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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

185450

Abstraction and epistemic economy

Marco Panza(French National Centre for Scientific Research)

pp. 387-428

Abstract

Most of the arguments usually appealed to in order to support the view that some abstraction principles are analytic depend on ascribing to them some sort of existential parsimony or ontological neutrality, whereas the opposite arguments, aiming to deny this view, contend this ascription. As a result, other virtues that these principles might have are often overlooked. Among them, there is an epistemic virtue which I take these principles to have, when regarded in the appropriate settings, and which I suggest to call "epistemic economy'. My purpose is to isolate and clarify this notion by appealing to some examples concerning the definition of natural and real numbers.

Publication details

Published in:

Costreie Sorin (2016) Early analytic philosophy: new perspectives on the tradition. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 387-428

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-24214-9_17

Full citation:

Panza Marco (2016) „Abstraction and epistemic economy“, In: S. Costreie (ed.), Early analytic philosophy, Dordrecht, Springer, 387–428.