more from Philip Kitcher

Single Idea 18070

[catalogued under 6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 10. Constructivism / a. Constructivism]

Full Idea

The development of a language for describing our correlational activity itself enables us to perform higher level operations.

Gist of Idea

We develop a language for correlations, and use it to perform higher level operations

Source

Philip Kitcher (The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge [1984], 06.2)

Book Reference

Kitcher,Philip: 'The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge' [OUP 1984], p.111


A Reaction

This is because all language itself (apart from proper names) is inherently general, idealised and abstracted. He sees the correlations as the nested collections expressed by set theory.