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In Realistic Rationalism, Jerrold Katz develops a new philosophical position integrating realism and rationalism. Realism here means that the objects of study in mathematics and other formal sciences are abstract; rationalism means that our knowledge of them is not empirical. Katz uses this position to meet the principal challenges to realism. In exposing the flaws in criticisms of the antirealists, he shows that realists can explain knowledge of abstract objects without supposing we have causal contact with them, that numbers are determinate objects, and that the standard counterexamples to the abstract/concrete distinction have no force. He develops a rationalist and non-naturalist account of philosophical knowledge and argues that it is preferable to contemporary naturalist and empiricist accounts.
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Acknowledgments
I acknowledge with gratitude the help of many friends and colleagues at various stages in the writing of this book. Special thanks are due to Glenn Branch, who has been especially helpful in the ªnal stages of the undertaking. Special thanks are also due to Arnold Koslow and David Pitt, who were in at the beginning and provided support and useful comments all along the way. All three of them have taught me a lesson about generosity. In addition, thanks are owed to Jody Azzouni, Mark Balaguer, Ned Block, Paul Boghossian, Arthur Collins, Hartry Field, Eric Hetherington, Keith Hosacks, Dan Isaacson, Gerrit Jan Kemperdyk, Juliette Kennedy, Noa Latham, Paolo Mancosu, Richard Mendelsohn, Elliott Mendelson, Sid Morgenbesser, Tom Nagel, Yuji Nishiyama, Robert Nozick, Paul Postal, David Rosenthal, Mark Sainsbury, Robert Tragesser, Palle Yourgrau, Hao Wang, and Linda Wetzel. My thanks also go to the members of my seminars at the Graduate Center in the springs of 1993, 1994, and 1996, and to the members of my seminar at King’s College, University o