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reliabilist Platonism: not an oxymoron

This is a response to an objection posed to my use of a Platonistic intuition of number to advance some part of natural theology (I forget which part).  My buddy J_ objected by pointing out that while there have often been a good number of Platonists in mathematics, the last few decades mathematicians have seen a greater number of mathematicians who embrace a naturalistic view of math... one which maintains that the truths of math are merely reliable rather than something epistemically extraordinary.

My reply is to embrace a reliabilist epistemology but point out that it is quite consistent with a Platonic ontology.  That is, my reason for positing supra-natural / meta-physical reality is not quite the fact that I know that 3 + 7 MUST equal 10 and that all other rational beings must agree that it is true.  On the contrary, my reason is the fact that what I know when I know 3 + 7 = 10 is the same as what anyone else knows--even if neither of us is absolutely sure that it must be the case.  Only by being sure about the semantics can we assign a tentative veridical status to that which we understand.  And this semantical transcendence is connects us with something that is the same for all-- even if none of us "perceives" it in the same way!

In a way, a reliabilist epistmeology combined with an affirmation of semantic success in meaningfulness of terms actually serves natural theology better.  It allows for the signified to be greater than our rationality can contain.

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