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Full Idea
One view, favoured by Dedekind, is that the cut postulates a real number for each cut in the rationals; it does not identify real numbers with cuts. ....A view favoured by later logicists is simply to identify a real number with a cut.
Gist of Idea
Dedekind says each cut matches a real; logicists say the cuts are the reals
Source
report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 4.4
Book Ref
Bostock,David: 'Philosophy of Mathematics: An Introduction' [Wiley-Blackwell 2009], p.99
A Reaction
Dedekind is the patriarch of structuralism about mathematics, so he has little interest in the existenc of 'objects'.
10572 | A cut between rational numbers creates and defines an irrational number [Dedekind] |
18244 | I say the irrational is not the cut itself, but a new creation which corresponds to the cut [Dedekind] |
14437 | Dedekind's axiom that his Cut must be filled has the advantages of theft over honest toil [Dedekind, by Russell] |
18094 | Dedekind says each cut matches a real; logicists say the cuts are the reals [Dedekind, by Bostock] |
14436 | A series can be 'Cut' in two, where the lower class has no maximum, the upper no minimum [Russell] |
18248 | A real number is the class of rationals less than the number [Russell/Whitehead, by Shapiro] |
15274 | Points are 'continuous' if any 'cut' point participates in both halves of the cut [Harré/Madden] |
18093 | For Eudoxus cuts in rationals are unique, but not every cut makes a real number [Bostock] |
10575 | Why should a Dedekind cut correspond to a number? [Fine,K] |
18245 | Cuts are made by the smallest upper or largest lower number, some of them not rational [Shapiro] |
15904 | The two sides of the Cut are, roughly, the bounding commensurable ratios [Lavine] |