1. Counterfactual Logic and the Necessity of Mathematics.
- Author
-
Elgin, Samuel Z.
- Subjects
PHILOSOPHY of mathematics ,COUNTERFACTUALS (Logic) ,IMPLICATION (Logic) ,APPLIED mathematics ,MATHEMATICS - Abstract
This paper is concerned with counterfactual logic and its implications for the modal status of mathematical claims. It is most directly a response to an ambitious program by Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne (2018), who seek to establish that mathematics is committed to its own necessity. I demonstrate that their assumptions collapse the counterfactual conditional into the material conditional. This collapse entails the success of counterfactual strengthening (the inference from 'If A were true, then C would be true' to 'If A and B were true, then C would be true'), which is controversial within counterfactual logic, and which has counterexamples within pure and applied mathematics. I close by discussing the dispensability of counterfactual conditionals within the language of mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2021
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