Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Many arguments in the philosophy of mathematics centre on whether mathematics is indispensible to natural sciences and whether the existence of mathematical objects must thus be presupposed and mathematical realism endorsed. Contrary to this, it has been recently claimed that the evolutionary challenge for moral realism is equally a challenge for mathematical realism (Justin Clarke-Doane, Morality and Mathematics: The Evolutionary Challenge, Ethics 122, Jan 2012). The evolutionary challenge for moral realism is, according to Clarke-Doane, based on the idea that our moral beliefs are the products of non-truth-tracking evolutionary forces and are, hence, indifferent to moral truth. Analogously, Clarke-Doane makes the significantly weaker claim that if our mathematical beliefs are the products of evolutionary forces, then they are non-truth-tracking. I will show how this line of argument can be reasonably hold but must eventually fail in favour of the indispensability argument.