Product Description

This text develops a philosophical position integrating realism and rationalism. The author meets the principle challenges of realism and exposes the flaws in the criticisms of the antirealists, showing that realists can explain knowledge of abstract objects without supposing we have causal contact with them, that numbers are determinate objects and that the standard counter-examples to the abstract/concrete distinction have no force. Generalizing the account of knowledge used to meet the challenges to realism, the author develops a rationalist and non-naturalist account of philosophical knowledge and argues that it is preferable to contemporary naturalist and empiricist accounts. The book illuminates a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of necessity, the distinction between the formal and natural sciences, empiricist holism, the structure of ontology and philosophical skepticism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1818900 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

Customer Reviews

Transcription of blurbs from the dust jacket
"This book is certainly going to count as one of the most important contributions to the philosophy of mathematics of the last decades."--Paolo Mancosu, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley

"What is philosophy? The dominant view is that philosophy, where it is not the unravelling of linguistic confusions, is an inseparable part of empirical inquiry. Katz sharply challenges this. In clear and relaxed prose he advocates an earlier view: philosophy is the study of reality at the most general level through rational reflection. But he does not simply return to the position of a former age. Drawing on a mastery of twentieth-century analytic philosophy, Katz takes us one whole cycle higher up the helix of metaphilosophy, reconstructing our understanding of the relations between science and philosophy in the process."--Marcus Giaquinto, Department of Philosophy, University College, London

"Jerrold J. Katz's new book, Realistic Rationalism, constitutes a major development in philosophy of mathematics as a testing ground for fundamentally opposed philosophies. The project is to defend rationalism, in respect of both ontology and epistemology; empiricist naturalism is rejected, and the existence of numbers as particular objects is upheld against structuralist and semantic considerations. Whether or not Katz's powerfully developed position is ultimately accepted, the terms of the debate have been very significantly advanced."--Daniel Isaacson, Oxford University