Grounding Concepts tackles the issue of arithmetical knowledge, developing a new position which respects three intuitions which have appeared impossible to satisfy simultaneously: a priorism, mind-independence realism, and empiricism.
Drawing on a wide range of philosophical influences, but avoiding unnecessary technicality, a view is developed whereby arithmetic can be known through the examination of empirically grounded concepts. These are concepts which, owing to their relationship to sensory input, are non-accidentally accurate representations of the mind-independent world. Examination of such concepts is an armchair activity, but enables us to recover information which has been encoded in the way our concepts represent. Emphasis on the key role of the senses in securing this coding relationship means that the view respects empiricism, but without undermining the mind-independence of arithmetic or the fact that it is knowable by means of a special armchair method called conceptual examination.
A wealth of related issues are covered during the course of the book, including definitions of realism, conditions on knowledge, the problems with extant empiricist approaches to the a priori, mathematical explanation, mathematical indispensability, pragmatism, conventionalism, empiricist criteria for meaningfulness, epistemic externalism and foundationalism. The discussion encompasses themes from the work of Locke, Kant, Ayer, Wittgenstein, Quine, McDowell, Field, Peacocke, Boghossian, and many others.
Industry Reviews
Anyone with the slightest interest in the nature of mathematics should give [Jenkins] serious study. * James Robert Brown and James Davies. Philosophical Quarterly *
offers and original treatment of arithmetic that is clearly articulated and carefully argued... It is a book that should be read by anyone with an interest in these topics, and will repay careful study. * Albert Casullo, Mind *
I think highly of this book. Grounding Concepts adds a genuinely new option to the philosophical landscape. The central idea - that sense experience may be relevant to the epistemic status of concepts and thus play a non-evidential role in explaining knowledge - is both sensible and clever. The book is sophisticated and accessible, both extremely careful and extremely clear... Grounding Concepts is an excellent book. It provides a sophisticated and clear discussion of a difficult nest of issues in the philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. By developing a new theoretical option, it makes a significant contribution to the literature on the epistemology of the a priori. Anyone interested in the epistemology of arithmetic or the nature of a priori knowledge would profit from reading it. * Joshua Schechter, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
