Talk:Structuralism (philosophy of mathematics)

Ante rem
I have added the "Editorializing" tag to the ante rem paragraph of the article's introduction. This may not be the right tag, only I could not find a better. I do not suspect that the writer's actual intent was to editorialize, but still: maybe the article would benefit by a clearer explanation of why Platonism should be a form of structuralism at all, for it is not clear to me that it is.

Would a Thomist agree that Platonism faced "usual problems of explaining the interaction between abstract ... structures and flesh-and-blood" people? Would not a Thomist prefer the word "form" to the word "structure"? Since Thomism is and has long been a major school of philosophy, can the words the article presently uses comport with a neutral point of view?

I do not have the answers to these questions, but am a little uneasy of the article's current approach. I am not sure that either Platonism or its sister, Thomism, is in fact structuralist. I suspect that the article's writer is himself a structuralist, which understandably is what would motivate him to write the article in the first place. Not a professional philosopher, I do not know how to improve the article, but maybe someone who does know how will do it. Tbtkorg (talk) 00:41, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Varieties
The attribution of thinkers and labels to the ante-rem, in-re and post-rem categories seems confusing or mistaken at some points. The Ante-rem description seems to agree with the literature, but the other two don't.   Shapiro says on p.271 that "Benacerraf (1965) adopts an eliminative, in re version of structuralism...". So Benacerraf can't be purely allocated to the Post-rem category. If his position shifted, this should be acknowledged. Concerning Hellman's position, Shapiro (op. cit.) says (p274) "Call this modal eliminative structuralism. Hellman (1989) carries out a programme like this...". Then Hellman says about his own modal structuralism (MS): "with regard to the in re/ante rem distinction, literally it doesn't apply to MS". So Hellman can't be purely allocated to the In-re category, especially when the article applies the label "eliminative" to the Post-rem category.  RMGunton (talk) 23:14, 23 November 2020 (UTC)