Realistic rationalism
Jerrold J. Katz
The MIT Press
In   Realistic Rationalism, Jerrold Katz develops a new philosophical  position integrating   realism and rationalism. Realism here means that  the objects of study in mathematics   and other formal sciences are  abstract; rationalism means that our knowledge of them is   not empirical.  Katz uses this position to meet the principal challenges to realism. In    exposing the flaws in criticisms of the antirealists, he shows that  realists can explain   knowledge of abstract objects without supposing we  have causal contact with them, that   numbers are determinate objects, and  that the standard counterexamples to the   abstract/concrete distinction  have no force. He develops a rationalist and non-naturalist   account of  philosophical knowledge and argues that it is preferable to contemporary    naturalist and empiricist accounts.