The Middle of Things

Building on Boghossian's defense of implicit definition and epistemic analyticity, we explored the prospects for some kind of realism in the philosophy of mathematics. Main reading: Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam, "Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings", https://philpapers.org/rec/BENPOM; Hilary Putnam, "What is Mathematical Truth?", https://philpapers.org/rec/PUTWIM-2; Hartry Field, "Tarski's Theory of Truth", https://philpapers.org/rec/FIETTO-6. SEP reference: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Building on Boghossian's defense of implicit definition and epistemic analyticity, we explored the prospects for some kind of realism in the philosophy of mathematics. Main reading: Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam, "Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings", https://philpapers.org/rec/BENPOM; Hilary Putnam, "What is Mathematical Truth?", https://philpapers.org/rec/PUTWIM-2; Hartry Field, "Tarski's Theory of Truth", https://philpapers.org/rec/FIETTO-6. SEP reference: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the first episode, we concluded that Jackson's metaphysics by conceptual analysis would ultimately rest on at least a partial rehabilitation of analyticity. In consideration of our prospects, we read a thorough and very historically informed defense of analyticity against Quine's challenge. Main reading: Paul Boghossian, "Analyticity Reconsidered", https://philpapers.org/rec/BOGAR. SEP reference: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/apriori/; https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/. Also mentioned: Gideon Rosen, "Mathematics and Metaphysical Naturalism", https://philpapers.org/rec/CLABCT-2; Lewis Carroll, "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", https://philpapers.org/rec/CARWTT-2; The Putnam bit about vixens and foxes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMHtgrmpvYM. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this first episode we discussed whether there is prospect for conceptual analysis in metaphysics. Rather than begin with an examination of first principles, we began in the middle of things, but after an ascent into meta-philosophy. Main reading: Frank Jackson, "Armchair Metaphysics", https://philpapers.org/rec/JACAM; Gilbert Harman, "Doubts about Conceptual Analysis", https://philpapers.org/rec/HARDAC-4. SEP reference: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/apriori/; https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analysis/. Also mentioned: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wick. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.