 Motivated by these considerations, Maddy set out to inquire into the standards of existence implicit in mathematical practice, and into the implicit ontological commitments of mathematics that follow from these standards (Maddy 1990). She focussed on set theory, and on the methodological considerations that are brought to bear by the mathematical community on the question which large cardinal axioms can be taken to be true. Thus her view is closer to that of Gödel than to that of Quine. In more recent work, she isolates two maxims that seem to be guiding set theorists when contemplating the acceptability of new set theoretic principles: unify and maximize (Maddy 1997). The maxim “unify” is an instigation for set theory to provide a single system in which all mathematical objects and structures of mathematics can be instantiated or modelled. The maxim “maximize” means that set theory should adopt set theoretic principles that are as powerful and mathematically fruitful as possible.