mengatakan
that they are nonphysical in some sense. bahwa mereka nonfisik dalam arti tertentu.
(Again, the reason (Sekali lagi, alasannya
that Maddy altered the Platonist view by giving sets bahwa Maddy mengubah tampilan
Platonis dengan memberikan set
spatiotemporal existence is that she thought it was spatiotemporal keberadaan adalah
bahwa ia pikir itu
necessary in order to explain how anyone could acquire diperlukan untuk menjelaskan
bagaimana orang bisa memperoleh
knowledge of abstract objects. See below Mathematical pengetahuan tentang benda-
benda abstrak. Lihat di bawah Matematika
Platonism: for and against.) Platonisme: bagi dan melawan.)
According to Balaguer and Zalta, on the other hand, the only Menurut Balaguer dan
Zalta, di sisi lain, satu-satunya
versions of Platonism that are tenable are those that versi Platonisme yang dapat
dipertahankan adalah mereka yang
maintain not just the existence of abstract objects but the tidak hanya mempertahankan
keberadaan benda-benda abstrak tapi
existence of as many abstract objects as there can possibly keberadaan sebagai obyek
abstrak sebanyak mungkin bisa ada
be. menjadi. If this is right, then any system of mathematical objects Jika ini benar, maka
setiap sistem objek matematika
that can consistently be conceived of must actually exist. yang secara konsisten dapat
dipahami benar-benar harus ada.
Balaguer called this view “full-blooded Platonism,” and he Balaguer disebut pandangan
"berdarah-Platonisme penuh," dan ia
argued that it is only by endorsing this view that Platonists berpendapat bahwa hanya
dengan mendukung pandangan ini bahwa Platonis

Page 6 Page 6
can explain how humans could acquire knowledge of bisa menjelaskan bagaimana
manusia dapat memperoleh pengetahuan
abstract objects. benda abstrak.
Finally, the nontraditional version of Platonism developed by Akhirnya, versi non-
tradisional Platonisme yang dikembangkan oleh
Resnik and Shapiro is known as structuralism. Resnik dan Shapiro dikenal sebagai
strukturalisme. The essential Yang penting
ideas here are that the real objects of study in mathematics ide di sini adalah bahwa yang
nyata objek penelitian dalam matematika
are structures, or patterns—things such as infinite series, adalah struktur, atau pola-hal-
hal seperti deret tak hingga,
geometric spaces, and set-theoretic hierarchies—and that geometrik ruang, dan set-teori
hierarki-dan bahwa
individual mathematical objects (such as the number 4) are objek matematika individu
(seperti nomor 4) adalah
not really objects at all in the ordinary sense of the term. objek tidak benar-benar sama
sekali dalam arti istilah biasa.
Rather, they are simply positions in structures, or patterns. Sebaliknya, mereka hanya
posisi dalam struktur, atau pola.
This idea can be clarified by thinking first about Ide ini dapat dijelaskan dengan berpikir
pertama tentang
nonmathematical patterns. nonmathematical pola.
Consider a baseball defense, which can be thought of as a Pertimbangkan pertahanan
bisbol, yang dapat dianggap sebagai
certain kind of pattern. jenis pola tertentu. There is a left fielder, a right Ada Fielder kiri,
kanan
fielder, a shortstop, a pitcher, and so on. Fielder, shortstop sebuah, pitcher, dan
seterusnya. These are all Ini semua adalah
positions in the overall pattern, or structure, and they are posisi dalam pola keseluruhan,
atau struktur, dan mereka
all associated with certain regions on a baseball field. semua yang berhubungan dengan
daerah-daerah tertentu di lapangan bisbol. Now, Sekarang,
when a specific team takes the field, real players occupy ketika sebuah tim khusus
mengambil lapangan, pemain menempati
these positions. posisi tersebut. For instance, during the early 1900s Honus Sebagai
contoh, selama awal 1900-an Honus
Wagner usually occupied the shortstop position for the Wagner biasanya menduduki
posisi shortstop untuk
Pittsburgh Pirates. Pittsburgh Pirates. He was a specific object, with Dia adalah objek
tertentu, dengan
spatiotemporal location. spatiotemporal lokasi. However, one can also think about
Namun, satu juga bisa berpikir tentang
the shortstop position itself. posisi shortstop sendiri. It is not an object in the Ini bukan
obyek dalam
ordinary sense of the term; rather, it is a role that can be arti dari istilah biasa, melainkan
merupakan peran yang dapat
filled by different people. diisi oleh orang yang berbeda. According to Resnik and
Shapiro, Menurut Resnik dan Shapiro,
similar things can be said about mathematical structures. hal yang sama dapat dikatakan
tentang struktur matematika.
They are something like patterns, made up of positions that Mereka adalah sesuatu seperti
pola, terdiri dari posisi yang
can be filled by objects. dapat diisi dengan objek. The number 4, for instance, is just
Nomor 4, misalnya, hanya
the fourth position in the positive integer pattern. posisi keempat dalam pola bilangan
bulat positif. Different Berbeda
objects can be put into this position, but the number itself is benda-benda dapat
dimasukkan ke dalam posisi ini, namun jumlah itu sendiri
not an object at all; it is merely a position. bukan objek sama sekali, melainkan hanya
posisi. Structuralists Strukturalis
sometimes express this idea by saying that numbers have no kadang-kadang
mengekspresikan gagasan ini dengan mengatakan bahwa nomor tidak memiliki
internal properties or that their only properties are those sifat internal atau bahwa hanya
sifat mereka adalah mereka
they have because of the relations they bear to other karena mereka memiliki hubungan
mereka tahan lainnya
numbers in the structure; eg, 4 has the property of being angka dalam struktur, misalnya,
4 memiliki sifat yang
between 3 and 5. antara 3 dan 5. This is analogous to saying that the Hal ini sejalan
dengan mengatakan bahwa
shortstop position does not have internal properties in the shortstop posisi tidak memiliki
sifat-sifat internal di
way that actual shortstops do; for instance, it does not have cara yang shortstops aktual
lakukan, misalnya, tidak memiliki
a height or a weight or a nationality. tinggi atau berat badan atau kewarganegaraan. The
only properties Satu-satunya sifat
that it has are structural, such as the property of being yang telah yang struktural, seperti
milik yang
located in or near the infield between the third baseman terletak di atau dekat tengah
lapangan antara baseman ketiga
and the second baseman. dan baseman kedua.
Mathematical anti-Platonism Matematika anti-Platonisme
Many philosophers cannot bring themselves to believe in Banyak filsuf tidak dapat
membawa diri mereka untuk percaya
abstract objects. benda abstrak. However, there are not many tenable Namun, tidak
banyak dipertahankan
alternatives to mathematical Platonism. alternatif untuk Platonisme matematika. One
option is to Salah satu pilihan adalah
maintain that there do exist such things as numbers and sets mempertahankan bahwa ada
memang ada hal-hal seperti angka dan set

Page 7 Page 7
(and that mathematical theorems provide true descriptions (Dan bahwa teorema
matematika memberikan deskripsi yang benar
of these things) while denying that these things are abstract hal-hal) sementara
menyangkal bahwa hal-hal yang abstrak
objects. objek. Views of this kind can be called realistic versions of Pandangan seperti ini
dapat disebut versi realistis
anti-Platonism. anti-Platonisme. Like Platonism, they are still versions of Seperti
Platonisme, mereka masih versi
mathematical realism because they maintain that matematika realisme karena mereka
mempertahankan bahwa
mathematical theorems provide true descriptions of some teorema matematika
memberikan gambaran yang benar dari beberapa
part of the world. bagian dari dunia.
In contrast to realistic versions of anti-Platonism, there is Berbeda dengan versi realistis
anti-Platonisme, ada
also an antirealist view known as mathematical nominalism. pandangan antirealist juga
dikenal sebagai nominalisme matematika.
This view rejects the belief in the existence of numbers, Pandangan ini menolak
keyakinan keberadaan nomor,
sets, and so on and also rejects the belief that mathematical set, dan seterusnya, dan juga
menolak keyakinan bahwa matematika
theorems provide true descriptions of some part of the teorema memberikan gambaran
yang benar dari beberapa bagian dari
world. dunia.
The two main alternatives to Platonism, then, are realistic Dua alternatif utama untuk
Platonisme, kemudian, adalah realistis
anti-Platonism and nominalism. anti-Platonisme dan nominalisme. These alternatives are
Alternatif-alternatif ini adalah
described more fully in the following two sections. dijelaskan lebih lengkap dalam bagian
berikut dua.
Realistic anti-Platonism Anti-Platonisme Realistis
There are two different versions of realistic anti-Platonism, Ada dua versi yang berbeda
dari realistis anti-Platonisme,
namely, psychologism and physicalism. yaitu, psychologism dan fisikalisme.
Psychologism is the Psychologism adalah
view that mathematical theorems are about concrete pandangan bahwa matematika
teorema tentang beton
mental objects of some sort. mental objek dari beberapa macam. In this view, numbers
and Dalam pandangan ini, nomor dan
circles and so on do exist, but they do not exist lingkaran dan sebagainya memang ada,
tetapi mereka tidak ada
independently of people; instead, they are concrete mental mandiri orang, melainkan
mereka beton mental
objects—in particular, ideas in people's heads. benda-khususnya, ide-ide di kepala orang
itu. As will Seperti yang akan
become clearer below (in the section Mathematical menjadi lebih jelas di bawah ini (di
bagian Matematika
Platonism: for and against), psychologism has serious Platonisme: bagi dan melawan),
psychologism telah serius
problems and is no longer endorsed by many philosophers; masalah dan tidak lagi
didukung oleh banyak filsuf;
nonetheless, it was popular during the late 19th and early Meskipun demikian, itu populer
pada akhir 19 dan awal
20th centuries, the most notable proponents being the 20 berabad-abad, terkenal sebagai
pendukung paling
German philosopher Edmund Husserl and the Dutch Jerman filsuf Edmund Husserl dan
Belanda
mathematicians LEJ Brouwer and Arend Heyting. matematikawan LEJ Brouwer dan
Arend Heyting.
Physicalism, on the other hand, is the view that Fisikalisme, di sisi lain, adalah
pandangan bahwa
mathematics is about concrete physical objects of some matematika adalah obyek fisik
yang konkret tentang beberapa
sort. semacam. Advocates of this view agree with Platonists that there Para pendukung
pandangan ini setuju dengan Platonis bahwa ada
exist such things as numbers and sets, and, unlike adherents ada hal-hal seperti angka dan
set, dan, tidak seperti pengikut
of psychologism, they also agree that these things exist dari psychologism, mereka juga
setuju bahwa hal-hal ada
independently of people and their thoughts. mandiri orang dan pikiran mereka.
Physicalists Fisikalis
differ from Platonists, however, in holding that mathematics berbeda dari Platonis,
Namun, dalam memegang bahwa matematika
is about ordinary physical objects. adalah benda fisik biasa tentang. There are a few
different Ada beberapa yang berbeda
versions of this view. versi pandangan ini. For example, one might hold that Misalnya,
orang mungkin berpendapat bahwa
geometric objects, such as circles, are regions of actual benda geometris, seperti
lingkaran, adalah daerah yang sebenarnya
physical space. fisik ruang. Similarly, sets might be claimed to be piles Demikian pula,
set mungkin diklaim sebagai tumpukan
of actual physical objects—thus, a set of eggs would be aktual fisik benda-demikian, satu
set telur akan
nothing more than the aggregate of physical matter that hal tak lebih dari agregat fisik
yang
makes up the eggs. membentuk telur. Moving on to numbers, one strategy is to Pindah ke
angka, salah satu strategi adalah
take them to be physical properties of some sort—for membawa mereka untuk menjadi
sifat fisik untuk beberapa jenis-
example, properties of piles of physical objects, so that, for Misalnya, sifat tumpukan
benda-benda fisik, sehingga, untuk

Page 8 Page 8
instance, the number 3 might be a property of a pile of Misalnya, angka 3 mungkin milik
tumpukan
three eggs. tiga telur. It should be noted here that many people have Perlu dicatat di sini
bahwa orang banyak
endorsed a Platonistic view of properties. mendukung pandangan Platonistic properti. In
particular, Secara khusus,
Plato thought that, in addition to all the red things he Plato berpikir bahwa, di samping
semua hal merah dia
observed in the world, there exists an independent property diamati di dunia, terdapat
sebuah properti independen
of redness and that this property was an abstract object. dari kemerahan dan bahwa harta
ini adalah obyek abstrak.
Aristotle, on the other hand, thought that properties exist in Aristoteles, di sisi lain,
berpikir bahwa properti ada di
the physical world; thus, in his view, redness exists in dunia fisik; demikian, dalam
pandangannya, kemerahan ada di
particular objects, such as red houses and red apples, rather objek tertentu, seperti rumah
merah dan apel merah, bukan
than as an abstract object outside of space and time. daripada sebagai objek abstrak di
luar ruang dan waktu. So in Jadi dalam
order to motivate a physicalistic view of mathematics by Untuk memotivasi pandangan
physicalistic matematika oleh
claiming that numbers are properties, one would also have mengklaim bahwa nomor
adalah properti, orang juga akan
to argue for an Aristotelian, or physicalistic, view of berdebat untuk Aristotelian, atau
physicalistic, pandangan
properties. properti. One person who has developed a view of this Satu orang yang telah
mengembangkan pandangan ini
sort since Aristotle is the Australian philosopher David semacam sejak Aristoteles adalah
filsuf Australia David
Armstrong. Armstrong.
Another strategy for interpreting talk of numbers to be Strategi lain untuk menafsirkan
bicara harus nomor
about the physical world is to interpret it as talk about tentang dunia fisik untuk
menafsirkannya sebagai berbicara tentang
actual piles of physical objects rather than properties of sebenarnya tumpukan benda-
benda fisik daripada sifat
such piles. seperti tumpukan. For instance, one might maintain that the Misalnya, orang
mungkin berpendapat bahwa
sentence “2 + 3 = 5” is not really about specific entities (the kalimat "2 + 3 = 5" adalah
tidak benar-benar tentang entitas tertentu (yang
numbers 2, 3, and 5); rather, it says that whenever a pile of nomor 2, 3, dan 5), melainkan
mengatakan bahwa setiap kali tumpukan
two objects is pushed together with a pile of three objects, dua benda didorong bersama-
sama dengan tumpukan tiga objek,
the result is a pile of five objects. hasilnya adalah tumpukan lima objek. A view of this
sort was Pemandangan semacam ini
developed by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill in the dikembangkan oleh filsuf
Inggris John Stuart Mill dalam
19th century. Abad 19.
Nominalism Nominalisme
Nominalism is the view that mathematical objects such as Nominalisme adalah
pandangan bahwa objek-objek matematika seperti
numbers and sets and circles do not really exist. angka dan set dan lingkaran tidak benar-
benar ada. Nominalists Nominalists
do admit that there are such things as piles of three eggs tidak mengakui bahwa ada hal-
hal seperti tumpukan tiga telur
and ideas of the number 3 in people's heads, but they do not dan ide nomor 3 di itu kepala
orang, tetapi mereka tidak
think that any of these things is the number 3. berpikir bahwa hal-hal itu adalah nomor 3.
Of course, Tentu saja,
when nominalists deny that the number 3 is a physical or ketika nominalists menyangkal
bahwa jumlah 3 adalah fisik atau
mental object, they are in agreement with Platonists. objek mental, mereka berada dalam
perjanjian dengan Platonis. They Mereka
admit that if there were any such thing as the number 3, mengakui bahwa jika ada hal
seperti nomor 3,
then it would be an abstract object; but, unlike maka akan menjadi objek abstrak, tetapi,
tidak seperti
mathematical Platonists, they do not believe in abstract Platonis matematika, mereka
tidak percaya abstrak
objects, and so they do not believe in numbers. obyek, dan sehingga mereka tidak
percaya pada angka. There are Ada
three different versions of mathematical nominalism: tiga versi yang berbeda
nominalisme matematika:
paraphrase nominalism, fictionalism, and what can be called parafrase nominalisme,
fictionalism, dan apa yang bisa disebut
neo-Meinongianism. neo-Meinongianism.
The paraphrase nominalist view can be elucidated by Pandangan nominalis parafrase
dapat ditetapkan oleh
returning to the sentence “4 is even.” Paraphrase kembali ke kalimat "4 bahkan
Parafrase."
nominalists agree with Platonists that if this sentence is nominalists setuju dengan
Platonis bahwa jika kalimat ini
interpreted at face value—ie, as saying that the object 4 ditafsirkan wajah yaitu nilai-,
yang mengatakan bahwa objek 4
has the property of being even—then it makes a memiliki sifat yang bahkan-saat itu
membuat
straightforward claim about an abstract object. langsung klaim tentang sebuah objek
abstrak. However, Namun,

Page 9 Page 9
paraphrase nominalists do not think that ordinary nominalists parafrase tidak berpikir
bahwa biasa
mathematical sentences such as “4 is even” should be kalimat matematika seperti "4
bahkan" harus
interpreted at face value; they think that what these diinterpretasikan pada nilai
nominalnya, mereka berpikir bahwa apa ini
sentences really say is different from what they seem to say kalimat benar-benar
mengatakan berbeda dari apa yang mereka katakan tampaknya
on the surface. di permukaan. More specifically, paraphrase nominalists Lebih khusus
lagi, parafrase nominalists
think that these sentences do not make straightforward berpikir bahwa kalimat ini tidak
membuat langsung
claims about objects. klaim tentang objek. There are several different versions of Ada
beberapa versi yang berbeda
paraphrase nominalism, of which the best known is “if- parafrase nominalisme, yang
paling dikenal adalah "jika-
thenism,” or deductivism. thenism, "atau deductivism. According to this view, the
Menurut pandangan ini, yang
sentence “4 is even” can be paraphrased by the sentence “If kalimat "4 bahkan" dapat
mengulangi dengan kalimat "Jika
there were such things as numbers, then 4 would be even.” ada hal-hal seperti nomor,
kemudian 4 akan lebih. "
In this view, even if there are no such things as numbers, Dalam pandangan ini, bahkan
jika tidak ada hal-hal seperti nomor,
the sentence “4 is even” is still true. kalimat "4 bahkan" masih benar. For, of course, even
if Karena, tentu saja, bahkan jika
there is no such thing as the number 4, it is still true that, if tidak ada yang seperti nomor
4, masih benar bahwa, jika
there were such a thing, it would be even. ada hal seperti itu, itu akan lebih. Deductivism
has Deductivism memiliki
roots in the thought of David Hilbert, a brilliant German akar dalam pemikiran David
Hilbert, sebuah brilian Jerman
mathematician from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, matematikawan dari 19 awal
dan akhir abad 20,
but it was developed more fully by the American tapi dikembangkan lebih sepenuhnya
oleh American
philosophers Hilary Putnam and Geoffrey Hellman. filsuf Hilary Putnam dan Geoffrey
Hellman. Other Lain
versions of paraphrase nominalism have been developed by versi nominalisme parafrase
telah dikembangkan oleh
the American philosophers Haskell Curry and Charles para filsuf Amerika Haskell Curry
dan Charles
Chihara. Chihara.
Mathematical fictionalists agree with paraphrase nominalists Matematika fictionalists
setuju dengan nominalists parafrase
that there are no such things as abstract objects and, hence, bahwa tidak ada hal-hal
seperti objek abstrak dan, karenanya,
no such things as numbers. tidak ada hal-hal seperti nomor. They think that paraphrase
Mereka berpikir bahwa parafrase
nominalists are mistaken, however, in their claims about nominalists keliru, Namun,
dalam klaim mereka tentang
what mathematical sentences such as “4 is even” really apa kalimat matematika seperti "4
bahkan" benar-benar
mean. berarti. Fictionalists think that Platonists are right that these Fictionalists berpikir
bahwa Platonis benar bahwa
sentences should be read at face value; they think that “4 is kalimat harus dibaca pada
nilai nominalnya, mereka berpikir bahwa "4 adalah
even” should be taken as saying just what it seems to say— bahkan "harus diambil
sebagai hanya mengatakan apa yang tampaknya mengatakan-
namely, that the number 4 has the property of being even. yaitu, bahwa nomor 4 memiliki
properti menjadi bahkan.
Moreover, fictionalists also agree with Platonists that if Selain itu, juga setuju dengan
fictionalists Platonis bahwa jika
there really were such a thing as the number 4, then it benar-benar ada hal-hal seperti
nomor 4, maka
would be an abstract object. akan menjadi objek abstrak. But, again, fictionalists do not
Tapi, sekali lagi, tidak fictionalists
believe that there is such a thing as the number 4, and so percaya bahwa ada hal seperti
itu sebagai nomor 4, dan begitu
they maintain that sentences like “4 is even” are not mereka mempertahankan bahwa
kalimat-kalimat seperti "4 bahkan" tidak
literally true. secara harfiah benar. Fictionalists think that sentences such as “4 is
Fictionalists berpikir bahwa kalimat-kalimat seperti "4 adalah
even” are analogous in a certain way to sentences like bahkan "adalah sejalan dengan
cara tertentu untuk kalimat seperti
“Santa Claus lives at the North Pole.” They are not literally "Santa Claus tinggal di Kutub
Utara secara harfiah." Mereka tidak
true descriptions of the world, but they are true in a certain benar deskripsi dari dunia,
tetapi mereka adalah benar dalam tertentu
well-known story. cerita terkenal. Thus, according to fictionalism, Jadi, menurut
fictionalism,
arithmetic is something like a story, and it involves a sort of aritmatika adalah sesuatu
seperti cerita, dan melibatkan semacam
fiction, or pretense, to the effect that there are such things fiksi, atau kepura-puraan, yang
menyatakan bahwa ada hal-hal seperti
as numbers. sebagai nomor. Given this pretense, the theory says what Dengan berpura-
pura ini, teori mengatakan apa
numbers are like, or what they would be like if they existed. nomor seperti, atau apa yang
mereka akan seperti jika mereka ada.
Fictionalists then argue that it is not a bad thing that Fictionalists kemudian berpendapat
bahwa itu adalah bukan hal yang buruk yang
mathematical sentences are not literally true. kalimat matematika tidak secara harfiah
benar. Mathematics Matematika
is not supposed to be literally true, say the fictionalists, and tidak seharusnya secara
harfiah benar, mengatakan fictionalists, dan
they have a long explanation of why mathematics is mereka memiliki penjelasan panjang
matematika mengapa
pragmatically useful and intellectually interesting despite pragmatis berguna dan menarik
secara intelektual meskipun

Page 10 Page 10
the fact that it is not literally true. fakta bahwa itu tidak benar secara harfiah. Fictionalism
was first Fictionalism pertama kali
proposed by the American philosopher Hartry Field. diusulkan oleh filsuf Amerika Hartry
Field. It was Itu
then developed in a somewhat different way by Balaguer, kemudian dikembangkan
dalam cara yang agak berbeda dengan Balaguer,
the American philosopher Gideon Rosen, and the Canadian filsuf Amerika Gideon Rosen,
dan Kanada
philosopher Stephen Yablo. filsuf Stephen Yablo.
The last version of nominalism is neo-Meinongianism, which Versi terakhir dari
nominalisme adalah neo-Meinongianism, yang
derives from Alexius Meinong, a late-19th century Austrian berasal dari Alexius
Meinong, sebuah akhir abad ke-19 Austria
philosopher. filsuf. Meinong endorsed a view that was supposed to Meinong mendukung
pandangan bahwa seharusnya
be distinct from Platonism, but most philosophers now agree dapat dibedakan dari
Platonisme, tapi sekarang kebanyakan filsuf setuju
that it is in fact equivalent to Platonism. bahwa sebenarnya setara dengan Platonisme. In
particular, Secara khusus,
Meinong held that there are such things as abstract objects Meinong berpendapat bahwa
ada hal-hal seperti objek abstrak
but that these things do not have full-blown existence. tetapi bahwa hal-hal tidak
memiliki keberadaan penuh-sesak nafas.
Philosophers have responded to Meinong's claims by making Filsuf telah merespon itu
dengan membuat klaim Meinong
a pair of related points. sepasang poin terkait. First, since Meinong thought there
Pertama, karena Meinong pikir ada
are such things as numbers, and since he thought that these hal-hal seperti nomor, dan
karena ia berpikir bahwa ini
things are nonspatiotemporal, it follows that he was a hal nonspatiotemporal, maka ia
adalah
Platonist. Platonis. Second, Meinong simply used the word exist in a Kedua, hanya
Meinong menggunakan kata yang ada dalam
nonstandard way; according to ordinary English, anything cara yang tidak standar;
menurut bahasa Inggris biasa, apa saja
that is exists, and so it is contradictory to say that numbers yang ada, dan sehingga
bertentangan dengan mengatakan bahwa angka
are but do not exist. ini tetapi tidak ada.
Advocates of neo-Meinongianism agree with Platonists and Para pendukung neo-
Meinongianism setuju dengan Platonis dan
fictionalists that the sentence “4 is even” should be fictionalists bahwa kalimat "4
bahkan" harus
interpreted at face value, as making (or purporting to make) ditafsirkan pada nilai
nominal, seperti membuat (atau yang mengaku membuat)
a straightforward claim about a certain object—namely, the klaim langsung tentang objek
tertentu-yaitu,
number 4. nomor 4. Moreover, they also agree that if there were any Selain itu, mereka
juga setuju bahwa apakah ada
such thing as the number 4, then it would be an abstract hal seperti itu sebagai nomor 4,
maka akan menjadi abstrak
object. obyek. Finally, they agree with fictionalists that there are Akhirnya, mereka setuju
dengan fictionalists bahwa ada
no such things as abstract objects. tidak ada hal-hal seperti benda abstrak. In spite of this,
neo- Meskipun demikian, neo-
Meinongians claim that “4 is even” is literally true, for they Meinongians mengklaim
bahwa "4 bahkan" secara harfiah benar, karena mereka
maintain that a sentence of the form “The object O has the mempertahankan bahwa
kalimat dalam bentuk "objek O memiliki
property P ” can be literally true, even if there is no such properti P "dapat secara harfiah
benar, bahkan jika tidak ada seperti
thing as the object O . hal sebagai objek O. Thus, neo-Meinongianism consists in Dengan
demikian, neo-Meinongianism terdiri
the following (seemingly awkward) trio of claims: (1) trio (tampaknya canggung) klaim
berikut: (1)
mathematical sentences should be read at face value, as kalimat matematika harus dibaca
pada nilai nominal, seperti
purporting to make claims about mathematical objects such mengaku untuk melakukan
klaim tentang obyek-obyek matematika seperti
as numbers; (2) there are no such things as mathematical sebagai nomor; (2) tidak ada
hal-hal seperti matematika
objects; and yet (3) mathematical sentences are still obyek, dan belum (3) kalimat
matematika masih
literally true. secara harfiah benar. Neo-Meinongianism, in the form described Neo-
Meinongianism, dalam bentuk yang dijelaskan
here, was first introduced by the New Zealand philosopher di sini, pertama kali
diperkenalkan oleh filsuf Selandia Baru
Richard Sylvan, but related views were held much earlier by Richard Sylvan, tapi
pandangan terkait diselenggarakan lebih awal oleh
the German philosophers Rudolf Carnap and Carl Gustav filsuf Jerman Rudolf Carnap
dan Carl Gustav
Hempel and the British philosopher Sir Alfred Ayer. Hempel dan filsuf Inggris Sir Alfred
Ayer. Views Tampilan
along these lines have been endorsed by Graham Priest of sepanjang garis-garis ini telah
didukung oleh Graham Pendeta
England, Jody Azzouni of the United States, and Otavio Inggris, Jody Azzouni Amerika
Serikat, dan Otavio
Bueno of Brazil. Bueno Brazil.
In sum, then, there are essentially five alternatives to Singkatnya, kemudian, ada lima
alternatif untuk dasarnya
Platonism. Platonisme. If one does not want to claim that mathematics is Jika seseorang
tidak ingin mengklaim bahwa matematika adalah
about nonphysical, nonmental, nonspatiotemporal objects, tentang nonfisik, nonmental,
nonspatiotemporal objek,
then one must to claim either (1) that mathematics is about maka kita harus mengklaim
baik (1) bahwa matematika adalah
concrete mental objects in people's heads (psychologism); or beton's mental objek dalam
kepala orang (psychologism); atau

Page 11 Page 11
(2) that it is about concrete physical objects (physicalism); (2) bahwa benda fisik yang
konkret tentang (fisikalisme);
or (3) that, contrary to first appearances, mathematical atau (3) bahwa, bertentangan
dengan penampilan pertama, matematika
sentences do not make claims about objects at all kalimat tidak membuat klaim tentang
objek sama sekali
(paraphrase nominalism); or (4) that, while mathematics (Nominalisme parafrase), atau
(4) bahwa, sementara matematika
does purport to be about abstract objects, there are in fact tidak dimaksudkan untuk
menjadi tentang obyek abstrak, ada sebenarnya
no such things, and so mathematics is not literally true tidak ada hal-hal seperti itu, dan
matematika adalah tidak benar secara harfiah
(fictionalism); or (5) that mathematical sentences purport to (Fictionalism), atau (5) yang
dimaksudkan untuk kalimat matematika
be about abstract objects, and there are no such things as menjadi tentang obyek abstrak,
dan tidak ada hal-hal seperti
abstract objects, and yet these sentences are still literally benda-benda abstrak, namun
kalimat ini masih harfiah
true (neo-Meinongianism). sejati (neo-Meinongianism).
Logicism, intuitionism, and formalism Logicism, intuisionisme, dan formalisme
During the first half of the 20th century, the philosophy of Selama paruh pertama abad
ke-20, filsafat
mathematics was dominated by three views: logicism, matematika didominasi oleh tiga
kali dilihat: logicism,
intuitionism, and formalism. intuisionisme, dan formalisme. Given this, it might seem
odd Mengingat ini, mungkin terasa aneh
that none of these views has been mentioned yet. bahwa tidak ada pandangan-pandangan
ini telah disebutkan belum. The Itu
reason is that (with the exception of certain varieties of Alasannya adalah bahwa (kecuali
varietas tertentu
formalism) these views are not views of the kind discussed formalisme) pandangan ini
tidak dilihat dari jenis yang dibahas
above. di atas. The views discussed above concern what the Pandangan dibahas di atas
keprihatinan apa
sentences of mathematics are really saying and what they kalimat matematika benar-
benar berkata dan apa yang mereka
are really about. benar-benar tentang. But logicism and intuitionism are not views Tapi
logicism dan intuisionisme tidak dilihat
of this kind at all, and insofar as certain versions of semacam ini sama sekali, dan sejauh
versi tertentu
formalism are views of this kind, they are versions of the formalisme adalah pandangan
semacam ini, mereka adalah versi
views described above. pandangan yang dijelaskan di atas. How then should logicism,
Bagaimana kemudian harus logicism,
intuitionism, and formalism be characterized? intuisionisme, dan formalisme akan
ditandai? In order to Agar
understand these views, it is important to understand the memahami pandangan ini,
adalah penting untuk memahami
intellectual climate in which they were developed. iklim intelektual di mana mereka
dikembangkan. During Selama
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mathematicians and awal akhir abad 20 dan 19,
ahli matematika dan
philosophers of mathematics became preoccupied with the filsuf matematika menjadi
sibuk dengan
idea of securing a firm foundation of mathematics. gagasan dasar yang kuat
mengamankan matematika. That is, Artinya,
they wanted to show that mathematics, as ordinarily mereka ingin menunjukkan bahwa
matematika, seperti biasa
practiced, was reliable or trustworthy or certain. dipraktekkan, itu dapat diandalkan atau
dipercaya atau tertentu. It was in Di
connection with this project that logicism, intuitionism, and sehubungan dengan proyek
ini yang logicism, intuisionisme, dan
formalism were developed. formalisme dikembangkan.
The desire to secure a foundation for mathematics was Keinginan untuk mengamankan
landasan bagi matematika
brought on in large part by the British philosopher Bertrand disebabkan sebagian besar
oleh filsuf Inggris Bertrand
Russell's discovery in 1901 that naive set theory contained a Russell penemuan pada
tahun 1901 bahwa teori himpunan naif berisi
contradiction. kontradiksi. It had been naively thought that for every Sudah naif berpikir
bahwa untuk setiap
concept, there exists a set of things that fall under that konsep, di sana ada seperangkat
hal-hal yang jatuh di bawah
concept; for instance, corresponding to the concept “egg” is konsep, misalnya, sesuai
dengan konsep "telur" adalah
the set of all the eggs in the world. himpunan semua telur di dunia. Even concepts such as
Bahkan konsep-konsep seperti
“mermaid” are associated with a set—namely, the empty "Putri duyung" berhubungan
dengan set yaitu kosong
set. ditetapkan. Russell noticed, however, that there is no set Russell melihat,
bagaimanapun, bahwa tidak ada diatur
corresponding to the concept “not a member of itself.” For sesuai dengan konsep "bukan
anggota itu sendiri Untuk."
suppose that there were such a set—ie, a set of all the sets beranggapan bahwa memang
ada satu set-yaitu, satu set semua set
that are not members of themselves. yang bukan anggota sendiri. Call this set S . Call set
S. Is S a Apakah sebuah S
member of itself? anggota itu sendiri? If it is, then it is not (because all the sets Jika ya,
maka tidak (karena semua set
in S are not members of themselves); and if S is not a di S bukan anggota sendiri); dan
jika S adalah bukan
 Page 12 Page 12
member of itself, then it is (because all the sets not in S are anggota itu sendiri, maka
(karena tidak semua set di S
members of themselves). anggota sendiri). Either way, a contradiction Either way,
kontradiksi
follows. berikut. Thus, there is no such set as S . Jadi, tidak ada diatur seperti S.
Logicism is the view that mathematical truths are ultimately Logicism adalah pandangan
bahwa kebenaran matematika akhirnya
logical truths. kebenaran logis. This idea was introduced by Frege. Ide ini telah
diperkenalkan oleh Frege. He Dia
endorsed logicism in conjunction with Platonism, but mendukung logicism bersama
dengan Platonisme, tapi
logicism is consistent with various anti-Platonist views as logicism konsisten dengan
pandangan anti-Platonis berbagai
well. baik. Logicism was also endorsed at about the same time by Logicism juga
disahkan pada waktu yang sama dengan
Russell and his associate, British philosopher Alfred North Russell dan rekannya, filsuf
Inggris Alfred North
Whitehead. Whitehead. Few people still endorse this view, although Hanya sedikit orang
yang masih mendukung pandangan ini, meskipun
there is a neologicist school, the main proponents of which ada sekolah neologicist, para
pendukung utama yang
are the British philosophers Crispin Wright and Robert Hale. adalah filsuf Inggris Crispin
Wright dan Robert Hale.
Intuitionism is the view that certain kinds of mathematical Intuisionisme adalah melihat
bahwa beberapa jenis matematika
proofs (namely, nonconstructive arguments) are bukti (yaitu, argumen nonconstructive)
adalah
unacceptable. tidak dapat diterima. More fundamentally, intuitionism is best seen Lebih
mendasar, intuisionisme adalah terbaik dilihat
as a theory about mathematical assertion and denial. sebagai teori tentang pernyataan
matematika dan penyangkalan.
Intuitionists embrace the nonstandard view that Intuitionists merangkul tampilan tidak
standar yang
mathematical sentences of the form “The object O has the kalimat matematika dalam
bentuk "objek O memiliki
property P ” really mean that there is a proof that the object properti P "benar-benar
berarti bahwa ada bukti bahwa obyek
O has the property P , and they also embrace the view that O memiliki sifat P, dan
mereka juga menganut pandangan bahwa
mathematical sentences of the form “not- P ” mean that a kalimat matematika bentuk
"tidak-P" berarti bahwa
contradiction can be proven from P . kontradiksi bisa dibuktikan dari P. Because
intuitionists Karena intuitionists
accept both of these views, they reject the traditionally menerima kedua pandangan ini,
mereka menolak tradisional
accepted claim that for any mathematical sentence P , menerima klaim bahwa untuk
setiap kalimat matematika P,
either P or not- P is true; and because of this, they reject baik P atau tidak-P adalah
benar, dan karena itu, mereka menolak
nonconstructive proofs. nonconstructive bukti. Intuitionism was introduced by
Intuisionisme diperkenalkan oleh
LEJ Brouwer, and it was developed by Brouwer's student LEJ Brouwer, dan
dikembangkan oleh itulah siswa Brouwer
Arend Heyting and somewhat later by the British philosopher Arend Heyting dan agak
kemudian oleh filsuf Inggris
Michael Dummett. Michael Dummett. Brouwer and Heyting endorsed Brouwer dan
didukung Heyting
intuitionism in conjunction with psychologism, but Dummett intuisionisme bersama
dengan psychologism, tapi Dummett
did not, and the view is consistent with various tidak, dan melihat konsisten dengan
berbagai
nonpsychologistic views—eg, Platonism and nominalism. nonpsychologistic dilihat-
misalnya, Platonisme dan nominalisme.
There are a few different versions of formalism. Ada beberapa versi yang berbeda dari
formalisme. Perhaps the Mungkin
simplest and most straightforward is metamathematical sederhana dan paling mudah
adalah metamathematical
formalism, which holds that ordinary mathematical formalisme, yang menyatakan bahwa
matematika biasa
sentences that seem to be about things such as numbers are kalimat yang tampaknya
menjadi hal-hal seperti nomor
really about mathematical sentences and theories. benar-benar tentang kalimat
matematika dan teori. In this Dalam hal ini
view, “4 is even” should not be literally taken to mean that melihat, "4 bahkan" tidak
boleh secara harfiah diartikan bahwa
the number 4 is even but that the sentence “4 is even” nomor 4 bahkan tapi kalimat "4
bahkan"
follows from arithmetic axioms. berikut dari aksioma aritmatika. Formalism can be held
Formalisme dapat dilaksanakan
simultaneously with Platonism or various versions of anti- bersamaan dengan Platonisme
atau berbagai versi anti-
Platonism, but it is usually conjoined with nominalism. Platonisme, tetapi biasanya siam
dengan nominalisme.
Metamathematical formalism was developed by Haskell Metamathematical formalisme
dikembangkan oleh Haskell
Curry, who endorsed it in conjunction with a sort of Curry, yang disahkan dalam
hubungannya dengan semacam
nominalism. nominalisme.
Mathematical Platonism: for and against Matematika Platonisme: bagi dan
melawan
Philosophers have come up with numerous arguments for Filsuf telah datang dengan
berbagai argumen untuk

Page 13 Page 13
and against Platonism, but one of the arguments for dan terhadap Platonisme, tapi salah
satu argumen untuk
Platonism stands out above the rest, and one of the Platonisme berdiri di atas sisanya, dan
salah satu
arguments against Platonism also stands out as the best. argumen terhadap Platonisme
juga berdiri sebagai yang terbaik.
These arguments have roots in the writings of Plato, but the Argumen ini memiliki akar
dalam tulisan-tulisan Plato, tetapi
pro-Platonist argument was first clearly formulated by Platonis-argumen pro pertama kali
jelas dirumuskan oleh
Frege, and the locus classicus of the anti-Platonist argument Frege, dan classicus lokus
dari argumen anti-Platonis
is a 1973 paper by the American philosopher Paul adalah kertas 1973 oleh filsuf Amerika
Paul
Benacerraf. Benacerraf.
The Fregean argument for Platonism Argumen Fregean untuk Platonisme
Frege's argument for mathematical Platonism boils down to Frege Argumen untuk bisul
Platonisme matematika ke
the assertion that it is the only tenable view of pernyataan bahwa itu adalah dapat
dipertahankan hanya melihat dari
mathematics. matematika. (The version of the argument presented here (Versi argumen
yang disajikan di sini
includes numerous points that Frege himself never made; termasuk banyak poin yang
Frege sendiri tidak pernah dibuat;
nonetheless, the argument is still Fregean in spirit.) Meskipun demikian, argumen yang
masih Fregean dalam roh.)
From the Platonist point of view, the weakest anti-Platonist Dari sudut pandang Platonis,
yang paling lemah anti-Platonis
views are psychologism, physicalism, and paraphrase dilihat adalah psychologism,
fisikalisme, dan parafrase
nominalism. nominalisme. These three views make controversial claims Ketiga dilihat
membuat klaim kontroversial
about how the language of mathematics should be tentang bagaimana bahasa matematika
harus
interpreted, and Platonists rebut their claims by carefully ditafsirkan, dan Platonis
membantah klaim mereka dengan hati-hati
examining what people actually mean when they make memeriksa apa yang sebenarnya
berarti ketika mereka membuat
mathematical utterances. matematika ucapan-ucapan. The following brings out some of
Berikut ini membawa beberapa dari
the arguments against these three views. argumen terhadap ketiga pandangan.
Psychologism can be thought of as involving two central Psychologism dapat dianggap
sebagai yang melibatkan dua pusat
claims: (1) number-ideas exist inside people's heads and (2) klaim: (1) ke-ide-ide yang
ada di dalam kepala orang dan (2)
ordinary mathematical sentences and theories are best kalimat matematika biasa dan
teori-teori yang terbaik
interpreted as being about these ideas. ditafsirkan sebagai tentang ide-ide. Very few
people Sangat sedikit orang
would reject the first of these theses, but there are several akan menolak pertama tesis ini,
tapi ada beberapa
well-known arguments against accepting the second view. terkenal argumen melawan
menerima pandangan kedua.
Three are presented here. Tiga disajikan di sini. First is the argument that Pertama adalah
argumen bahwa
psychologism makes mathematical truth contingent upon psychologism membuat
kebenaran matematika yang tergantung pada
psychological truth. psikologis kebenaran. Thus, if every human being died, the Jadi, jika
setiap manusia meninggal,
sentence “2 + 2 = 4” would suddenly become untrue. kalimat "2 + 2 = 4" tiba-tiba akan
menjadi tidak benar. This Ini
seems blatantly wrong. tampak terang-terangan salah. The second argument is that
Argumen kedua adalah bahwa
psychologism seems incompatible with standard arithmetical psychologism tampaknya
tidak sesuai dengan standar ilmu hitung
theory, which insists that infinitely many numbers actually teori, yang menegaskan
bahwa banyak tak terhingga jumlah sebenarnya
exist, because clearly there are only a finite number of ada, karena jelas hanya ada jumlah
terbatas
ideas in human heads. ide-ide dalam kepala manusia. This is not to say that humans
cannot Ini bukan untuk mengatakan bahwa manusia tidak dapat
conceive of an infinite set; the point is, rather, that membayangkan set tak terbatas;
intinya adalah, sebaliknya, bahwa
infinitely many actual objects (ie, distinct number-ideas) tak terhingga banyak obyek
sebenarnya (misalnya, nomor-ide yang berbeda)
cannot reside in human heads. tidak dapat berada dalam kepala manusia. Therefore,
numbers cannot Oleh karena itu, nomor tidak bisa
be ideas in human heads. berupa ide dalam kepala manusia. ( See also infinity for
Aristotle's (Lihat juga tak terhingga untuk Aristoteles
distinction between actual infinities and potential perbedaan antara terhingga aktual dan
potensial
infinities.) Third, psychologism suggests that the proper Ketiga terhingga.), psychologism
menunjukkan bahwa tepat
methodology for mathematics is that of empirical metodologi untuk matematika adalah
empiris
psychology. psikologi. If psychologism were true, then the proper way Jika psychologism
itu benar, maka cara yang tepat
to discover whether, say, there is a prime number between untuk mengetahui apakah,
misalnya, ada bilangan prima antara
10,000,000 and 10,000,020 would be to do an empirical 10.000.020 10.000.000 dan akan
melakukan suatu empiris

Page 14 Page 14
study of humans to ascertain whether such a number existed penelitian manusia untuk
memastikan apakah nomor tersebut ada
in someone's head. di kepala seseorang. This, however, is obviously not the Ini,
bagaimanapun, adalah jelas bukan
proper methodology for mathematics; the proper metodologi yang tepat untuk
matematika; yang tepat
methodology involves mathematical proof, not empirical metodologi melibatkan bukti
matematika, tidak empiris
psychology. psikologi.
Physicalism does not fare much better in the eyes of Fisikalisme tarif tidak lebih baik di
mata
Platonists. Platonis. The easiest way to bring out the arguments Cara termudah untuk
mengeluarkan argumen
against physicalistic interpretations of mathematics is to terhadap interpretasi
physicalistic matematika adalah
focus on set theory. fokus pada teori himpunan. According to physicalism, sets are just
Menurut fisikalisme, set hanya
piles of physical objects. tumpukan benda-benda fisik. But, as has been previously
shown, Namun, seperti telah ditunjukkan sebelumnya,
sets cannot be piles of physical stuff—or at any rate, when set tidak dapat tumpukan
barang-fisik atau setidaknya, ketika
mathematicians talk about sets, they are not talking about matematikawan bicara tentang
set, mereka tidak berbicara tentang
physical piles—because it follows from the principles of set fisik tumpukan-karena
mengikuti dari prinsip-prinsip set
theory that for every physical pile, there corresponds teori bahwa untuk setiap tumpukan
fisik, ada sesuai
infinitely many sets. banyak tak terhingga set. A second problem with physicalistic
Masalah kedua dengan physicalistic
views is that they seem incapable of accounting for the dilihat adalah bahwa mereka
tampaknya tidak mampu akuntansi untuk
sheer size of the infinities involved in set theory. semata-mata ukuran yang tak terbatas
yang terlibat dalam teori set. Standard Standar
set theory holds not just that there are infinitely large sets memegang teori himpunan
bukan hanya bahwa ada tak terhingga set besar
but also that there are infinitely many sizes of infinity, that tapi juga bahwa ada banyak
ukuran tak terhingga tak terhingga, bahwa
these sizes get larger and larger with no end, and that there mendapatkan ukuran ini lebih
besar dan lebih besar dengan tidak ada akhir, dan bahwa ada
actually exist sets of all of these different sizes of infinity. benar-benar ada set semua
ukuran yang berbeda tak terhingga.
There is simply no plausible way to take this sort of Tidak ada cukup cara yang masuk
akal untuk mengambil semacam ini
mathematical theorizing about the infinite to be about the matematika teori tentang yang
tak terbatas akan tentang
physical world. fisik dunia. Finally, a third problem with physicalism in Akhirnya,
masalah ketiga dengan fisikalisme di
Platonists' eyes is that it also seems to imply that 'Mata Platonis adalah bahwa hal itu
tampaknya juga menyiratkan bahwa
mathematics is an empirical science, contingent on physical matematika adalah ilmu
empiris, bergantung pada fisik
facts and susceptible to empirical falsification. fakta dan rentan terhadap pemalsuan
empiris. This seems Hal ini tampaknya
to contradict mathematical methodology; mathematics is bertentangan metodologi
matematika; matematika
not empirical (at least not usually), and most mathematical tidak empiris (setidaknya
tidak biasanya), dan sebagian besar matematika
truths (eg, “2 + 3 = 5”) cannot be empirically falsified by kebenaran (misalnya, "2 + 3 =
5") tidak dapat secara empiris dipalsukan oleh
discoveries about the nature of the physical world. penemuan tentang sifat dari dunia
fisik.
Platonists argue against the various versions of paraphrase Platonis membantah terhadap
berbagai versi parafrase
nominalism by pointing out that they are also out of step nominalisme dengan
menunjukkan bahwa mereka juga keluar dari langkah
with actual mathematical discourse. dengan wacana matematika yang sebenarnya. These
views are all Pandangan ini semua
committed to implausible hypotheses about the intentions of berkomitmen untuk
hipotesis tidak masuk akal tentang maksud dari
mathematicians and ordinary folk. matematikawan dan rakyat biasa. For instance,
deductivism Misalnya, deductivism
is committed to the thesis that when people utter sentences berkomitmen untuk tesis
bahwa ketika orang mengucapkan kalimat
such as “4 is even,” what they really mean to say is that, if seperti "4 bahkan," apa
mereka benar-benar bermaksud mengatakan bahwa, jika
there were numbers, then 4 would be even. ada nomor, kemudian 4 akan lebih. However,
there Namun, ada
simply is no evidence for this thesis, and, what is more, it hanya ada bukti untuk tesis ini,
dan, apa yang lebih, itu
seems obviously false. ini jelas palsu. Similar remarks can be made about komentar yang
sama dapat dibuat tentang
the other versions of paraphrase nominalism; all of these yang lain versi nominalisme
parafrase; semua ini
views involve the same idea that mathematical statements dilihat melibatkan gagasan
yang sama bahwa pernyataan matematika
are not used literally. tidak digunakan secara harfiah. There is no evidence, however, that
Tidak ada bukti, bahwa
people use mathematical sentences nonliterally. orang menggunakan kalimat matematika
nonliterally. It seems Rasanya
that the best interpretation of mathematical discourse takes bahwa interpretasi terbaik dari
wacana matematika membutuhkan
it to be about (or at any rate, to purport to be about) hal itu terjadi sekitar (atau
setidaknya, untuk mengaku menjadi sekitar)
certain kinds of objects. jenis objek tertentu. Furthermore, as has already been Selain itu,
seperti sudah
shown, there are good reasons to think that the objects in ditampilkan, ada alasan-alasan
yang baik untuk berpikir bahwa benda-benda di
question could not be physical or mental objects. pertanyaan tidak dapat fisik atau mental
objek. Thus, the Dengan demikian,

Page 15 Page 15
arguments outlined here seem to lead to the Platonistic argumen yang dijelaskan di sini
tampaknya mengarah ke Platonistic
conclusion that mathematical discourse is about abstract kesimpulan bahwa wacana
matematika adalah abstrak
objects. objek.
It does not follow from this that Platonism is true, however, Ia tidak mengikuti dari ini
yang Platonisme adalah benar, namun,
because anti-Platonists can concede all these arguments and karena anti-Platonis bisa
mengakui semua argumen dan
still endorse fictionalism or neo-Meinongianism. masih mendukung fictionalism atau
neo-Meinongianism. Advocates Advokat
of the neo-Meinongian view accept the eminently plausible dari pandangan neo-
Meinongian menerima sungguh masuk akal
Platonistic interpretation of mathematical sentences while Platonistic interpretasi kalimat
matematika sementara
also denying that there are any such things as numbers and juga menyangkal bahwa ada
hal-hal seperti jumlah dan
functions and sets; but then neo-Meinongians want to claim fungsi dan set, tetapi
kemudian neo-Meinongians ingin mengklaim
that mathematics is true anyway. bahwa matematika adalah benar pula. Platonists argue
that this Platonis mengatakan bahwa ini
reasoning is absurd. penalaran yang masuk akal. For instance, if mermaids do not exist,
Misalnya, jika tidak ada putri duyung,
then the sentence “There are some mermaids with red hair” kemudian kalimat "Ada
beberapa putri duyung dengan rambut merah"
cannot be literally true. tidak dapat secara harfiah benar. Likewise, if there are no such
things Demikian juga, jika tidak ada hal-hal seperti
as numbers, then the sentence “There are some prime sebagai angka, maka kalimat "Ada
beberapa perdana
numbers larger than 20” cannot be literally true either. angka yang lebih besar dari 20
"tidak bisa secara harfiah benar baik.
Perhaps the best thing to say here is that neo-Meinongianism Mungkin hal terbaik untuk
mengatakan di sini adalah bahwa neo-Meinongianism
warps the meaning of the word true. warps arti kata yang benar.
The one remaining group of anti-Platonists, the fictionalists, Sisanya satu kelompok anti-
Platonis, yang fictionalists,
agree with Platonists on how to interpret mathematical setuju dengan Platonis tentang
cara menafsirkan matematika
sentences. kalimat. In fact, the only point on which fictionalists Bahkan, hanya titik yang
fictionalists
disagree with Platonists is the bare question of whether tidak setuju dengan Platonis
adalah pertanyaan apakah telanjang
there exist any such things as abstract objects (and, as a ada ada ada hal-hal seperti objek
abstrak (dan, sebagai
result, the question about whether mathematical sentences Hasilnya, pertanyaan tentang
apakah kalimat matematika
are literally true). secara harfiah benar). However, since abstract objects must be Namun,
karena benda-benda abstrak harus
nonphysical and nonmental if they exist at all, it is not nonfisik dan nonmental jika
mereka ada sama sekali, tidak
obvious how one could ever determine whether they exist. jelas bagaimana seorang pun
dapat menentukan apakah mereka ada.
This is the beauty of the fictionalists' view: they endorse all Ini adalah keindahan
fictionalists 'melihat: mereka mendukung semua
of the Platonists' arguments that mathematics is best dari Platonis 'argumen bahwa
matematika adalah yang terbaik
interpreted as being about abstract objects, and then they ditafsirkan sebagai tentang
benda abstrak, dan kemudian mereka
simply assert that they do not believe in abstract objects. hanya menegaskan bahwa
mereka tidak percaya pada objek abstrak. It Itu
might seem very easy to dispense with fictionalism, because mungkin tampak sangat
mudah untuk membuang fictionalism, karena
it might seem utterly obvious that sentences such as “2 + 2 = mungkin tampak sangat
jelas bahwa kalimat-kalimat seperti "2 + 2 =
4” are true. 4 "adalah benar. On closer inspection, however, this is not at all Pada
pemeriksaan lebih dekat, namun ini sama sekali tidak
obvious. jelas. If the arguments discussed above are correct—and Jika argumen yang
dibahas di atas adalah benar-dan
Platonists and fictionalists both accept them—then in order Platonis dan fictionalists baik
menerima mereka-maka dalam rangka
for “2 + 2 = 4” to be true, abstract objects must exist. untuk "2 + 2 = 4" untuk menjadi
kenyataan, benda abstrak harus ada. But Tapi
one might very well doubt that there really do exist such satu mungkin sangat baik
diragukan bahwa ada benar-benar ada seperti
things; after all, they seem more than a bit strange, and hal, setelah semua, mereka
tampaknya lebih dari sedikit aneh, dan
what is more, there does not seem to be any evidence that apa yang lebih, ada tampaknya
tidak menjadi bukti bahwa
they really exist. mereka benar-benar ada.
Or maybe some evidence does exist. Atau mungkin beberapa bukti tidak ada. This, at any
rate, is Ini, setidaknya, adalah
what Platonists want to claim. apa Platonis ingin klaim. Platonists have offered a few
Platonis telah menawarkan beberapa
different arguments as refutations of fictionalism, but only berbeda argumen sebagai
refutations dari fictionalism, tetapi hanya
one of them, known as the indispensability argument, has salah satu dari mereka, yang
dikenal sebagai argumen indispensability, telah
gained any real currency. memperoleh mata uang riil. According to the indispensability
Menurut indispensability yang
argument, well-established mathematical theorems must be argumen, didirikan
matematika teorema-sumur harus
true because they are inextricably woven into the empirical benar karena mereka terjalin
erat ke dalam empiris
theories that have been developed and accepted in the teori-teori yang telah
dikembangkan dan diterima di
natural sciences, and there are good reasons to think that ilmu alam, dan ada alasan-
alasan yang baik untuk berpikir bahwa

Page 16 Page 16
these empirical theories are true. teori-teori empiris adalah benar. (This argument has
roots (Argumen ini memiliki akar
in the work of Frege and has been developed by Quine and dalam karya Frege dan telah
dikembangkan oleh Quine dan
Putnam.) Fictionalists have offered two responses to this Putnam.) Fictionalists telah
menawarkan dua tanggapan atas
argument. argumen. Field has argued that mathematics is not Lapangan berpendapat
bahwa matematika tidak
inextricably woven into the empirical theories that scientists erat dijalin ke teori empiris
bahwa para ilmuwan
have developed; if scientists wanted, he has argued, they telah dikembangkan, jika para
ilmuwan ingin, ia mengatakan, mereka
could extract mathematics from their theories. bisa ekstrak matematika dari teori-teori
mereka.
Furthermore, Balaguer, Rosen, and Yablo have argued that it Selanjutnya, Balaguer,
Rosen, dan Yablo berpendapat bahwa
does not matter whether mathematics is indispensable to Tidak masalah apakah
matematika sangat diperlukan untuk
empirical science because even if it is, and even if empiris ilmu pengetahuan karena
meskipun, dan bahkan jika
mathematical theorems are not literally true (because there teorema matematika tidak
secara harfiah benar (karena ada
are no such things as abstract objects), the empirical ada hal-hal seperti obyek abstrak),
yang empiris
theories that use these mathematical theorems could still teori-teori yang menggunakan
teorema matematis masih bisa
provide essentially accurate pictures of the physical world. memberikan gambar pada
dasarnya akurat dari dunia fisik.
The epistemological argument against Platonism Argumen epistemologis terhadap
Platonisme
The epistemological argument is very simple. Argumen epistemologis sangat sederhana.
It is based on Hal ini didasarkan pada
the idea that, according to Platonism, mathematical gagasan bahwa, menurut Platonisme,
matematika
knowledge is knowledge of abstract objects, but there does pengetahuan adalah
pengetahuan tentang benda abstrak, tapi tidak ada
not seem to be any way for humans to acquire knowledge of sepertinya tidak ada cara
bagi manusia untuk memperoleh pengetahuan
abstract objects. benda abstrak. The argument for the claim that humans Argumen untuk
mengklaim bahwa manusia
could not acquire knowledge of abstract objects proceeds as tidak bisa memperoleh
pengetahuan dari objek abstrak hasil sebagai
follows: berikut:
• (1) Humans exist entirely within space-time. • (1) Manusia ada sepenuhnya dalam
ruang-waktu.
• (2) If there exist any abstract objects, then they • (2) Jika terdapat benda abstrak, maka
mereka
exist entirely outside of space-time. sepenuhnya ada di luar ruang-waktu.
• (3) Therefore, it seems that humans could never • (3) Oleh karena itu, tampaknya
manusia tidak akan pernah bisa
acquire knowledge of abstract objects. memperoleh pengetahuan benda abstrak.
There are three ways for Platonists to respond to this Ada tiga cara untuk Platonis untuk
menanggapi ini
argument. argumen. They can reject (1), they can reject (2), or they Mereka dapat
menolak (1), mereka dapat menolak (2), atau mereka
can accept (1) and (2) and explain why the very plausible dapat menerima (1) dan (2) dan
menjelaskan mengapa sangat masuk akal
sounding (3) is nonetheless false. terdengar (3) tetap saja salah.
Platonists who reject (1) maintain that the human mind is Platonis yang menolak (1)
mempertahankan bahwa pikiran manusia
not entirely physical and that it is capable of somehow tidak sepenuhnya fisik dan bahwa
ia mampu entah bagaimana
forging contact with abstract objects and thereby acquiring menjalin kontak dengan
benda-benda abstrak dan dengan demikian memperoleh
information about such objects. informasi tentang objek tersebut. This strategy was
pursued Strategi ini dikejar
by Plato and Gödel. oleh Plato dan Gödel. According to Plato, people have Menurut
Plato, orang
immaterial souls, and before birth their souls acquire immaterial jiwa, dan sebelum
kelahiran jiwa mereka memperoleh
knowledge of abstract objects, so that mathematical pengetahuan tentang benda abstrak,
sehingga matematika
learning is really just a process of recollection. belajar adalah benar-benar hanya suatu
proses ingatan. For Gödel, Untuk Gödel,
humans acquire information about abstract objects by manusia memperoleh informasi
tentang obyek abstrak oleh
means of a faculty of mathematical intuition—in much the berarti dari fakultas
matematika intuisi-dalam banyak
same way that information about physical objects is cara yang sama bahwa informasi
tentang obyek-obyek fisik
acquired through sense perception. diperoleh melalui persepsi akal.
Platonists who reject (2) alter the traditional Platonic view Platonis yang menolak (2)
mengubah pandangan Platonis tradisional

Page 17 Page 17
and maintain that, although abstract objects are nonphysical dan menyatakan bahwa,
meskipun objek abstrak yang nonfisik
and nonmental, they are still located in space-time; hence, dan nonmental, mereka masih
berada dalam ruang-waktu; maka,
according to this view, knowledge of abstract objects can be menurut pandangan ini,
pengetahuan tentang benda-benda abstrak dapat
acquired through ordinary sense perceptions. diperoleh melalui persepsi arti biasa. Maddy
Maddy
developed this idea in connection with sets. mengembangkan gagasan ini sehubungan
dengan set. She claimed Dia mengklaim
that sets of physical objects are spatiotemporally located yang menentukan obyek fisik
terletak spatiotemporally
and that, because of this, people can perceive them—that dan bahwa, karena ini, orang
dapat melihat mereka-yang
is, see them and taste them and so on. ini, lihat mereka dan rasa mereka dan seterusnya.
For example, Sebagai contoh,
suppose that Maddy is looking at three eggs. misalkan Maddy adalah melihat tiga telur.
According to Menurut
her view, she can see not only the three eggs but also the melihat, ia dapat melihat tidak
hanya tiga telur tetapi juga
set containing them. mengatur mengandung mereka. Thus, she knows that this set has
three Jadi, dia tahu bahwa set ini memiliki tiga
members simply by looking at it—analogous to the way that anggota hanya dengan
melihat hal-analog dengan cara yang
she knows that one of the eggs is white just by looking at it. dia tahu bahwa salah satu
telur putih hanya dengan melihatnya.
Platonists who accept both (1) and (2) deny that humans Platonis yang menerima
keduanya (1) dan (2) menyangkal bahwa manusia
have some sort of information-gathering contact with memiliki semacam pengumpulan
informasi kontak dengan
abstract objects in the way proposed by Plato, Gödel, and abstrak objek dalam cara yang
diusulkan oleh Plato, Gödel, dan
Maddy; but these Platonists still think that humans can Maddy, tetapi Platonis ini masih
berpikir bahwa manusia dapat
acquire knowledge of abstract objects. memperoleh pengetahuan tentang obyek abstrak.
One strategy that Salah satu strategi yang
Platonists have used here is to argue that people acquire Platonis telah digunakan di sini
adalah untuk menyatakan bahwa orang memperoleh
knowledge of abstract mathematical objects by acquiring pengetahuan tentang objek
abstrak matematika dengan memperoleh
evidence for the truth of their empirical scientific theories; bukti kebenaran teori-teori
ilmiah empiris mereka;
the idea is that this evidence provides reason to believe all idenya adalah bahwa bukti ini
memberikan alasan untuk percaya semua
of empirical science, and science includes claims about ilmu pengetahuan empiris, dan
sains mencakup klaim tentang
mathematical objects. objek matematika. Another approach, developed by Pendekatan
lain, dikembangkan oleh
Resnik and Shapiro, is to claim that humans can acquire Resnik dan Shapiro, adalah
klaim bahwa manusia dapat memperoleh
knowledge of mathematical structures by means of the pengetahuan tentang struktur
matematika dengan cara dari
faculty of pattern recognition. fakultas pengenalan pola. They claim that Mereka
mengklaim bahwa
mathematical structures are nothing more than patterns, struktur matematika tidak lebih
dari pola,
and humans clearly have the ability to recognize patterns. dan manusia jelas memiliki
kemampuan untuk mengenali pola.
Another strategy, that of full-blooded Platonism, is based on Lain strategi, yaitu berdarah-
Platonisme penuh, didasarkan pada
the claim that Platonists ought to endorse the thesis that all klaim bahwa Platonis harus
mendukung tesis bahwa semua
the mathematical objects that possibly could exist actually yang matematika benda yang
mungkin ada sebenarnya
do exist. memang ada. According to Balaguer, if full-blooded Platonism is Menurut
Balaguer, kalau-Platonisme berdarah penuh
true, then knowledge of abstract objects can be obtained benar, maka pengetahuan
tentang benda abstrak dapat diperoleh
without the aid of any information-transferring contact with tanpa bantuan apapun-
mentransfer informasi kontak dengan
such objects. seperti objek. In particular, knowledge of abstract objects Secara khusus,
pengetahuan benda-benda abstrak
could be obtained via the following two-step method (which bisa diperoleh melalui
metode dua-langkah berikut ini (yang
corresponds to the actual methodology of mathematicians): sesuai dengan metodologi
yang sebenarnya matematikawan):
first, stipulate which mathematical structures are to be pertama, menetapkan struktur
matematika yang harus
theorized about by formulating some axioms that berteori tentang dengan merumuskan
beberapa aksioma yang
characterize the structures of interest; and second, deduce ciri struktur bunga; dan kedua,
menyimpulkan
facts about these structures by proving theorems from the fakta tentang struktur dengan
membuktikan teorema dari
given axioms. aksioma yang diberikan.
For example, if mathematicians want to study the sequence Misalnya, jika
matematikawan ingin mempelajari urutan
of nonnegative integers, they can begin with axioms that dari bilangan bulat negatif,
mereka dapat mulai dengan aksioma-aksioma yang
elaborate its structure. rumit strukturnya. Thus, the axioms might say that Jadi, aksioma
mungkin mengatakan bahwa
there is a unique first number (namely, 0), that every ada nomor pertama yang unik
(yaitu, 0), bahwa setiap
number has a unique successor, that every nonzero number nomor memiliki penerus yang
unik, bahwa setiap angka nol
has a unique predecessor, and so on. memiliki pendahulu yang unik, dan seterusnya.
Then, from these Kemudian, dari
axioms, theorems can be proven—for instance, that there aksioma, teorema bisa
dibuktikan-misalnya, bahwa ada

Page 18 Page 18
are infinitely many prime numbers. bilangan prima adalah tak terhingga banyak. This is,
in fact, how Hal ini, pada kenyataannya, bagaimana
mathematicians actually proceed. matematikawan sebenarnya melanjutkan. The point
here is that Yang penting di sini adalah bahwa
full-blooded Platonists can maintain that by proceeding in Platonis berdarah penuh dapat
mempertahankan bahwa dengan melanjutkan di
this way, mathematicians acquire knowledge of abstract cara ini, matematikawan
memperoleh pengetahuan abstrak
objects without the aid of any information-transferring obyek tanpa bantuan apapun
mentransfer informasi
contact with such objects. kontak dengan benda tersebut. Put differently, they maintain
Dengan kata lain, mereka mempertahankan
that what mathematicians have discovered is that, in the bahwa apa matematikawan telah
menemukan bahwa, dalam
sequence of nonnegative integers (by which is just meant urutan bilangan bulat non
negatif (oleh yang hanya dimaksudkan
the part or parts of the mathematical realm that bagian atau bagian dari dunia matematika
yang
mathematicians have in mind when they select the standard matematikawan yang ada
dalam pikiran ketika mereka memilih standar
axioms of arithmetic), there are infinitely many prime aksioma dari aritmatika), ada
banyak jauh utama
numbers. nomor. Without full-blooded Platonism this cannot be Tanpa berdarah
Platonisme penuh ini tidak dapat
said, because traditional Platonists have no answer to the kata, karena Platonis tradisional
tidak memiliki jawaban atas
question “How do mathematicians know which axiom pertanyaan "Bagaimana
matematika tahu mana aksioma
systems describe the mathematical realm?” In contrast, this sistem menggambarkan
bidang matematika? "Sebaliknya, ini
view entails that all internally consistent axiom systems melihat mensyaratkan bahwa
semua sistem aksioma yang konsisten secara internal
accurately describe parts of the mathematical realm. akurat menjelaskan bagian dari
dunia matematika.
Therefore, full-blooded Platonists can say that when Oleh karena itu, berdarah-Platonis
penuh bisa mengatakan bahwa ketika
mathematicians lay down axiom systems, all they are doing matematikawan berbaring
sistem aksioma, semua yang mereka lakukan
is stipulating which parts of the mathematical realm they adalah penetapan bagian mana
dari bidang matematika mereka
want to talk about. ingin dibicarakan. Then they can acquire knowledge of Lalu mereka
dapat memperoleh pengetahuan
those parts simply by proving theorems from the given bagian-bagian hanya dengan
membuktikan teorema dari yang diberikan
axioms. aksioma.
Ongoing impasse Kebuntuan yang sedang berlangsung
Just as there is no widespread agreement that fictionalists Hanya karena tidak ada
kesepakatan luas bahwa fictionalists
can succeed in responding to the indispensability argument, dapat berhasil dalam
menanggapi argumen indispensability,
there is no widespread agreement that Platonists can tidak ada perjanjian luas yang dapat
Platonis
adequately respond to the epistemological argument. cukup menanggapi argumen
epistemologis. It Itu
seems to this writer, though, that both full-blooded tampaknya penulis ini, meskipun,
bahwa kedua totok
Platonism and fictionalism can be successfully defended Platonisme dan fictionalism
dapat berhasil mempertahankan
against all of the traditional arguments brought against terhadap semua argumen
tradisional diajukan terhadap
them. mereka. Recall that Platonism and fictionalism agree on how Ingat bahwa
Platonisme dan fictionalism setuju tentang bagaimana
mathematical sentences should be interpreted—that is, both kalimat matematika harus
ditafsirkan-yaitu, baik
views agree that mathematical sentences should be dilihat setuju bahwa kalimat
matematika harus
interpreted as being statements about abstract objects. diartikan sebagai laporan yang
tentang obyek-obyek abstrak. On Pada
the other hand, Platonism and fictionalism disagree on the sisi lain, Platonisme dan
fictionalism tidak setuju pada
metaphysical question of whether abstract objects exist, metafisik pertanyaan apakah
benda abstrak ada,
and an examination of the foregoing debate does not dan pemeriksaan dari perdebatan di
atas tidak
provide any compelling reason to endorse or reject either memberikan alasan kuat untuk
mendukung atau menolak baik
view (though some reasons have proved plausible and view (meskipun beberapa alasan
yang masuk akal dan terbukti
attractive enough to persuade people to take sides on this cukup menarik untuk
membujuk orang untuk mengambil sisi ini
question). pertanyaan). In fact, humanity seems to be cut off in principle Bahkan, umat
manusia tampaknya harus dipotong pada prinsipnya
from ever knowing whether there are such things as abstract dari yang pernah mengetahui
apakah ada hal-hal seperti abstrak
objects. objek. Indeed, it seems to this writer that it is doubtful Memang, tampaknya ini
penulis yang diragukan
that a correct answer even exists. bahwa jawaban yang benar bahkan ada. For it can be
argued that Untuk dapat dikatakan bahwa
the concept of an abstract object is so unclear that there is konsep benda abstrak sangat
jelas bahwa ada
no objective, agreed-upon condition that would need to be Tujuan tidak, disepakati
kondisi-yang perlu

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satisfied in order for it to be true that there are abstract puas agar itu benar bahwa ada
abstrak
objects. objek. This view of the debate is extremely controversial, Pandangan perdebatan
tersebut sangat kontroversial,
however. Namun.
Mark Balaguer Mark Balaguer
Additional Reading Membaca Tambahan
EE
DWARD DWARD
A. M A. M
AZIARZ AZIARZ
and dan
TT
HOMAS Thomas
GG
REENWOOD REENWOOD
, Greek Mathematical , Yunani Matematika
Philosophy (1968, reissued 1995), discusses the evolution of Filsafat (1968, diterbitkan
kembali 1995), membahas evolusi
mathematical philosophy from Thales of Miletus and the matematika filsafat dari Thales
dari Miletus dan
Pythagoreans through Plato and Aristotle. Pythagoreans melalui Plato dan Aristoteles.
PP
AUL AUL
BB
ENACERRAF ENACERRAF
and dan
HH
ILARY ILARY
PP
UTNAM UTNAM
(eds.), Philosophy of (Ed.), Filsafat
Mathematics: Selected Readings , 2nd ed. Matematika: Bacaan Terpilih, 2nd ed. (1983),
is the (1983), adalah
standard anthology of early and mid-20th-century writings. standar antologi dan
pertengahan abad ke-20 tulisan-tulisan awal.
BB
ERTRAND ERTRAND
RR
USSELL USSELL
, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy , 2nd , Pengantar Filsafat Matematika, 2
ed. ed. (1920, reissued 1993), is perhaps the most famous (1920, diterbitkan kembali
1993), mungkin yang paling terkenal
introductory book on the subject, though it is mainly pengantar buku tentang topik ini,
meskipun terutama
dedicated to developing Russell's own view. didedikasikan untuk mengembangkan
sendiri melihat's Russell.
SS
TEPHAN TEPHAN
KK
ÖRNER ÖRNER
, The , The
Philosophy of Mathematics (1960, reissued 1986), is a classic Filsafat Matematika (1960,
diterbitkan kembali 1986), adalah sebuah klasik
introductory overview of the debate between logicists, pengantar tinjauan tentang
perdebatan antara logicists,
intuitionists, and formalists during the first half of the 20th intuitionists, dan formalis
pada paruh pertama dari 20
century. abad.
SS
TEWART TEWART
SS
HAPIRO HAPIRO
, Thinking About Mathematics (2000), is a very , Berpikir Tentang Matematika (2000),
adalah sangat
good recent book that provides a more general introduction baik baru-baru ini buku yang
menyediakan pengenalan yang lebih umum
to the philosophy of mathematics. dengan filosofi dari matematika.
MM
ARK ARK
BB
ALAGUER ALAGUER
, Platonism and , Platonisme dan
Anti-Platonism in Mathematics (1998, reissued 2001), Anti-Platonisme di Matematika
(tahun 1998, diterbitkan kembali 2001),
provides an overview of various theories in the philosophy of memberikan ikhtisar
berbagai teori dalam filsafat
mathematics, while arguing for a very specific, original view matematika, sedangkan
berdebat untuk spesifik, asli pandangan yang sangat
of its own. sendiri. Finally, two works written by mathematicians are Akhirnya, dua karya
yang ditulis oleh matematikawan adalah
GH H GH H
ARDY Ardy
, A Mathematician's Apology , rev. , Mathematician's Apology A, rev. ed. ed. (1969,
(1969,
reissued 1999); and diterbitkan kembali tahun 1999); dan
RR
EUBEN EUBEN
HH
ERSH ERSH
, What Is Mathematics, Really? , Apa Matematika, Really?
(1997). (1997).
Mark Balaguer Mark Balaguer