FOM: Is `weak realism' possible?

Peter Schuster pschust at rz.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de
Wed Jun 14 05:34:40 EDT 2000


>From the postings 

Neil Tennant  Tue, 13 Jun 2000 13:45:34 -0400 (EDT)
Mark Steiner Tue, 13 Jun 2000 20:49:52 +0300

I understand that some sort of `weak realism' is philosophically 
possible, which assumes the existence of certain objects but not 
the knowledge of all truth values, and that Goedel presumably  
had such a standpoint ( by the way, I could never believe what 
one is frequently told, that he was an unreflected Platonist ). 

However, is there any *committed realist* who would like to argue 
against the possibility of a `weak realism', who maintains that 
the law of bivalence has to be part of any realism?!  As I learned from 
the recent debate on constructive mathematics, there must be some.  

Peter Schuster. 


PS  Many thanks to Neil and Mark for their contributions. 







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