some remarks on the physicalist account of mathematics一些评价物理主义的数学.pdf

Open Journal of Philosophy 2012. Vol.2, No.2, 165-170 Published Online May 2012 in SciRes (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ojpp) /10.4236/ojpp.2012.22025 Some Remarks on the Physicalist Account of Mathematics Ferenc Csatári Department of Logic, Institute of Philosophy, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary Email: fcsatari@ Received February 28th th th , 2012; revised March 25 , 2012; accepted April 9 , 2012 The paper comments on a rather uncommon approach to mathematics called physicalist formalism. Ac- cording to this view, the formal systems mathematicians concern with are nothing more and nothing less than genuine physical systems. I give a brief review on the main theses, then I provide some arguments, concerning mostly with the practice of mathematics and the uniqueness of formal systems, aiming to show the implausibility of this radical view. Keywords : Physicalism; Formalism; Philosophy of Mathematics Introduction its “laws” to be more solid than that of physics.3 On the other hand, physicalism asserts that mathematical statements do have On the following pages I comment on a rather uncommon factual content, though far not in the u