Event Detail

On metalinguistic construal, famously advanced by Robert Stalnaker, mathematical propositions are possible-worlds propositions about the relation between mathematical sentences and what these sentences express. In this talk, I’ll defend the metalinguistic construal of mathematical propositions against the commonly raised criticism that it yields a highly implausible account of mathematical content. My defense will draw upon on a conventionalist metasemantics for mathematics and build on my prior work addressing a different “internal” challenge faced by the metalinguistic construal, namely, that it ascribes too much mathematical knowledge on the standard possible-worlds account of belief and knowledge on which these are closed under entailment.