Naturalizing Badiou: Mathematical Ontology and Structural Realism

Naturalizing Badiou offers a naturalist critique and revision of Alain Badiou's philosophy. It argues against some core elements of his systematic philosophy, considering them unacceptable for the naturalist philosopher. At the same time, however, it highlights how Badiou's broader and ambitious metaphilosophical commitments can fruitfully supplement the orthodox naturalism grounding some contemporary stances in the philosophy of science. This goal is pursued through staging an encounter of Badiou's mathematical ontology and theory of truth with contemporary trends in philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. Targeting Badiou's inability to elucidate the link between the empirical and the ontological, and his residual reliance on a Heideggerian project of fundamental ontology, the book articulates a particular understanding of what realism and naturalism should commit us to. It then presents a creative fusion of Badiou's attention to metamathematical results with a structural-informational metaphysics, proposing a 'matherialism' that unites the more daring speculative insights of the former with the naturalist and empiricist commitments motivating the latter.