Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persist...

The long read: As GenAI becomes the primary way to find information, local and traditional wisdom is being lost. And we are only beginning to realise what we’re missing

From Jeffrey Epstein to Lawrence Krauss to Woody Allen, Chomsky has shown a clear pattern of poor judgment and low moral standards. Hard to express how disappointed I am in him. (2,800 words.)

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Will AI stretch our minds—or stunt them?

Abstract. In this paper we develop a systematic account of trust in mathematics based on Katherine Hawley’s commitment account of trust. We focus on two re

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Abstract. In this paper we develop a systematic account of trust in mathematics based on Katherine Hawley’s commitment account of trust. We focus on two re

Everyone who has come up with a new idea or concept faces the same problem: they need to call it something. This choice is simultaneously arbitrary and important. The new idea could have any name, ...

In ontological debates on the existence of mathematical objects, it has long been taken for granted that if we take our mathematical discourse at face value, it follows from the fact that our true mathematical statements refer to mathematical objects that mathematical objects exists; reference in true statements entails existence. In this paper, I argue that there are positions available in the philosophy of logic that allow us to dislodge this assumption, allowing for a nominalist position according to which statements such as ‘there are four prime numbers between 1 and 10’ are true and genuinely refer to numbers, without a corresponding statement asserting the existence of numbers following from it. Consequently, there is an overlooked nominalist position according to which objects just are what singular terms refer to and that reference is successful when those singular terms figure in true statements, with corresponding existence statements being literally false. I argue that this view is not only coherent, but that it does not entail that there are objects that do not exist.

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