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Ideas for 'Thinking About Mathematics', 'On Signs (damaged)' and 'Philosophy of Mathematics'

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4 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / D. Assumptions for Logic / 2. Excluded Middle
8729 Intuitionists deny excluded middle, because it is committed to transcendent truth or objects [Shapiro]
     Full Idea: Intuitionists in mathematics deny excluded middle, because it is symptomatic of faith in the transcendent existence of mathematical objects and/or the truth of mathematical statements.
     From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 1.2)
     A reaction: There are other problems with excluded middle, such as vagueness, but on the whole I, as a card-carrying 'realist', am committed to the law of excluded middle.
9605 If a proposition is false, then its negation is true [Brown,JR]
     Full Idea: The law of excluded middle says if a proposition is false, then its negation is true
     From: James Robert Brown (Philosophy of Mathematics [1999], Ch. 1)
     A reaction: Surely that is the best statement of the law? How do you write that down? ¬(P)→¬P? No, because it is a semantic claim, not a syntactic claim, so a truth table captures it. Semantic claims are bigger than syntactic claims.
5. Theory of Logic / K. Features of Logics / 1. Axiomatisation
9649 Axioms are either self-evident, or stipulations, or fallible attempts [Brown,JR]
     Full Idea: The three views one could adopt concerning axioms are that they are self-evident truths, or that they are arbitrary stipulations, or that they are fallible attempts to describe how things are.
     From: James Robert Brown (Philosophy of Mathematics [1999], Ch.10)
     A reaction: Presumably modern platonists like the third version, with others choosing the second, and hardly anyone now having the confidence to embrace the first.
5. Theory of Logic / L. Paradox / 4. Paradoxes in Logic / c. Berry's paradox
9638 Berry's Paradox finds a contradiction in the naming of huge numbers [Brown,JR]
     Full Idea: Berry's Paradox refers to 'the least integer not namable in fewer than nineteen syllables' - a paradox because it has just been named in eighteen syllables.
     From: James Robert Brown (Philosophy of Mathematics [1999], Ch. 5)
     A reaction: Apparently George Boolos used this quirky idea as a basis for a new and more streamlined proof of Gödel's Theorem. Don't tell me you don't find that impressive.