 2016 - 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 0618-4067-01 | Mathematics in Philosophy | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
University credit hours: 4.0
Course description
Philosophy of mathematics has traditionally been one of great importance to philosophers interested in metaphysics and epistemology. Issues related to the nature of mathematics, and our knowledge of mathematics, were central to the work of Kant, and played an important role in the work of thinkers ranging from Plato to Berkeley to Husserl to Bertrand Russell. Apart from their historical significance, such questions are found of renewed philosophical interest. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, philosophy of mathematics emerged as a discipline in its own right, thanks to seminal work of Frege and Russell and Dedekind, Wittgenstein, Brouwer, Hilbert, and Gödel, among others. On all of these figures Kant’s Critical philosophy has had a significant influence. By considering the influences of selected Kantian theses the students will be introduced to some of the classical questions in philosophy of mathematics. In this tutorial, students will compose two short papers - one concerning an early text and one on a later text. The sources and themes will be presented in an expository first meeting that will be followed by individual instruction. Toward the end of the term a class meeting will be held in which individual presentations will be discussed. Final grade is based on the two short papers, instruction meetings and class presentations