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Full Idea
Maddy takes a natural number to be a certain property of sui generis sets, the property of having a certain number of members.
Gist of Idea
A natural number is a property of sets
Source
report of Penelope Maddy (Realism in Mathematics [1990], 3 §2) by Alex Oliver - The Metaphysics of Properties
Book Ref
-: 'Mind' [-], p.19
A Reaction
[I believe Maddy has shifted since then] Presumably this will make room for zero and infinities as natural numbers. Personally I want my natural numbers to count things.
| 8755 | Maddy replaces pure sets with just objects and perceived sets of objects [Maddy, by Shapiro] |
| 8756 | Intuition doesn't support much mathematics, and we should question its reliability [Maddy, by Shapiro] |
| 17733 | We know mind-independent mathematical truths through sets, which rest on experience [Maddy, by Jenkins] |
| 10718 | A natural number is a property of sets [Maddy, by Oliver] |