Single Idea 10192

[catalogued under 6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 7. Mathematical Structuralism / c. Nominalist structuralism]

Full Idea

Chihara's 'constructability theory' is nominalist - mathematics is reducible to a simple theory of types. Instead of talk of sets {x:x is F}, we talk of open sentences Fx defining them. Existence claims become constructability of sentence tokens.

Gist of Idea

We can replace existence of sets with possibility of constructing token sentences

Source

report of Charles Chihara (A Structural Account of Mathematics [2004]) by Fraser MacBride - Review of Chihara's 'Structural Acc of Maths' p.81

Book Reference

-: 'Bulletin of Symbolic Logic' [-], p.81


A Reaction

This seems to be approaching the problem in a Fregean way, by giving an account of the semantics. Chihara is trying to evade the Quinean idea that assertion is ontological commitment. But has Chihara retreated too far? How does he assert existence?