Short Profile on Pen Maddy

On the UCI website there is a short profile on Pen Maddy, the Logician and Philosopher of Science. I have taken three classes with her (two on the philosophy of logic and one of the philosophy of mathematics; and schedule permitting, I will take some more in the future). Anyway, she is the kindest and most helpful professor as well as being brilliant. (Parenthetically, she is also a baseball fan, which is awesome.)

She has had four books published; the most recent of which is Second Philosophy: A Naturalistic Method. This book, which I had the privilege to read with Prof Maddy and some of the Logic and Philosophy of Science graduate students at UCI demonstrates how a scientist, whom Maddy refers to as as the 'Second Philosopher' (she- the Second Philosopher- is philosophically naive, but scientifically sophisticated) would go about doing philosophy. First, Maddy describes how the Second Philosopher reacts to various philosophies and then she shows how the Second Philosopher does philosophy in an austere form of naturalism.

If you have not read Maddy's books before, and naturally I suggest that you do, one of the reasons they are such a pleasure to read even though the content is dense is that she is very attuned to the history of science and mathematics. And so Maddy actually looks at the way that science and mathematics is done as opposed to just giving some a priori explanation that has nothing to do with science. This leads me to what I think is the best invention in the Second Philosophy book, viz. the notion of a KF-Structure. (The K stands for Kant and the F for Frege.) The KF-Structure, is, as I recall it, the bare bones world that the Second Philosopher is able to come up with. And it turns out, that there is plenty one can do with such a world. Anyway, when I get my hands on a copy again I will write more about the KF-Structure. And this reminds me, I also need to talk about- one day- with respect to the philosophy of mathematics robust and thin realism as well as arealism. (I generally consider myself to be a thin realist- like Aristotle before me, whereas Maddy is an arealist.)