Aaron Ackbarali

Philosophy 350-01
Prof. Oberbrunner

The Indispensability of
Mathematical Truth in the
Earliest Universe

Introduction
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Realism is a difficult position to hold in philosophy. In its most basic form, Platonism,
one claims that all universals exist in the realm of Forms and when we experience
them through sensory experience, we are interacting with instances of those forms.
This is such a difficult position because for our modern minds it is almost beyond
belief that such an other-worldly realm could exist. Where is this realm? How does it
interact with our reality? These questions are very difficult for realists to handle with
regards to everyday sorts of objects such as books and chairs. We can already
interact with those as tangible objects, why ought they need to be tied to
mysterious undiscovered realms. However, mathematics is a different story. We can
indeed see instances of mathematical ideas such as one-ness, instantiated perhaps
by one chair or one book, but there is no tangible portion of what one is. One could
claim that our observation of a singular object is an interaction with the essence of
one-ness, but if one should hold this view then they also must hold the view that the
book cut in half is an interaction with the essences of both two-ness and one halfness, by observing instances. For an object to be instantiating both mathematical
ideas would be contradictory, as two and one half are not equivalent
mathematically; thus if the process of instantiation preserves logical statements 1,
which must be the case, then it cannot be the case that any essence of one-ness
was interacted with.
This fundamental difference, sensory comprehensibility versus ultimately abstract
nature, between our common world and mathematics is what drives the thinking

1 Instantiation as a functor, from the category of forms to the category of our

universe, must be locally equivalent to the identity map (local to the extension, i.e.
entities instantiating any particular form). This is trivially the case since instances
embody the form they instantiate. The identity map naturally preserves logical
statements, thus instantiation must.
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that perhaps mathematical entities could exist. This essay will make an argument
for the existence of mathematical truth due to a weakened version of the
indispensability argument which appeals to the nature of any universe.

Indispensability
The Quine-Putnam indispensability argument has been perhaps the most compelling
argument for mathematical realism. The version of this argument which shall be
used in this paper is the following:
"Indispensability: a) Mathematical theories are indispensable components of our
best scientific

theories; b) referring to mathematical objects and invoking

mathematical principles is

indispensable to the practice of science.

Confirmational Holism: The evidence for a scientific theory bears directly

upon its theoretical

apparatus as a whole and not upon its individual

hypotheses.
Naturalism: Science is our ultimate arbiter of truth and existence." [Leng 396]
The reason why indispensability, if true, would assure the existence of mathematical
objects is that we genuinely believe the subject of our science is practiced on and
reveals real entities, entities in existence. For example, relative to an average
person's sensory perception capabilities, a single electron is wholly undetectable. It
is far too small to be seen and carries far too little energy to interact with our other
four senses. However, through extensive research and scientific practice we have
developed machinery capable of sensing its effects and making them visible to us.
Through extensive mathematical and theoretical research we have come to
understand what the effects of existence would imply and we have observed
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correlating events such as lightening, which confirm our hypothesis. It has become
an undeniable truth that the electron exists. This principle is what is defined as
naturalism; if it is scientifically true, then is it true. It is mere fact that we could not
have done science regarding the electron without using mathematics. Its nature is
beyond our observation thus since we are working in the abstract, mathematics is
the only tool for understanding. Mathematics is indispensible. Finally, since science
relies on all of its indispensible constituents, and we have an ontological
commitment (belief in existence) to its results because of a belief in naturalism, we
ought to have an ontological commitment to science's indispensible constituents.
Thus if we believe the objects of our science exist, we must believe mathematical
entities exist.

Objections to the Indispensability Argument

To be clear, the indispensability argument is not claiming that all mathematical
objects exist, nor is it claiming that all the mathematical objects which are
indispensable to all of science exist. As in the case of the electron, we can see that
the scientific theory of the electron relies indispensably on some mathematics,
those mathematical entities directly related to the mathematics of the electron are
the objects being claimed to exist. Furthermore, any mathematical objects
indispensable to theory preceding the theory of the electron which is also not itself
indispensable to the theory of the electron does not suddenly extinguish from
existence, similarly the mathematical entities indispensable to the theory of the
electron do not come into existence. We were simply mistaken about the existence
of now dispensable entities, and we have thusly discovered the indispensable ones.
Lastly we aren't claiming that science is the ultimate decider on all truth and

existence, rather we are only considering a logical universe of things which science
can be applied to. This also protects the argument from bad science, science which
yields false results or science which can be shown to have been false. Mathematical
entities indispensable to those theories do not vanish from existence. Those which
are dispensable to all true theories were simply mistakenly thought to be real, they
never truly existed. With this restricted domain it would be valid to say that if
science is the arbiter of truth and existence then it is ultimately so. Moving forward
there are two fundamental objections that can be made to this argument; objecting
to confirmational holism, and objecting to naturalism.
"Confirmation may be holistic with respect to the nominalistic parts of our empirical
theories (actually, I doubt even this), but the mathematical parts of our empirical
theories are not confirmed by empirical findings. Indeed, empirical findings provide
no reason whatsoever for supposing that the mathematical parts of our empirical
theories are true." [Balaguer 55-56] A simple counterexample will suffice to show
that there is some scientific theory which is not evidenced by all some part of its
theoretical apparatus. In fact any scientific theory which makes any reference to a
numeric scale would be a counterexample. This can be seen by observing that there
is no causality associated with the claim 'object-x has property-y in the amount z'.
Object-x being in the extension of property-y is does not cause nor is it caused by
the number z. Thus the actual number z cannot serve as evidence for object-x
having property-y. The evidence that is here is that object-x has property-y in some
amount, z is not necessary. One might say that, in such systems, numerical scales
and perhaps numbers themselves are dispensable to the theory of that system,
however, this is not the case. One cannot have an amount devoid of a unit. There
must be some precise amount by which all other amounts are referentially
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described, that is the nature of a scale. The very nature thus causes some
numerical relation to occur, the precise labeling of which is inconsequential, be it z
or 2z. Thus the numerical scale is genuinely indispensible, but its content, the
actual numbers, are not required other than in name. We can now conclude that
confirmational holism is not necessarily the case, as the content of some
mathematical parts of the theoretical apparatus might be nominalistic in nature.
The second objection is that science cannot decide truth or existence. A sufficiently
strong argument given is that there are hypotheses in the indispensable theory of
mathematics, the structures formed by mathematical entities which are
indispensable, whose truths cannot be resolved. One such question is that of the
continuum hypothesis. The continuum hypothesis claims that there is no set which
is strictly bigger than the set of natural numbers and strictly smaller than the set of
real numbers. It was proven by Paul Cohen that this hypothesis cannot be resolved
by the Zermelo-Frankel and Choice axioms of set theory. Thus with one further
appropriate axiom, the continuum hypothesis can be made true or false. Trueness
and falsehood are thusly uncertain in our indispensable mathematical theory, the
same truth which a scientific naturalist would hope science could use to make
claims. Thus in the science we practice, the truth we invoke via naturalism is not
well defined. Furthermore, the LwenheimSkolem theorem, which also results from
indispensable mathematics, would say that even when we did invoke our
ambiguous truth with any intention, we could be mistakenly invoking an unintended
definition, since both the intended definition and a second unintended definition
both satisfy the extension of the intended predicate. Scientific naturalism is
severely crippled as science is unable to make any solid claims at all about the truth
of statements.
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One could make the third objection that mathematics is dispensable to science, but
this objection is "extremely controversial." [Balaguer 84] In fact, it is my opinion
that mathematics is indispensable to everything. I will sketch a simple argument of
this. Consider anything; the statement, "there is nothing there" is vacuously true
when the locational 'there' is taken to mean within the bounds of the system
constructed by anything which was considered. The idea of nothing is indispensably
tied to the mathematical idea of nothing. In fact, nothing can always be viewed as
an instantiation of mathematical nothingness (whichever precise formulation of
nothing be applicable, e.g. 0, {}, etc.), since all versions of instantiated nothing's
would be equivalent. One should be careful to note that this does not guarantee the
existence a mathematical entity since via the same argument given against
confirmational holism, one can see that the content of the mathematical entity
nothing is nominalistic. However, this is still sufficient as an rebuttal to the objection
that science, or indeed anything, is totally devoid of indispensable mathematical
entities.

Reformulation of the Indispensability Argument

Fortunately it is not the content of this paper to defend all of the Quine-Putnam
indispensability argument from these crippling objections. I only claim that, at the
very least, mathematical truth itself survives both of these objections and
moreover, must exist.

Let us first examine the objection that truth is nominalistic in content due to
undecidability in the foundations of mathematics. Let us also survive the
LwenheimSkolem theorem by asking the reader to note that the argument we
give below is independent of what the truth predicate is and thus works equally well
for the intended and unintended definitions of our word truth. We need not have a
singular foundation for all of our indispensable mathematic theory. We would not
have run into the issue of the continuum hypothesis if instead of working in ZFC we
permitted the hypothesis, and all independent hypotheses, to have their truth be
relative to a foundation where such truth can be decided. An idea very akin to a
Carnap scheme of frameworks. "[The continuum hypothesis] shows that no concrete
structure can be a standard model for the naive conception of the totality of all sets;
for any concrete structure has a possible extension that contains more 'sets.' (If we
identify sets with the points that represent them in the various possible concrete
structures, we might say: it is not possible for all possible sets to exist in any one
world!) Yet set theory does not become impossible. Rather, set theory becomes the
study of what must hold in, e.g., any standard model for Zermelo set
theory."[Putnam 22]
I believe we ought go further yet and say that truth in science is only relative to its
particular indispensible mathematical theory. A natural objection to this would be
that we would then have mathematical theories by which one makes contradictory
statements of the other. However, this is only the case if both theories are
indispensable to the same scientific theory. This would imply that some
contradiction would exist in our universe since we could theoretically extend our
natural science over the domains of the independent mathematical foundations.
The nature of a genuine contradiction is that it could not exist, thus one of the two
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contradicting mathematical foundations must be dispensable. We can suitably

reform naturalism to the claim that science is the ultimate arbiter of the truth, thus
existence, of statements made relative to a theories necessary foundation. This
reformulation seems to also solve the problems we encountered with confirmational
holism. We now only say that at least the relative form of mathematical truth is a
bore down upon by a scientific theory. This is virtually a tautology since it follows
immediately from the single premise that a given scientific theory is true. Not all is
well though, our reformulation seems to force a new problem. We now have many
kinds of mathematical truth and many kinds of existence; are any "true" and do any
"exist"?
The mathematical truth in particular that this paper refers to is the one which
presides over our universe, embodying physical truth as a subset of its extension.
Consider a universe devoid of anything. Devoid of time and space itself. The truth of
the equation "1+1=2" is unaffected. It still has truth relative to many mathematical
foundational systems. Thus even devoid entirely of everything, the universe itself
relies on mathematical truth to be an entity. Mathematical truth, in some ultimate
form, is indispensable to the structure of any universe. By our revised, weakened
version of indispensability, if we are going to make the ontological commitment to
the existence of the universe then we ought make and ontological commitment to
mathematical truth. It is by introducing space, time, matter, etc. that we create new
frameworks for other kinds of truth to live. "Physical objects are postulated entities
which round out, and simplify our account of the flux of experience, just, as the
introduction of irrational numbers simplifies laws of arithmetic."[Quine 10]

Concluding Remarks
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One could make the objection that, supposing the argument above were accurate,
could we not do the same for mathematical falsehood? Supposing that we could
might seem to be problematic since potentially an entity in our universe could
instantiate both ultimate truth and ultimate falsehood. However, if an entity
instantiated both ultimate truth and ultimate falsehood, when restricted to the
appropriate system, it must be the case that either its properties are locally true or
locally false, or the entity is an instance of nothingness. It is vacuously acceptable
for any instance of nothingness to locally instantiate any truth and falsehood and
thus acceptable for such to be an instance of ultimate truth and falsehood.
Supposing it were not nothingness, we know, by assumption of the structure of our
universe, that it cannot exist locally, that is to say within its own indispensable
framework, in contradiction. Thus it must not be an instance of at least one local
form of truth or falsehood implying it is not an instance of either ultimate
mathematical truth or falsehood.
While mathematical truth seems to survive the appearance of mathematical
falsehood, it perhaps does not need to. There is a fundamental difference between
this ultimate truth and falsehood that goes beyond simply being negations of each
other. If we take our universe that consists of absolutely nothing physical, neither
space nor time nor any dimension, and we go yet further and begin stripping
possible abstraction, it seems that we can never arrive at a structure where we can
abandon truth. We are forced to have truth always in order to satisfy the statement,
"this universe is a universe." We could try and abandon truth by refusing to
abandon falsehood, but this would leave us with the statement, "it is not the case
that the universe is not a universe." Thus abandoning truth, refusing to abandon
falsehood, seems to force one to not abandon negation. Such a stripped down
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universe is still more complex than we could make it if we allowed ourselves to

abandon falsehood (at least one more predicate more complex!). Considering that
our intent was to strip the universe as bare as we could, it seems that falsehood is
not as necessary as truth. Thus perhaps we ought not be necessarily compelled into
the existence of a mathematical entity for falsehood.
Such an ultimate mathematical truth can be thought of as a conglomerate of all
mathematical truths. One which can evaluate any statement and return a truthvalue in every system where one is decidable. Very akin to a platonic form, such a
truth is almost more real than our universe since we could continuously strip our
universe of all traits, until we were left with perhaps only the identity claim that the
universe is itself, without affecting its existence. Its existence is an entirely foreign
sort as well since it is instantiated everywhere, at all times, before time, after time,
even by the nothingness of the vacuum. How could such a thing be said to exist? In
many ways the nature of its existence is only as mysterious as our own. For, we live
in the universe but where does the universe live? Such puzzling questions causing
us to be afraid of our lack of understanding ought not keep us from bending
philosophy to fit ourselves. If we do that, perhaps with the claim that the content of
this ultimate mathematical truth is simply nominalistic, then we risk our own
existence since the ultimate mathematical truth is self-referential, its only content is
itself, and thus if its content were nominalistic it would be nominalistic. This would
mean our universe, all things in it including us, are but labels and collections. This is
more than traditional nominalism which only claims our words and references are
unreal labels and abstract collections. This would mean we, our tangible physical
atoms, are abstract, unreal. Lest we venture ourselves into the existential crisis of

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being but a thought in the mind of God, let us recall Descartes and know that at
least I exist.

Bibliography
Balaguer, Mark (2009). Realism and Anti-Realism in Mathematics. Philosophy of
Mathematics (Handbook of the Philosophy of Science), A. D. Irvine (ed.),
Amsterdam: Elsevier/North-Holland:35-101.
Leng, Mary (2002). What's Wrong With Indispensability?. Synthese 131 (3):395-417.
Putnam, Hilary (1967). Mathematics without Foundations. Journal of Philosophy 64
(1):5-22.
Quine, W. V. (1961). On What There Is. From a Logical Point of View, T. Crane & K.
Farkas (eds.), Harvard University Press:21-38.

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