Geoffrey Hellman

That's what I looked like, sitting at my Stenway, c. 1990. Now my appearance is a nice illustration of why 'bald' is a vague predicate! But during the intervening years, I also mastered and performed Bach's 6th Partita (e minor), Schumann's Davidsbundler, the Phantasie, and Kreisleriana, Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin and the paino Trio, the complete Mozart sontas for piano and violin (with Kensley Rosen), and many other chamber and solo works. (It's a disturbing fact that, in addition to 'bald', every predicate and singular term in this last sentence is also vague. But that's life! Furthermore, as Russell suggested, the rarified paradise of classical mathematics and logic, from which vagueness is banished, doesn't have widespread appeal.)

In philosophy, over the last decade and a half, my work has been concentrated in the areas of philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. In the former, I have been developing a modal-structural interpretation of mathematics, a variety of structuralism quite distinct from set theoretic or other Platonistic accounts.

This also has concerned the closely related question of the scope and limits of nominalism. In a second line of research, I have been examining varieties of constructive mathematics (e.g. Bishop's constructivism, intuitionism, predicativism) and apparent limitations in connection with scientific applications, arising especially in quantum mechanics and space-time physics. Closely related is the whole question of indispensability arguments for classical mathematics.

In the philosophy of science, I have pursued work on the significance of the Bell results in the foundations of quantum mechanics, e.g., implications concerning determinism, locality, and realism (a kind of "experimental metaphysics," as Shimony has put it). Other contributions have included a critique of quantum logic, and, more recently, a volume of Minnesota Studies on recent approaches to the quantum measurement problem (co-edited with Richard Healey). I also continue to think about more general topics in philosophy of science such as Bayesian confirmation, reasonable realism, physicalism and unity of science.

Use the links for selected publications and other items.

 



Recent and forthcoming publications (pdf files)
 

"Structuralism, mathematical" (forthcoming in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2d Ed. (MacMillan))

"Structuralism" (in S.Shapiro, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic (Oxford, 2005))

 

"Does Category Theory Provide a Framework for Mathematical Structuralism?" (2003)

  "What Is Categorical Structuralism?"(forthcoming)
  "Maximality vs. Extendability: Reflections on Structuralism and Set Theory" (2002)
 

"Against 'Absolutely Everything'!" (forthcoming)

  "Russell's Absolutism vs.(?) Structuralism" (2004)

 

"Predicativism as a Philosophical Position" (2004)
  "Pluralism and the Foundations of Mathematics" (with J.L. Bell, forthcoming)
A not-so-recent non-publication:
  "Carnap* Replies"

 

 

 

 

 

 

List of Publications
   

 

 


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