Numerical cognition and mathematical realism
Skip other details (including permanent urls, DOI, citation information)
: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. Please contact mpub-help@umich.edu to use this work in a way not covered by the license.
For more information, read Michigan Publishing's access and usage policy.
Abstract
Humans and other animals have an evolved ability to detect discrete magnitudes (numerosities) in their environment. Does this observation support evolutionary debunking arguments against mathematical realism, as has been recently argued by Clarke-Doane, or does it bolster mathematical realism, as authors such as Joyce and Sinnott-Armstrong have assumed? To find out, we need to pay closer attention to the features of evolved numerical cognition. I provide a detailed examination of the functional properties of evolved numerical cognition, and propose that they prima facie favor a realist account of numbers.
