A. Yap --- Homepage

Audrey Yap

Department of Philosophy
University of Victoria
P.O. Box 3045
Victoria, BC V8W 3P4

Email: ayap(at)uvic(dot)ca
CV

I am currently an associate professor in the Philosophy department at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia. My PhD work was done at Stanford University, where I wrote a dissertation entitled Mathematical Practice and the Philosophy of Mathematics under the supervision of my co-advisors Michael Friedman and Sol Feferman. My primary research areas are the history and philosophy of mathematics and logic, as well as feminist epistemology.

I am currently on the ASL Committee for Logic Education and am a board member of the Philosophy of Mathematics Association.

Selected Publications

"Feminist Radical Empiricism, Values, and Evidence", Hypatia 31(1) (Winter 2016): 58-73
"Logics of Temporal-Epistemic Actions" with Bryan Renne and Joshua Sack, forthcoming in Synthese
"Ad hominem fallacies and epistemic credibility," in Christian Dahlman and Thomas Bustamante (Eds.) Argument Types and Fallacies in Legal Argumentation (p. 19-35): Dordrecht: Springer.
"Dedekind and Cassirer on Mathematical Concept Formation", forthcoming in Philosophia Mathematica
"Idealization, Epistemic Logic, and Epistemology", Synthese 191 (14) (2014): 3351-3366
"Ad Hominem Fallacies, Bias, and Testimony" Argumentation 27 (2013): 97-109
"Gauss' Quadratic Reciprocity Theorem and Mathematical Fruitfulness" in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 42 (3) (September 2011): 410-415.
"Dynamic Epistemic Logic and Temporal Modality" in Dynamic Formal Epistemology, Patrick Girard, Olivier Roy, and Mathieu Marion (eds), Dordrecht: Springer, 2011.
"Logical Empiricism, Feminism, and Carnap's Principle of Tolerance" Hypatia 25(2) (2010): 437-454.
"Dynamic Epistemic Temporal Logic" with Bryan Renne and Joshua Sack, in the proceedings of LORI 2009.
"Dynamic Epistemic Logic and Branching Temporal Structures" with Tomohiro Hoshi, Synthese 169 (2009): 259-281.
"Predicativity and Structuralism in Dedekind’s Construction of the Reals" Erkenntnis 71(2) (Sept 2009): 157-173.
"Logical Structuralism and Benacerraf's Problem" Synthese 171 (1) (Nov 2009): 157-173.
"Revisiting Galison's "Aufbau/Bauhaus" in Light of Neurath's Philosophical Projects" with Angela Potochnik, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 37 (Sept. 2006): 469-488.
Mathematical Practice and the Philosophy of Mathematics, PhD Dissertation, Stanford University, July 2006.

Selected Talks

"Emmy Noether and the History of Structuralism: Invariants and Ideals", Carnegie Mellon University Colloquium, February 2016
"(Hip) throwing like a girl: combat sports and norms of female body comportment", CSWIP 2015, October 2015
"Structural Influences on Carnap", Virtual Seminar at Victoria University Wellington NZ, May 2015.
"Structural Influences on Carnap", Group Session for the Society for the History of Analytic Philosophy at the Pacific APA, April 2015
"Argumentation, Adversariality, and Social Norms" Keynote address at the Western Canadian Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, Victoria, March 2015
"Women in tech culture: What’s the big deal about diversity, anyway?" IdeaFest 2015, UVic, March 2015. (Public Lecture)
"The History of Algebra’s Impact on Philosophy of Mathematics", Innovations Workshop at McMaster, January 2015.
"Noether’s Mathematical Structuralism", PSA 2014, November 2014.
"Testimonial Injustice and Victim Blaming", WCPA 2014, October 2014.
"Feminist Radical Empiricism as Ideal Theory", UBC Spring Colloquium, March 2014.
"The History of Algebra’s Impact on Philosophy of Mathematics", SFU History and Philosophy of Mathematics Colloquium, November 2013.
"Ad Hominem Fallacies and Epistemic Credibility", IVR 2013, July 2013.
"Teaching Logic, Fighting Stereotypes", ASL Panel on Logic Education, February 2013
"Treatments of Time in Epistemic Logic", Logic and Interactive Rationality Seminar, University of Amsterdam, January 2013
"Idealization, Epistemic Logic, and Epistemology," SFU Philosophy Colloquium, September 2012
"Perfect Recall and Forgetting," Stanford Modal Logic Seminar, May 2011
"Dedekind and Cassirer on the Construction of Mathematical Concepts," UC Riverside Philosophy Colloquium, November 2010
"Epistemic Logic and Epistemology," UBC Spring Symposium, March 2010
"Dynamic Epistemic Temporal Logic," Workshop in Logic, Rationality, and Interaction, October 2009 (with Bryan Renne and Joshua Sack)
"Dynamic Epistemic Logic," UVic Economics Seminar, October 2009
"Mathematical Concepts and Fruitfulness," Philosophy of Science Association, November 2008
"ETL, DEL, and Past Operators," Workshop on Logic and Intelligent Interaction, European Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information, August 2008 (with Tomohiro Hoshi)
"Noether and Dedekind on Structures and Ideals," International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, June 2008
"Language, Bias, and Logic," Canadian Philosophical Association, June 2008.
"Dedekind's Conception of Set," Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Mathematics, June 2008.
"What Can Logical Empiricism Do For Feminism?" BC Philosophy Conference, Mar 2008.
"Product Update and Temporal Modality," Dynamic Logic Montréal, UQAM, June 2007.
"Predicativity and Determinateness in Dedekind's Construction of the Reals," Society for Exact Philosophy, May 2007.
"Creation and Construction: Dedekind and Kronecker on the Philosophy of Mathematics," UBC Philosophy Colloquium, Mar 2007.
"Dedekind's Structuralism in Historical Context," Logical Methods in the Humanities Workshop, Stanford University, May 2006.
"Product Update and Looking Backward," Games in Logic, Language and Computation 11, ILLC Amsterdam, September 2005

Dissertation

Title: Mathematical Practice and the Philosophy of Mathematics
Abstract: Most views in the philosophy of mathematics can be seen as addressing the following questions: what are mathematical objects, and how do we have knowledge of them? However, any account we give of how we have knowledge of mathematical objects has to take into account what sorts of things we claim they are; conversely, any account we give of the nature of those objects must be accompanied by a corresponding account of how it is that we acquire knowledge of them. In this dissertation, I argue that attentiveness to mathematical practice suggests a more fruitful approach to tackling these issues than the route typically taken.

The history and practice of modern algebra yields an interesting notion of abstract object, which is metaphysically "thin". A good illustration of this is found in Dedekind's work on the theory of ideals, and the way in which this work connects to his more general structuralist views in the philosophy of mathematics. What this Dedekindian view gives us is an alternative approach to explaining epistemic access to the objects of algebra, which takes into account the methods of algebra. For such objects, the explanation of how it is that we have knowledge about them is simply given by the fact that all there is to them are the structural properties by which they are defined in the first place.