Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Justin Clarke-Doane's Morality and Mathematics is a real tour de force, the culmination of a rich research program that he has been developing for a number of years.In the book, he discusses in detail the presumed parity between morality and mathematics with respect to a number of epistemological issues, in particular regarding mathematical and moral realism and the justification of mathematical and moral beliefs.Clarke-Doane shows that a number of claims made in the philosophical literature regarding both mathematics and morality (in comparison with each other as well as separately) simply do not hold up upon further scrutiny.Here is his summary of the main conclusions: I have argued that the case for moral and mathematical realism is surprisingly parallel.In particular, our mathematical beliefs have no better claim to being self-evident, provable, plausible, or analytic than our moral beliefs.Nor do our mathematical beliefs have a better claim to being empirically justified than our moral beliefs.It is also incorrect that reflection on the genealogy of our moral beliefs undermines them, while reflection on the genealogy of our mathematical beliefs does not.What is true is that our moral beliefs are contingent in a worrying way, and this may disqualify them from counting as safe, realistically construed.However, exactly the same thing is true of our mathematical beliefs.(p.176)The perfect parity between mathematical and moral realism ultimately breaks down, when it is established that a solution to the problem of safety is viable in the case of mathematics, but not in the moral case.Safety is defined thus: a belief P is safe when we could not have easily had a false belief as to whether or not Q, where Q is any belief similar enough to P, using the method
DOI: 10.1111/phpr.13038
Author: Catarina Dutilh Novaes
Institutions: University of St Andrews, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,630
OpenAlex ID: W4390239217