Mathematics Refer to Material Entities/Mathematics Do Not Refer to Material Entities

GUSTAVO E. ROMERO; CARLOS M. MADRID CASADO

Contemporary Materialism: Its Ontology and Epistemology

Springer International Publishing AG

Año: 2022; p. 321 - 332

This discussion is about whether mathematics refer to material entitiesor not. While both Carlos Madrid Casado and Gustavo E. Romero agree in theirrejection of Platonism and radical conventionalism, Madrid argues that mathematicsrefer to the very material symbols they operate with while Romero states thatthey refer to abstract concepts fabricated by humans according to certain rules.The relationship between operational mathematical signs and diagrams and themathematical concepts they outline deserves longer and more detailed case-by-caseanalyses, but the alternatives presented here encourage precise ways of formulatingthe question