The Reality of Field’s Epistemological Challenge to Platonism

In the introduction to his Realism, mathematics and modality (1989), and in earlier papers included in that collection, Hartry Field offered an epistemological challenge to platonism in the philosophy of mathematics. Justin Clarke-Doane (in: Fabrice Pataut (ed.) Truth, objects, infinity: New perspectives on the philosophy of Paul Benacerraf, 2016) argues that Field’s challenge is an illusion: it does not pose a genuine problem for platonism. My aim is to show that Clarke-Doane’s argument relies on a misunderstanding of Field’s challenge.