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Mathematical Philosophy - the application of logical and mathematical methods in philosophy - is about to experience a tremendous boom in various areas of philosophy. At the new Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, which is funded mostly by the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, philosophical research will be carried out mathematically, that is, by means of methods that are very close to those used by the scientists.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Mathematical philosophy • Metaphysics of structure, dependence, modality, laws • Formal logic, conditionals, presuppositions • Philosophy of language: compositionality, opacity, quotation • Realism debates • Measurement, magnitudes • Existence, nonexistents • Truth relativism • Theistic arguments • Disease ontologyThis podcast presents research talks and discussions in mathematical philosophy, with a particular emphasis on metaphysics and the philosophy of language approached through formal tools from logic, mathematics, and model theory. Across the episodes, speakers use frameworks such as possible-worlds semantics, intensional logic, and formal accounts of inference to clarify traditional philosophical questions and to test competing metaphysical views.
A recurring theme is how semantic phenomena—especially opacity, quotation, and the behavior of conditionals—interact with compositionality and valid inference. Several talks revisit Fregean ideas about sense and reference in modern set-theoretic and possible-worlds terms, and examine when intensional resources are required to preserve systematic meaning-composition. Relatedly, there is sustained attention to how apparently problematic linguistic data can generate alleged counterexamples to familiar logical rules, and how careful semantic analysis may dissolve them.
On the metaphysical side, the podcast explores dependence relations in structuralism about mathematics, debates about realism (including structural realism and internal realism), and questions about the ontological commitments of logic itself—such as whether classical logic presupposes abstract objects or other metaphysical assumptions. Other episodes connect formal and metaphysical analysis to scientific practice, including realism about measurement and magnitudes and the metaphysics of laws of nature (e.g., the status of the principle of least action). Additional topics include modality grounded in dispositions, the classification and ontology of diseases, relativism about truth and assertibility (with connections to intuitionistic logic), and a philosophical debate—presented in German—over rational arguments for and against the existence of God, engaging cosmological and teleological considerations and the problem of evil.