Penelope Maddy

Penelope Maddy is UCI Distinguished Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and of Mathematics at the University of California, Irvine. Maddy specializes and is known for her influential work in the philosophy of mathematics and mathematical realism. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1979.

Maddy’s early work was largely a defense of the position known as mathematical realism or Platonism, in which mathematical objects (like, say, numbers) are real objects in the universe (though abstract). This position resembles that of famous mathematical realists like the great logician Kurt Gödel, though importantly Maddy also considers sets of objects real, as well. Her development of this position is in her early book Realism in Mathematics. Her later ideas led to a slightly different position, similar to the American philosopher W.V. Quine, expressed in her later book Naturalism in Mathematics.

Maddy was elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998.