This thesis examines the connections between the motivations of ante rem structuralism and the
problem of automorphism. Ante rem structuralists are led to the problem of automorphism because
of their commitment to the thesis of structure-relative identity. Ladyman's and Button's solutions
to the problem are both unsatisfactory. The problem can be solved only if ante rem structuralists
drop the thesis of structure-relative identity. Besides blocking the problem of automorphism, there
are further reasons why the thesis has to be dropped. (i) The purported metaphysical and epistemic
purchase of adopting the thesis can be put into doubt. (ii) Primitive identity within a mathematical
structure is more in line with ante rem structuralist's commitment to the faithfulness constraint
and to the ontological priority of structure over positions. However, the cost of dropping the thesis
is that ante rem structuralists cannot provide a satisfactory solution to Benacerraf's problem of
multiple reductions of arithmetic.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2008-05-14 |
| Date | 20 January 2010 |
| Creators | Siu, Ho Kin |
| Contributors | Menzel, Christopher |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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