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    Carmelics

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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that FBP-ists do not need to explain how humans could know that Full-Blooded Platonism is true in order to respond to the epistemic argument against platonism

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.The analogy between FBP and external-world realism fails because sense perception provides a causal mechanism linking knowers to the external world, while abstract objects are causally inert.
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    • 2.Benacerraf's epistemic challenge specifically targets the absence of any causal-explanatory story for mathematical knowledge, making it structurally disanalogous to Cartesian skepticism.
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    • 3.A response to the epistemic argument against platonism must therefore address the causal inertness of abstract objects, not merely deflect to the permissibility of unexplained foundational commitments.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.FBP's claim that all logically consistent mathematical structures exist does not automatically confer warrant on any particular human belief about which structures those are.
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    • 2.Even if FBP dissolves the ontological question, epistemological access to the specific content of mathematical truths remains unexplained, as Hartry Field argues in 'Realism, Mathematics and Modality'.
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    • 3.The reliability of human mathematical intuition tracking abstract mathematical facts requires independent justification that the analogy to external-world realism does not supply.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Demanding that platonists explain how humans could know that Full-Blooded Platonism is true is exactly analogous to demanding that external-world realists explain how humans could know that an external world exists that gives rise to accurate sense perceptions
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    • 2.The argument against platonism in steps (1)–(6) is a different kind of argument from Cartesian-style skeptical arguments
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    • 3.Responding to the argument in (1)–(6) does not require answering Cartesian-style skeptical challenges
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