Alexander Paseau

Alexander Christopher Paseau is a British philosopher of Greek and Belgian origin. He is Professor of Mathematical Philosophy at the University of Oxford and the Stuart Hampshire Fellow at Wadham College. He specializes in the philosophy of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion, and has made many well-known contributions to these fields.

He has been an Associate Editor of the journal Mind and has held Research Fellowships from the Mind Association and the Leverhulme Trust.

Research work
Paseau subscribes to a broadly realist conception of mathematical truth, stating in an interview that "mathematical truth is not tensed. Mathematicians discover mathematical truths; they don’t make them up". In the same interview, Paseau also maintains that "inductive reasoning is crucial for mathematical knowledge" and that "we can know a mathematical truth without ever having proved it".

Paseau also works on the subtraction argument for metaphysical nihilism. Paseau's view is discussed and defended by Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra in "The Subtraction Arguments for Metaphysical Nihilism: Compared and Defended".

Books

 * Mathematical Knowledge, co-editor with Mary Leng and Michael Potter, Oxford University Press 2007
 * Philosophy of Mathematics, (ed.), 5 volumes, Routledge 2017
 * One True Logic, with Owen Griffiths, Oxford University Press 2022
 * Indispensability, with Alan Baker, Cambridge University Press, 2023.
 * The Euclidean Programme, with Wesley Wrigley, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming
 * What is Mathematics About?, Oxford University Press, forthcoming