Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
2-2016
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Program
Philosophy
Advisor
Gary Ostertag
Advisor
Saul Kripke
Committee Members
Saul Kripke
Nathan Salmon
Jesse Prinz
Michael Levin
Subject Categories
Epistemology | History of Philosophy | Logic and Foundations of Mathematics | Philosophy of Language | Philosophy of Mind
Keywords
Number sense, Cardinal, Counting, Acquisition, Paradox of analysis, Set theory
Abstract
Saul Kripke once remarked to me that natural numbers cannot be posits inferred from their indispensability to science, since we’ve always had them. This left me wondering whether numbers are objects of Russellian acquaintance, or accessible by analysis, being implied by known general principles about how to reason correctly, or both. To answer this question, I discuss some recent (and not so recent) work on our concepts of number and of particular numbers, by leading psychologists and philosophers. Special attention is paid to Kripke’s theory that numbers possess structural features of the numerical systems that stand for them, and to the relation between his proposal about numbers and his doctrine that there are contingent truths known a priori. My own proposal, to which Kripke is sympathetic, is that numbers are properties of sets. I argue for this by showing the extent to which it can avoid the problems that plague the various views under discussion, including the problems raised by Kripke against Frege. I also argue that while the terms ‘the number of F’s’, ‘natural number’ and ‘0’, ‘1’, ‘2’ etc. are partially understood by the folk, they can only be fully understood by reflection and analysis, including reflection on how to reason correctly. In this last respect my thesis is a retreat position from logicism. I also show how it dovetails with an account of how numbers are actually grasped in practice, via numerical systems, and in virtue of a certain structural affinity between a geometric pattern that we grasp intuitively, and our fully analyzed concepts of numbers. I argue that none of this involves acquaintance with numbers.
Recommended Citation
Marshall, Oliver R., "Toward a Kripkean Concept of Number" (2016). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/703
Included in
Epistemology Commons, History of Philosophy Commons, Logic and Foundations of Mathematics Commons, Philosophy of Language Commons, Philosophy of Mind Commons