Mathematical Truth (Benacerraf 1973), introduces a problem for mathematical knowledge that I find incredibly compelling. Benacerraf thinks that there are two requirements of a theory of mathematical truth: semantic uniformity, such that what we mean when we talk about math is similar to what we mean when we talk about everything else; and epistemic uniformity, such that the epistemology of math is similar to the epistemology of everything else. Benacerraf thinks that a good theory of mathematical truth has to meet both goals, and that the two goals are incompatible, which leaves mathematical truth in a rough spot.
Semantic Uniformity
On the topic of semantic uniformity, Benacerraf says that "A theory of truth for the language we speak, argue in, theorize in, mathematize in, etc., should ... provide similar truth conditions for similar sentences. The truth conditions as- signed to two sentences containing quantifiers should reflect in relevantly similar ways the contribution made by the quantifiers". For examples, he looks at these two sentences:
(1) There are at least three large cities older than New York. and
(2) There are at least three perfect numbers greater than 17.
Then, he asks if these sentences have the same logical form:
(3) There are at least three F's that bear R to a.
Sentence (1) has the same logical form as sentence (3). This means that sentence (1) is true if there are at least three elements in the set of things that exist which satisfy the predicates “large city” and “older than New York”. For sentence (2), can we do the same thing? Benacerraf replies “That sounds like a silly question to which the obvious answer is “Of course.””. However, he continues, that requires numbers to be in the set of things that exist! A Platonic realist has no problem with this, because they posit the real existence of numbers. Benacerraf calls this the “standard view” – sentence (2) has the logical form of sentence (3), and numbers really exist so this is fine.
However, in intuitionist mathematics, sentence (2) would have a very different logical form than sentence (3). Benacerraf then turns to views where mathematical truth comes from being derivable from a set of axioms. Those theories give a truth-predicate for sentences that is strictly syntactic, allowing us to determine the truth or falsity of a sentence in a system of axioms without referencing anything in the real world. So, under syntactic (what Benacerraf calls “combinatorial”) views of mathematical truth, sentence (2)’s logical form is again unlike sentence (3). This is all just to say that it is controversial that sentence (2)’s logical form looks like sentence (3).
Benacerraf thinks “we shouldn’t be satisfied with an account that fails to treat (1) and (2) [the same]”.
Epistemic Uniformity
The second condition on a theory of mathematical truth, epistemic uniformity, requires that “we have mathematical knowledge, and that such knowledge is no less knowledge for being mathematical”. In other words, we need to be able to know whether at least some mathematical sentences are true or false. Mathematical knowledge “must fit into an over-all account of knowledge in a way that makes it intelligible how we have the mathematical knowledge that we have”.
Epistemic uniformity is hard! If we model sentence (2) in the form of sentence (3), it is a claim about properties of numbers. The “standard view”‘ says that numbers exist, so the sentence at least has a truth-value. Numbers are acausal. The existence or non-existence of the number 3 is not observable by humans. This is a problem for causal accounts of epistemology, where knowledge requires some causal link between the state of the world and your knowledge. Numbers are acausal, so we can’t have knowledge of them, and we can’t have mathematical knowledge more generally.
(Some people say that noticing that putting two items next to two items and seeing that you now have four items gives you some evidence that 2 + 2 = 4. However, “adding two items to two items gives you four items” being true or false has a causal effect on your belief after running the text, so you can have knowledge of it even if you can’t have knowledge of “2 + 2 = 4”.)
Dilemma
Here is the crux of the paper: those two properties can’t both be satisfied. If mathematical sentences are like normal sentences, they refer to objects. If mathematical sentences refer to objects, we can’t have causal knowledge of mathematical truth. Eek! This is a big problem for humans ever gaining knowledge of mathematical truth.
Benacerraf convinced me that either mathematical sentences have different logical forms than non-mathematical sentences or that mathematical knowledge has a different form than non-mathematical knowledge. It sounds like your view is that mathematical sentences have different forms (they all have an implicit "within some mathematical system that is relevant, it is provable that..." before them), and also that mathematical knowledge is different (not real knowledge, just exists in a system). In other words, it sounds like you just think that epistemic uniformity and semantic uniformity are not important features of a theory of mathematical truth. That comes down to personal aesthetics and meta-beliefs about how theories should look, so I will just talk about what I think you're saying in this comment.
I think what you're trying to say is that mathematical statements are not true or false in an absolute sense, only true and false within a proof system. and their truth or falsehood is based entirely on whether they can be derived from within that system.
If that's true, math is just a map, and maps are neither true nor false. If math is just a map, then there is no such thing as objective mathematical truth. So it sounds like you agree that knowledge about any mathematical object is impossible. But when you say that "Epistemic uniformity simply states that math is a useful model", I think that's a little different than what I intended it to mean. Epistemic uniformity says that evaluating the truth-value of a mathematical statement should be a similar process evaluating the truth-value of any other statement.
The issue here is that our non-mathematical statements aren't only internally true or false, they are actually true or false. If you asked someone to justify sentence (1), and they handed you a proof about New York and London, consistent on a set of city-axioms, you would probably be pretty confused. Epistemic uniformity says that a theory of mathematical truth should look relatively like the rest of our theories of truth - why should math be special?
I'm going to take a slight objection to using the phrase "discoverable experimentally" to describe proving a theorem and thinking up numbers, but let's talk about those examples. To me, it sounds like that is doing work within a system of math to determine whether a claim is consistent with axioms. There is some tension here between saying that math is just a tool and thinking that you can do experiments on it to discover facts about the world. No! It will tell us about the tool we are experimenting with. Doing math (under the intutionist paradigm) tells us whether something is provable within a mathematical system, but it has no bearing on whether it is true outside of our minds.
(Side note about intuitionism:
I think it's important to prevent talking past each other by checking definitions, so I'd like to clarify what you mean by intuitionism. In the definition I'm aware of, intuitionism says roughly that math exists entirely in minds, and the corresponding account of mathematical truth is that a statement is true if someone has a mental construction proving it to be true. Please let me know if this is not what you meant!
My main objection with intuitionism is that it makes a lot of math time-dependent (e.x. 2+2 didn't equal 4 until someone proved it for the first time). Under an intuitionist account of mathematical truth, you can make sentence (2) true by finding three examples that fit. But then that statement's truthhood or falsehood is independent of whether the mathematical fact is really true or false (intuitionists usually don't think there exist universal mathematical truth). It seems to me that math is a real thing in the universe, it was real because humans comprehended it, and it will remain real after humans are gone. That view is incompatible with intuitionism.)
(Another note - can you be a bit more specific about the contradition you think is avoided by giving up Platonism? I think that you still don't have epistemic and semantic uniformity with an intuitionist/combinatorial theory of math)