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Empiricism, Conservativeness, and Quasi-Truth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Otávio Bueno
Otávio Bueno*
Affiliation:
California State University, Fresno
*
†Department of Philosophy, California State University, Fresno, Fresno, CA, 93740-8024; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

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

Type
Explanation, Confirmation, and Scientific Inference
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 1999 , 1999 , pp. S474 - S485
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Many thanks to Philip Catton, Steven French, Sarah Kattau, David Miller, Stathis Psillos, Wade Savage, Elliott Sober, Mauricio Suárez and Bas van Fraassen for helpful discussions and comments on a previous version of this paper.

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