On Thursday 9th May at 4.15pm in the graduate common room Tim Button wil give al talk on "Structuralism and referential indeterminacy". NB this talk will be suitable for Part II students who have looked at mathematical structuralism or Putnam's model-theoretic arguments. MDP
Abstract It should be obvious that `Julius Caesar' refers to Julius Caesar. But it is easy to offer a deviant interpretation of our words, according to which `Julius Caesar' refers to Mahatma Gandhi. Of course, to preserve the truth-values of everything we say, we shall have to make compensating adjustments elsewhere in our interpretation; `___ is a general' will have to apply to some pacifists, rather than to all (and only) the generals. But this only deepens the problem: what, if anything, fixes reference? The shape of this problem is not affected by the kind of objects that we are trying to designate. And a particularly interesting version of the problem concerns reference to mathematical objects. After all, whilst some causal theory of reference seems plausible when we consider Caesar and Gandhi, no one ever interacts causally with the number 2. This raises the question: can mathematical platonism answer the threat of radical referential indeterminacy? Shapiro (1997) has suggested that realistic structuralism provides platonism with fresh resources for answering this problem. In this talk, I shall explain why he thinks this, and why it is mistaken. _____________________________________________________ Sent by the CamPhilEvents mailing list. To unsubscribe or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents Posts are archived here: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive
