|
|
|
Juliette Kennedy: Three Moments in the Philosophical Life of Kurt
Gödel
Abstract
In this talk we will visit three moments in the philosophical
life of Kurt Gödel, bearing in mind that Gödel's
philosophical work was in a clear sense inseparable from his mathematical
work.
We consider first
the philosophical remarks in the introduction of Gödel's 1929 thesis, in
which he presented his proof of the completeness of first order predicate
logic. Those remarks concern the use of the law of the excluded middle in
his proof of the completeness theorem, and secondly the question
whether consistency is a criterion of existence of mathematical objects,
the latter being the subject of debate between both Hilbert and Frege, and
Hilbert and Brouwer.
The second moment concerns Gödel's remarks on meaning in the 1964
supplement to his paper "What is Cantor's Continuum Problem?", an earlier
version of which was published in 1947.
The last moment concerns his remarks about the life of a philosopher,
about phenomenology, and about some other topics, made during a number of
conversations with Gödel had with the proof theorist Sue Walker Toledo
in 1972. Our remarks are
based on the extensive (hitherto unpublished) notes taken by Toledo
of those conversations.
|
|
|
|