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Student’s name (Family name) (Given names)

Edwards-Taylor Henry Andrew Meriton

Student’s ID: 25191314 Phone number: 0458727119

Unit code: ATS3882 Metaphysics

Title of assessment: Essay (Draft)

Due date: 28/9/2018 Date submitted 28/9/2018

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ATS2861.112.Expos1
 iii. submit it to a plagiarism checking service which may then retain a copy of the assignment on its
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Marker: Mark: /100

ATS2861.112.Expos1
 ATS3882: Metaphysics
Fourth Assessment Task

Length: 3000 words

Weight: 30%

Due Date: See the Unit Guide / Moodle

Criteria for Marking:

Consult the Unit Guide for the marking rubric.

Make sure that you have:

 Kept within the word limit (3000 words).

 Provided answers that meet the learning objectives of the exercise.
 Not detached the cover sheet
 Kept a backup copy of the exercise.

Learning Objectives:

 Demonstrated you have some acquaintance with the history of metaphysics and a
deeper acquaintance with some particular debates of contemporary research focus
 Demonstrated that you have a highly developed understanding of the norms of
philosophical writing.

Format preference: Double-spaced, 12 point, Times New Roman

INSTRUCTIONS

Write a 3000 word essay according to the essay plan that you developed. You should try to
make this essay as good as you possibly can. It is a draft only in the sense that you will be
given detailed advice on ways that you can improve your essay, and the opportunity to
improve your essay according to this advice.

WRITE YOUR ANSWER BELOW HERE

ATS2861.112.Expos1
Does fictionalism develop a better explanation of mathematical objects than platonism?

In the two most widely argued accounts of mathematical objects, nominalism and platonism,

we end up in two streams of thought. Platonism accounts for the seemingly ‘true’ nature of

mathematics by placing these objects in a non-spatiotemporal and non-causal realm where

they exist and embody certain properties. Nominalism denies the existence of abstract objects

altogether. First, I will elucidate the grounds for adoption of a platonist view and

discuss/refute what I consider the strongest nominalist responses (namely, fictionalism) (I).

Given these grounds, I will then raise arguably the strongest counterargument to platonism,

the epistemological objection, and two ways that we can block this argument (II).

I – Grounds for platonism

For a consistent view of mathematics, we need to explain our intuitions about mathematics,

that is, how we are performing mathematics to the extent that we come out with useful and

consistently reliable theorems. We need to also explain how we attain knowledge of

mathematics at all. The former is one of the fundamental reasons for adopting a platonist

view. For platonism, it is simple enough to say that these mathematical objects do indeed

exist in this abstract realm previously described, so they carry with them certain properties

and relations that we then instantiate in mathematics in our environment. This also seems in

line with our intuition that mathematical objects exist in some form for us to have the ability

to manipulate them. The latter epistemological problem is perhaps the most difficult problem

for the platonist and will be discussed in the later section. It should be noted at this point that

there are other conceptions of mathematical objects existing as physical objects (immanent

realism) or as mental objects (psychologism), however as these are not very widely held

beliefs and because of the limited space of this essay, these will not be covered.

ATS2861.112.Expos1
One of the earliest arguments in favour of general platonism was developed by Plato himself,

titled the One Over Many argument. Its basic formulation is as such (Balaguer, 2004):

I have in front of me three red objects (say a ball, a hat, and a rose). These objects

resemble one another. Therefore, they have something in common. What they have in

common is clearly a property, namely, redness; therefore, redness exists.

This argument is basically an inference to the best explanation, that the thing holding together

all of these objects is this property of redness. This also isn’t necessarily an argument for as

platonist belief of properties as abstract object so much as an argument for properties existing

at all. However, given the extent and quality of arguments against psychologism and

immanent realism not covered here, we are left with a platonist interpretation. At this point it

is irrelevant though, as the One Over Many argument is not considered a very good argument.

In entertaining a nominalist approach to this argument, we can see how a critical component

of the platonist’s argument is developed in the form of the Criterion of Ontological

Commitment.

It isn’t necessary for a nominalist to believe in the property of redness to explain that the ball

is red. They can simply say that the ball is red because of the structure of the ball and the way

that it reflects light. The platonist would respond that the nominalist now must explain why

the ball is structured in such a way to reflect light without an appeal to properties. The

nominalist response to this is that firstly; they could keep going down this rabbit hole of

explanations, and secondly; where no more explanations can be given, there are no more

explanations. At this point, the object in question just is and no further explanation is relevant

or necessary. Also, of more interest to us now, the nominalist must explain why their account

is better than the platonist account.

ATS2861.112.Expos1
It seems that in an attempt to explain the sentence the ball is red, the platonist says the ball is

red because it possesses the property of redness. The nominalist now can say that this is

simply uninformative, as saying that the ball possesses the property of redness is essentially

saying the same thing as the ball is red. With an appeal to bruteness, that the property of

redness can simply be paraphrased away. Furthermore, by appealing to Ockham’s Razor, the

nominalist can say that where platonism offers no better explanation, we have no reason to

believe in this property of redness. The paraphrase Nominalist is committed to the ball being

red, but not the property of redness. The important thing that comes out of this argument is

Quine’s Criterion of Ontological Commitment, which is used by Frege to develop perhaps the

strongest argument for mathematical latonism, the Singular Terms argument (Frege, 1919).

Criterion of Ontological Commitment: We are ontologically committed by the

singular terms (that can't be paraphrased away) in the (simple) sentences that we take

to be literally true; and we are ontologically committed by the existential quantifiers

(that can't be paraphrased away) in the (existential) sentences that we take to be

literally true; but we are not committed by the predicates in such sentences. (Balaguer,

2004)

Now that we have this criterion to explain belief, we will focus on the application of such

arguments specific to mathematical platonism. Frege’s singular term argument can be

formulated for the existence of abstract mathematical objects as follows.

1. If a simple mathematical sentence is literally true, then the mathematical objects that

its singular terms denote exist.

2. There are literally true simple mathematical sentences containing singular terms that

refer to mathematical objects that could only be abstract. Therefore,

3. Abstract mathematical objects exist.

ATS2861.112.Expos1
Following the reasoning behind the development of Quine’s criterion of ontological

commitment, premise (1) seems non-controversial. It doesn’t seem accurate to say that in the

sentence ‘3 is prime’ that '3’ doesn’t exist. Because (3) is a very basic extension of (1) and

(2), the most obvious way of refuting the singular term argument is through attacking

premise (2). As noted before, it is possible to argue away premise (2) by stating that there are

other ways of conceiving of mathematical objects as physical or mental, but these will not be

covered. Arguably the best attempt at attacking premise (2) was brought forward by Hartry

Field (Field, 1998) and his view of fictionalism, however, this will be shown to be untenable,

and less useful than a platonist account.

Field agrees with the semantics of (1) but denies that these abstract objects exist. That is to

say, fictionalists do believe that sentences containing mathematical objects purport to be

about abstract objects, but instead denies the existence of abstract objects altogether, labelling

it a ‘fiction’. These mathematical objects are fiction in much the same way that goblins and

orcs would be considered fiction. The mathematical sentences made up of these mathematical

objects are untrue simply because these mathematical objects do not exist. At this point the

argument between the platonist and the fictionalist becomes one of ontological commitment,

the mathematical platonist needs to come up with good reasons for believing that

mathematics is true to be convincing. A common approach for platonists is to use the

indispensability of mathematics in science, as is evidenced in the world around us. This is

referred to as the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument, formulated here by Balaguer,

2004:

1. Mathematical sentences form an indispensable part of our empirical theories of the

physical world—i.e., our theories of physics, chemistry, and so on;

2. We have good reasons for thinking that these empirical theories are true, i.e., that they

give us accurate pictures of the world; therefore,

ATS2861.112.Expos1
 3. We have good reasons to think that our mathematical sentences are true and, hence,

that fictionalism is false.

This argument holds good intuitive value, of course empirical science is indispensable to our

everyday life, and it seems mathematics plays a critical role in our conception of science. Of

course, the fictionalist has attempted to develop responses to these. Firstly, one could attack

premise (2) as Balaguer has, and state that our mathematical sentences are simply a

descriptive tool rather than actual truth. For Balaguer, and other easy-road fictionalists it is

not necessary to develop a true mathematical system for it to have value. In a typical

fictionalist response, mathematics is simply a good story to be told to help us explain the

physical world. While in line with fictionalists, this argument loses power when considering

that mathematics does not simply offer a descriptive role, but instead an explanatory role. If it

can be shown that mathematics is a necessary precursor to science, this results in a far

stronger version of the indispensability argument. Baker, 2005 considers cases involving

periodic cicada’s in which the nymphal stage is either 13 or 17 years. According to

evolutionary biologists, this is because 13 and 17 are prime numbers which minimizes the

intersection with other periodic species. With examples like this where mathematics and

physical phenomena are interlinked, easy-road fictionalist responses cannot succeed in

refuting the indispensability argument.

Another method of refuting the indispensability argument was put forward by Field himself,

and is accomplished by refuting premise (1), resulting in hard-road fictionalism. In

attempting to refute premise (1), the hard-road fictionalist believes that our scientific theories

can be nominalized to not utilize these mathematical sentences. This is a very controversial

claim because it then seems to require the nominalization of all scientific theories, which is

laborious to prove. Field nominalized one theory, Newtonian Gravitation Theory, to motivate

the process that this version of fictionalism would entail. However, it does not necessarily

ATS2861.112.Expos1
follow that from one succinct nominalization that all other scientific theories can also be

appropriately nominalized. For these reasons, Fields hard-road attempt at refuting the

indispensability argument remain controversial and at best, incredibly laborious.

One other indispensable argument in the platonist’s toolkit against fictionalists is the

seemingly objective nature of mathematics, or that there are certain things that we say in

mathematics that are “correct”. The fictionalist runs in to problems with the concept of

correctness, as according to them, all mathematical discourse is untrue, so no one sentence

can be more correct than another. This seems untenable and results in mathematical discourse

that is entirely nonsensical.

Responding to this on one hand, we have the idea that Field puts forward that a given

statement in mathematics can only be true if it is consistent with the story of mathematics.

But where Field’s formalistic fictionalism differs from Balaguer’s non-formalistic

fictionalism is that what is considered true in the story of mathematics by Field, is

corresponding to a set of agreed axioms. This runs into its own problems in explaining how

we discover new phenomena in mathematics. Something currently unproven in mathematics

by Field’s view is not part of the story of mathematics. However, if we were to posit a new

axiom that could explain this phenomenon, then by Field’s view this phenomenon would

become the new story of mathematics. This doesn’t seem correct though, it seems more

correct to say that the phenomenon had been correct all along, so Field’s view really doesn’t

explain objectivity at all.

Balaguer’s non-formalistic view agrees that something need only be true in the story of

mathematics to be considered objectively true, however what he considers to be in the story

of mathematics is different. Balaguer believes that in the thesis of mathematics there exist

abstract objects that mathematics purports to be about. In this story within a story all

ATS2861.112.Expos1
objectiveness can be explained just as a platonist would. However at this point it is

unintuitive to believe on one hand that abstract objects do not exist, and on the other use all

of the useful properties they would have if they did exist in order to explain objectivity. By

Ockham’s razor it’s much more sensible to simply assume that abstract mathematical objects

do exist rather than not.

Given the preceding arguments for platonism, and the refutation to the responses given, it’s

now important to discuss the main counterargument to platonism.

II – The epistemological objection

Undoubtedly the hardest question the platonist must answer is the epistemological objection

brought forward by Benacerraf (Benacerraf, 1973). That is, how are we to gain access to this

mystical abstract realm and interact with these mathematical objects given that we are simply

spatiotemporal beings and a necessary attribute of this abstract realm is its noncausal nature.

The objection can be formulated as follows:

1. Human beings exist entirely within spacetime.

2. If there exist any abstract mathematical objects, then they do not exist in spacetime.

Therefore, it seems very plausible that:

3. If there exist any abstract mathematical objects, then human beings could not attain

knowledge of them. Therefore,

4. If mathematical platonism is correct, then human beings could not attain mathematical

knowledge.

5. Human beings have mathematical knowledge. Therefore,

6. Mathematical platonism is not correct.

It seems that there is a disjunct here between the necessary noncausal nature of abstract

objects and our interactions with them. Premise (1) seems fairly uncontroversial, one could

ATS2861.112.Expos1
argue for the existence of a sort of abstract connection that humans have that exists outside of

spacetime. However, this results in behaviour that is no less mysterious than gaining

knowledge of abstract objects as a purely spatiotemporal being. (2) is a necessary aspect of

platonism. (4), (5), and (6) follow simply from (3). In order to block the epistemological

argument, the most effective way for the platonist, is to argue against (3), which is the crux of

this argument. If the platonist can describe a way in which we could come into knowledge of

abstract objects, without a transfer of information, then this argument would be refuted. There

have been many attempts by philosophers to argue against this premise, and some of these

methods will be outlined.

One such method can be seen implicitly in the formulation of the Quine-Putnam

indispensability argument, originally an objection to fictionalism. This argument, as shown in

the section previously, is a staple of the mathematical platonist, so it’s not surprising that we

find use for it again here. Under this argument, it seems that we have good reason to believe

that our mathematical theories are true. Firstly, we accept that our mathematical theories are

embedded in our empirical theories. Secondly, we have acquired empirical evidence

supporting our empirical theories. It follows that we have empirical evidence of our

mathematical theories being true, and therefore the existence of mathematical objects. This

method of thinking provides a sort of roundabout way of explaining how we can gain

knowledge of abstract objects. It’s not that we go to the realm of the abstract and grab these

objects that exist there, but rather that we have very good reason to believe that our

mathematical theories are true regardless of our interaction with this realm. While the abstract

realm filled with these mathematical objects remains the objective truth, because these

objects exist, our mathematics appears to be in line with it as the true set of mathematical

axioms. The proponents of this argument consider it simply irrelevant whether this explains

our interaction with abstract objects, it’s enough to say that these abstract mathematical

ATS2861.112.Expos1
objects exist and that we have good reason to believe our theories are true, thereby blocking

the epistemological argument. This method of thinking, however, could be said to be shaky

as it is attempting to confirm the existence of all mathematical theories based on our (limited)

testing of empirical science. This train of thought of utilizing the indispensability of science

leads us to an adoption of a different sort of platonism that blocks this epistemological

argument.

This version of platonism was put forward by Balaguer. Instead of thinking of a realm of

abstract mathematical objects consisting of a single set of mathematical theories, we should

think of this abstract realm as consisting of all the mathematical objects that could possibly

exist. This view is put forward as plenitudinous platonism (PP). Where this specific version

of platonism holds value for us is again in circumventing the information transfer problem of

Benaceraff’s argument. Firstly, we need to adopt the idea that all mathematical objects that

could possibly exist, do exist as PP states. We then realise that as an extension of this, every

mathematical theory that exists in our world that is internally consistent, also exists in this

abstract realm. This means that all we need to do to develop mathematical theories that are

true is to develop internally consistent mathematical theories, which it appears we already do.

And additionally, we require no interaction with this abstract realm to form these theories. A

response to the plenitudinous platonist here might be that we need proper grounds for

believing that there exist all possible mathematical objects in the abstract realm in the first

place. However, one could say that there is no equally good reason to believe in any other

theory, such as fictionalism. And furthermore (to once again bring the Quine-Putnam

indispensability argument in to the debate), this explanation seems to be the only way to

account for mathematics that our empirical sciences are based off regardless of what the

physical world is like.

ATS2861.112.Expos1
Mathematics is intuitionally much easier to think about when you think about the objects that

mathematicians are working with as existent. The fictionalist alternative developed to

platonism firstly doesn’t offer enough convincing reasons to be adopted over a platonist

belief, and secondly offers no explanation to the intuitive notion of mathematical objects

existing. Additionally, what is considered the smoking gun to all anti-platonists alike in the

form of the epistemological argument can be blocked by adopting a variation of platonism.

Bibliography:

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1. Balaguer, M. (2004). Platonism in Metaphysics. [online] Plato.stanford.edu. Available

at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/ [Accessed 28 Sep. 2018].

2. Frege, G. (1919). “The Thought: A Logical Inquiry,” reprinted in Essays on Frege,

E.D. Klemke (ed.), Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1968, 507–35.

3. Baker, A. (2005). “Are there Genuine Mathematical Explanations of Physical

Phenomena?,” Mind, 114: 223–38.

4. Field, H. (1998). “Mathematical Objectivity and Mathematical Objects,” in

Contemporary Readings in the Foundations of Metaphysics, C. MacDonald and

S.Laurence (eds.), Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 387–403.

5. Benacerraf, P. (1973), “Mathematical Truth,” Journal of Philosophy, 70: 661–79.

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