Question

I am graduate student and have a decent understanding of logic and set theory.

Recently I have got interested in the philosophy of mathematics and set theory. I have read a number of papers by Penelope Maddy and Saharon Shelah, but I am wondering what other papers or books I should read. Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a good resource, especially for 'analytic' approaches. See the Philosophy of Mathematics entry, and links at the bottom of the page. You might also want to browse through the dedicated journal Philosophia Mathematica. If you're interested in approaches which look to broaden the range of questions asked by philosophers about mathematics, you could try Mancosu (ed.) The Philosophy of Mathematical Practice.

Answer 2

David Corfield's Towards a Philosophy of Real Mathematics is an excellent read, and also likely to stretch you mathematically. It takes up the theme mentioned in Andrej's answer: mathematics is a great deal more than set theory, so philosophy of mathematics should be a great deal more than philosophy of set theory. (But I understand that you're specifically interested in philosophy of set theory, and of course there's nothing wrong with that.)

Answer 3

Benacerraf and Putnam's Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings is a pretty standard (as these things go) collection of seminal papers in the philosophy of mathematics generally, and in the philosophy of set theory in particular (Part IV). Looking farther afield, you could use Maddy as a guide to the literature and go through some of this syllabus, which largely builds around that volume.

You don't say exactly what papers of Maddy's you've read, so maybe this next isn't useful, but I remember getting a lot out of her Naturalism in Mathematics many moons ago, and maybe you'd prefer a single, focused work to a bevy of papers. Rather than a survey, this book takes a particular philosophical stance, and uses it to give a sustained argument against the idea of adopting $V=L$ as a foundational axiom. Along the way, Maddy situates her position among the traditional philosophy of math literature (e.g. Quine), while also dealing substantially with the set-theoretic issues/technicalities that necessarily intertwine with any attempts to do something serious.

Beyond the works already mentioned, if you seek current philosophical work that draws directly on the set-theoretic state-of-the-art, my humble suggestion is to look to folks like Peter Koellner (disclaimer: former advisor) and MO-superstar Joel David Hamkins.

Answer 4

Philosophy of mathematics seems to focus primarily on set theory, which is probably a historical accident (just like it is a historical accident that set theory became the prevalent "foundation" in the 20th century). If you want to see things from other perspectives you could read things like:

• S. Awodey: Structure in mathematics and logic: a categorical perspective. Philosophia Mathematica (3), vol. 4 (1996), pp. 209--237. (See also the subsequent discussion.)

• F. W. Lawvere's "Down with "Foundations"! Up with algebra!" and "Why are we concerned? II" posting on the categories mailing list, which include further references.

Perhaps other, more knowledgable readers, can suggest additional references in this direction.

Answer 5

Last fall I taught a course in the Philosophy of Set Theory at NYU and you can find the reading list available on my web page. This course was more narrrowly focused on the question of realism and pluralism than some of the other syllabi mentioned in the other excellent answers here.

Answer 6

For the philosophy of Mathematics side, rather than the set theory side, I'd suggest:

Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings; by Benacerraf & Putnam

From Frege to Godel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic; edited by Jean van Heijenoort

Logic, Logic, and Logic; by George Boolos

Fixing Frege; by John Burgess

Foundations without Foundationalism; by Stewart Shapiro

New Waves in the Philosophy of Mathematics; edited by Linnebo and Bueno

For their historical interest:

Foundations of Arithmetic; by Gottlob Frege

An Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy; by Bertrand Russell

One book on the set theory side that I can recommend:

Set Theory and its Philosophy; by Michael Potter

Answer 7

Maybe not quite the topic you're after, but I really enjoyed Lakatos, Proofs and Refutations.

Answer 8

Paul Benacerraf's "What Numbers could not be" and "Mathematical Truth" are interesting. Shapiro's book Thinking about Mathematics is a good introduction to philosophy of math and goes through some history (Plato, Kant, Mill, Frege) before getting into stuff from the last century.

Answer 9

For a break from the dry analyticity of most of the philosophy of mathematics, try Alain Badiou's "Number and numbers".

Answer 10

The Foundations of Mathematics (FOM) mailing list has fair amount of interesting discussion with references worth following, plus a lot of lameness like anything else on the internet. Browsing its archives (so you can skip around easily) is usually fun and can help you find more stuff to look into. Location:

• http://www.cs.nyu.edu/pipermail/fom/

Answer 11

Borges 'The Library of Babel' is a beautiful meditation on all sorts of philosophical positions around the 'idea' of infinity, epistemology, the sociology of science, set theory paradoxes. Its literature & not philosophy though, or is it the other way around...?

Answer 12

Here are 3 ones:

Critique of Pure Reason (Immanuel Kant) (It seems there are sections that are more mathematically relevant than others.)

The Provenace of Pure Reason (William Tait)

Philosophies of Mathematics (Alexander George and Daniel Velleman)