Marks of Mathematical Concepts

Abstract

In Kirchberg am Wechsel in the summer of 1992 Mathieu Marion spoke on the
“dark cellar of platonism”. Then in 1995 he first published
his striking finitist interpretation of the later Wittgenstein, following three
years later with a trenchant book on the foundations of mathematics. Marion says
that overall the later Wittgenstein is a finitist, thereby posing a challenge to
the restrictive traditional interpretation of Wittgenstein's later philosophy of
mathematics as being anthropological or strictly finitistic. Yet, a 15 March
1944 manuscript entry on number and rules reveals a case in which Wittgenstein
is less finitistic than dialectical, by which I mean that the main point is not
so much to secure a particular core account as to describe its possible
evanescence.