Mathematics, morally

• Published in 2004
• Added on 2020-10-16

A source of tension between Philosophers of Mathematics and Mathematicians is the fact that each group feels ignored by the other; daily mathematical practie seems barely affected by the questions the Philosophers are considering. In this talk I will describe an issue that does have an impact on mathematical practice, and a philosophical stance on mathematics that is detectable in the work of practising mathematicians. No doubt controversially, I will call this issue `morality', but the term is not of my coining: there are mathematicians across the world who use the word `morally' to greate effect in private, and I propose that there should be a public theory of what they mean by this.

Links

• http://eugeniacheng.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/cheng-morality.pdf

Other information

BibTeX entry

@article{MathematicsMorally,
	key = {MathematicsMorally},
	type = {article},
	title = {Mathematics, morally},
	author = {Eugenia Cheng},
	abstract = {A source of tension between Philosophers of Mathematics and Mathematicians is the fact that each group feels ignored by the other; daily mathematical practie seems barely affected by the questions the Philosophers are considering. In this talk I will describe an issue that does have an impact on mathematical practice, and a philosophical stance on mathematics that is detectable in the work of practising mathematicians. No doubt controversially, I will call this issue `morality', but the term is not of my coining: there are mathematicians across the world who use the word `morally' to greate effect in private, and I propose that there should be a public theory of what they mean by this.},
	comment = {},
	date_added = {2020-10-16},
	date_published = {2004-11-11},
	urls = {http://eugeniacheng.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/cheng-morality.pdf},
	collections = {the-act-of-doing-maths},
	url = {http://eugeniacheng.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/cheng-morality.pdf},
	year = 2004,
	urldate = {2020-10-16}
}