Denison: 'Field's Challenge and Mathematical Practice'

The Titus-Hepp Lecture Series welcomes Eileen Nutting, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Kansas, presenting “Field’s Challenge and Mathematical Practice.” Hartry Field raises an epistemological challenge for mathematical platonism: roughly, if mathematics is about causally inert mathematical objects, how could mathematicians so reliably get mathematical truths right? But Field’s challenge presupposes a deeply misguided picture of mathematical practice. Once this picture is corrected, Nutting argues, Field’s epistemological challenge pretty much reduces to an older epistemological challenge — due to Paul Benacerraf — that Field was trying to replace.