Platonism - Modern Platonism

Modern Platonism

Apart from historical Platonism originating from thinkers such as Plato himself, Numenius, Plotinus, Augustine and Proclus, we may wish to consider the theory of abstract objects in the modern sense.

Platonism is the view that there exist such things as abstract objects — where an abstract object is an object that does not exist in space or time and which is therefore entirely non-physical and non-mental. Platonism in this sense is a contemporary view.

This modern Platonism (sometimes rendered "platonism," with a lower-case p, to distinguish it from the ancient schools) has been endorsed in one way or another at one time or another by numerous philosophers (most of whom taking a particular interest in the philosophy and foundations of logic and mathematics), including Bernard Bolzano, Gottlob Frege, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Alonzo Church, Kurt Gödel, W.V. Quine, Hilary Putnam, George Bealer and Edward Zalta. Modern Platonism recognizes a range of objects, including numbers, sets, truth values, properties, types, propositions and meanings.