Penelope Maddy

Penelope Maddy Jo ( born July 4, 1950 in Tulsa, Oklahoma) is an American logician and philosopher of science, in particular, deals with the philosophy of mathematics.

Maddy went to school in San Diego and in 1968 was a finalist in the Westinghouse science competition for students. She studied from 1968 Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley ( Bachelor 1972) and in 1974 at Princeton University, where she holds a doctorate in philosophy in 1979 (set theoretical Realism ). After that, she taught at the University of Notre Dame ( Lecturer, Assistant Professor from 1979 ) and from 1983 was associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Since 1987, she was Associate Professor and in 1979 Professor of Philosophy ( 1989 simultaneously for mathematics) at the University of California, Irvine. As of 1998, she moved to the chair of logic and philosophy of science and mathematics is also a professor.

Maddy is known for important contributions to the philosophy of mathematics. Since the 1970s, she was involved in discussions about theses of Solomon Feferman on the role of axioms in mathematics.

In Realism in Mathematics defends Platonism of Kurt Godel, who assumed an independent existence of mathematical objects, as reflected for example in his search for new axioms of set theory, which allow to prove statements such as the continuum hypothesis (as example uses Maddy in the Book the Konstruktibilitätsaxiom of Gödel ). She sees the reason for this "realism" somewhat differently than Gödel and recognizes in particular the objects of set theory to concrete existence. It draws on recent findings of developmental psychology and cognitive science. In Naturalism in Mathematics she occupies a slightly modified position, referred to her as naturalism. Taking up the ideas of Willard van Orman Quine, Gödel and Ludwig Wittgenstein, she argues that in philosophical contemplation of mathematics, especially in applications of mathematics itself, and not outside, as in philosophy and the natural sciences, should have in mind. The validity of axioms must be assessed on practical considerations in mathematics by Maddy accordingly.

For her book Naturalism in Mathematics, she received the Lakatos Award in 2002.

In 2006, she held the Gaussian lecture the DMV in Dresden. Since 2007 she has been president of the Association for Symbolic Logic, the Vice President, she was 2001 to 2004.

Writings

• Realism in Mathematics, Oxford University Press, 1990
• Naturalism in Mathematics, Oxford University Press, 1997
• Second Philosophy - a naturalistic method, Oxford University Press, 2007
• Believing the axioms I and II, The Journal of Symbolic Logic 53, June and September 1988, pp. 481-511 and 736-764 (English)