Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Unconscious Cerebral Initiative', 'Knowledge:Readings in Cont.Epist' and 'Logicism in the 21st Century'

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2 ideas

6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 6. Logicism / a. Early logicism
Logicism is only noteworthy if logic has a privileged position in our ontology and epistemology [Hale/Wright]
     Full Idea: It is only if logic is metaphysically and epistemologically privileged that a reduction of mathematical theories to logical ones can be philosophically any more noteworthy than a reduction of any mathematical theory to any other.
     From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 8)
     A reaction: It would be hard to demonstrate this privileged position, though intuitively there is nothing more basic in human rationality. That may be a fact about us, but it doesn't make logic basic to nature, which is where proper reduction should be heading.
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 6. Logicism / c. Neo-logicism
Logicism might also be revived with a quantificational approach, or an abstraction-free approach [Hale/Wright]
     Full Idea: Two modern approaches to logicism are the quantificational approach of David Bostock, and the abstraction-free approach of Neil Tennant.
     From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1 n2)
     A reaction: Hale and Wright mention these as alternatives to their own view. I merely catalogue them for further examination. My immediate reaction is that Bostock sounds hopeless and Tennant sounds interesting.