Kant’s Views on Mathematics and Constructivism

Abstract

The author rejects the opinion that Kant’s views on mathematics lend in any interesting sense support to constructivism, understood as the thesis that the truth conditions of mathematical propositions consist in the existence of their constructive proofs or in the possibility of proving them constructively. Kant’s insistence on the role of intuitive construction in mathematics is here interpreted as a thesis concerning mathematical concepts, not mathematical objects, and therefore not in any sense implying that the objects of mathematical cognition cannot be interpreted classically.