Iuss Philosophy Masterclass
Linguistics & Philosophy IUSS Center
(PhD Program in Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy of Mind) 

eMath Project - Epistemology of Mathematics and Logic

“CONCEPTIONS OF NUMBER AND VARIETIES OF ABSTRACTION”

November 30th, 2021, 14 - 16

December 2nd, 2021, 11 - 13

December 3rd, 2021, 11 - 13

IUSS, Sala Del Camino - Palazzo del Broletto 

Piazza della Vittoria n. 15 – Pavia

Speaker: 

• Erich Reck - University of California, Riverside  

What is the nature of numbers starting with the simplest case, the natural numbers?  And can they be regarded as the result of a kind of abstraction, as is often assumed?  These are old philosophical questions that have received a variety of responses over time.  In the late nineteenth century, Gottlob Frege and Richard Dedekind gave answers that shaped subsequent discussions in important ways until today.  In this sequence of three seminars, we will look at Frege’s and Dedekind’s positions, including motivating them historically and examining the different kinds of abstraction at play in them.  In addition, we will trace the reception of their proposals forward in time, in the sense of considering several current positions that can be seen as further articulations but also modifications of Frege’s and Dedekind’s positions.  Along the way, we will consider more complicated number systems too, asking whether similar accounts apply to them or not.

Info: andrea.sereni@iusspavia.it 

Programme