Abstract:
It will be argued that the Skolem "paradox" of the existence of a countable model of set theory can be viewed as a good description of the process of construction of mathematical objects, that the usual infinite models of mathematical theopries have rather faithful finite counterparts, and that Hilbert's epsilon-operators and his view of sets yield an ontology of mathematics which is more economical than Platonism. It will be argued that this view suggests some new axioms for set theory.

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