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Mathematical Structuralism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2018

Geoffrey Hellman
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
Stewart Shapiro
Affiliation:
Ohio State University

Summary

The present work is a systematic study of five frameworks or perspectives articulating mathematical structuralism, whose core idea is that mathematics is concerned primarily with interrelations in abstraction from the nature of objects. The first two, set-theoretic and category-theoretic, arose within mathematics itself. After exposing a number of problems, the Element considers three further perspectives formulated by logicians and philosophers of mathematics: sui generis, treating structures as abstract universals, modal, eliminating structures as objects in favor of freely entertained logical possibilities, and finally, modal-set-theoretic, a sort of synthesis of the set-theoretic and modal perspectives.
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Online ISBN: 9781108582933
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 29 November 2018

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