Tanswell-Kidd2021_Article_MathematicalPracticeAndEpistem.pdf (554.35 kB)
Mathematical practice and epistemic virtue and vice
journal contribution
posted on 2020-04-20, 10:50 authored by Fenner Tanswell, Ian James KiddWhat sorts of epistemic virtues are required for effective mathematical practice? Should these be virtues of individual or collective agents? What sorts of corresponding epistemic vices might interfere with mathematical practice? How do these virtues and vices of mathematics relate to the virtue-theoretic terminology used by philosophers? We engage in these foundational questions, and explore how the richness of mathematical practices is enhanced by thinking in terms of virtues and vices, and how the philosophical picture is challenged by the complexity of the case of mathematics. For example, within different social and interpersonal conditions, a trait often classified as a vice might be epistemically productive and vice versa. We illustrate that this occurs in mathematics by discussing Gerovitch’s historical study of the aggressive adversarialism of the Gelfand seminar in post-war Moscow. From this we conclude that virtue epistemologies of mathematics should avoid pre-emptive judgments about the sorts of epistemic character traits that ought to be promoted and criticised.
History
School
- Science
Department
- Mathematics Education Centre
Published in
SyntheseVolume
199Issue
1-2Pages
407-426Publisher
Springer VerlagVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The AuthorsPublisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Springer under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2020-04-13Publication date
2020-05-12Copyright date
2021ISSN
0039-7857eISSN
1573-0964Publisher version
Language
- en