Combining Texts

Ideas for 'On the Question of Absolute Undecidability', 'fragments/reports' and 'Sets and Numbers'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


3 ideas

4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 1. Set Theory
Mathematical set theory has many plausible stopping points, such as finitism, and predicativism [Koellner]
     Full Idea: There are many coherent stopping points in the hierarchy of increasingly strong mathematical systems, starting with strict finitism, and moving up through predicativism to the higher reaches of set theory.
     From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], Intro)
'Reflection principles' say the whole truth about sets can't be captured [Koellner]
     Full Idea: Roughly speaking, 'reflection principles' assert that anything true in V [the set hierarchy] falls short of characterising V in that it is true within some earlier level.
     From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], 2.1)
4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 7. Natural Sets
The master science is physical objects divided into sets [Maddy]
     Full Idea: The master science can be thought of as the theory of sets with the entire range of physical objects as ur-elements.
     From: Penelope Maddy (Sets and Numbers [1981], II)
     A reaction: This sounds like Quine's view, since we have to add sets to our naturalistic ontology of objects. It seems to involve unrestricted mereology to create normal objects.