Putnam and contemporary fictionalism

  1. Martínez-Vidal, Concha
Journal:
Theoria: an international journal for theory, history and foundations of science

ISSN: 0495-4548

Year of publication: 2018

Volume: 33

Issue: 2

Pages: 165-181

Type: Article

DOI: 10.1387/THEORIA.17610 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

More publications in: Theoria: an international journal for theory, history and foundations of science

Abstract

Putnam rejects having argued in the terms of the argument known in the literature as “the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument”. He considers that mathematics contribution to physics does not have to be interpreted in platonist terms but in his favorite modal variety (Putnam 1975; Putnam 2012).The purpose of this paper is to consider Putnam’s acknowledged argument and philosophical position against contemporary so called in the literature ‘fictionalist’ views about applied mathematics.The conclusion will be that the account of the applicability of mathematics that stems from Putnam‘s acknowledged argument can be assimilated in many aspects to so-called ‘fictionalist’ views about applied mathematics. 

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* I presented a first version of the paper at the workshop that took place in November 2016, at the Uni-versity of Santiago de Compostela “Updating Indispensabilities: Hilary Putnam in Memoriam.” I would like to thank Mary Leng, Otávio Bueno, Susan Vineberg, Sorin Bangu, José Miguel Sagüillo and Matteo Plebani for their helpful comments. I would also like to thank two anonymous referees of Theoria for their helpful comments on a second version. They really contributed to improve the result. Finally, I would like to thank Mary Leng for her contribution to the edition of this monographic sec-tion and M.ª José Garcia Encinas (Theoria’s editor) for her support and patience throughout the proc-ess. The research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competititivity and FEDER under projects FFI2013-41415-P, FFI2017-82534-P. 1 For instance, Colyvan 2001; Field 2001, 329.

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