In his 1951 Gibbs Memorial Lecture, Kurt Gödel put forth his famous disjunction that either the power of the mind outstrips that of any machine or there are absolutely unsolvable problems. The view that there are no absolutely unsolvable problems is optimism, the view that there are such problems is pessimism. In his 1995—and, revised in 2013—Verificationism Then and Now, Per Martin-Löf presents an illustrative argument for a constructivist form of optimism. In response to that argument, Solomon Feferman points out (...) that Martin-Löf’s reasoning relies upon constructive understandings of key philosophical notions. In the vein of Feferman’s analysis, one might be object to Martin-Löf’s argument for either its reliance upon constructivist considerations, or for its appeal to non-unproblematically mathematical premises. We argue that both of these responses fall short. On one hand, to be critical of Martin-Löf’s reasoning for its constructiveness is to reject what would otherwise be a scientific advance on the basis of the assumption of constructivism’s falsehood or implausibility, which is of course uncharitable at best. On the other hand, to object to the argument for its use of non-unproblematically mathematical premises is to assume that there is some philosophically neutral mathematics, which is implausible. Martin-Löf’s argument relies upon his third law, the claim that from the impossibility of a proof of a proposition we can construct a proof of its negation. We close with a discussion of some ways in which this claim can be criticized from the constructive point of view. Specifically, we contend that Martin-Löf’s third law is incompatible with what has been called “Poincaré’s Principle of Epistemic Conservation”, the thesis that genuine increase in mathematical knowledge requires subject-specific insight. (shrink)

Is consistency the sort of thing that could provide a guide to mathematical ontology? If so, which notion of consistency suits this purpose? Mark Balaguer holds such a view in the context of platonism, the view that mathematical objects are non-causal, non-spatiotemporal, and non-mental. For the purposes of this paper, we will examine several notions of consistency with respect to how they can provide a platon-ist epistemology of mathematics. Only a Gödelian notion, we suggest, can provide a satisfactory guide to (...) a platonist ontology. Is consistency the sort of thing that could provide a guide to mathematical ontology? If so, which notion of consistency suits this purpose? Mark Bala-guer holds such a view in the context of platonism, the view that mathematical objects are non-causal, non-spatiotemporal, and non-mental. Balaguer's version of Platonism, Full-Blooded Platonism (FBP), is the view that "there are as many abstract mathematical objects as there could be-i.e., there actually exist abstract mathematical objects of all possible kinds" (Balaguer, 2017, p. 381). He continues: Since FBP says that there are abstract mathematical objects of all possible kinds, it follows that if FBP is true, then every purely mathematical theory that could be true-i.e., that is internally consistent-accurately describes some collection of actually existing abstract objects. Thus it follows from FBP that in order to acquire knowledge of abstract objects, all we have to do is come up with an internally consistent purely mathematical theory (and know that it is internally consistent). (Balaguer, 2017, p. 381) * To be published in 43rd International Wittgenstein Symposium proceedings. (shrink)

L.E.J. Brouwer famously took the subject’s intuition of time to be foundational and from there ventured to build up mathematics. Despite being largely critical of formal methods, Brouwer valued axiomatic systems for their use in both communication and memory. Through the Dutch Mathematical Society, Gerrit Mannoury posed a challenge in 1927 to provide an axiomatization of intuitionistic arithmetic. Arend Heyting’s 1928 axiomatization was chosen as the winner and has since enjoyed the status of being the _de facto_ formalization of intuitionistic (...) arithmetic. We argue that axiomatizations of intuitionistic arithmetic ought to make explicit the role of the subject’s activity in the intuitionistic arithmetical process. While Heyting Arithmetic is useful when we want to contrast constructed objects with platonistic ones, Heyting Arithmetic omits the contribution of the subject and thus falls short as a response to Mannoury’s challenge. We offer our own solution, Doxastic Heyting Arithmetic, or \({\textsf{DHA}}\), which we contend axiomatizes Brouwerian intuitionistic arithmetic. (shrink)

All is vanity, we learn early in Ecclesiastes. This is motivated by the mysterious aphorism that there is nothing new under the sun. But what does it mean to say that there is nothing new under the sun? One might interpret this as a statement of the Eternal Return of the past. Alternatively, one could understand it as a statement what we call the Eternal Withering of the past. Eternal Withering is the view that the present draws from the past (...) but not all of the past repeats. We argue that Eternal Withering motivates the claim that all is vanity. We then show how this interpretation can help us explain the positive practical suggestions in Ecclesiastes. (shrink)

Quine's translation argumnent figures centrally in his views on logic. The goal of this paper is to get clear on that argument. It can be interpreted as an argument to the effect that one should never translate somebody’s speech as going against a law of the translator’s logic. Key to this reading of the translation argument is the premise that one should never translate somebody's speech such that their speech is unintelligible. Ultimately, it is my aim to reject this reading. (...) I argue that only a weaker conclusion—one that says “not most of the time” instead of the stronger “never”—should be attributed to Quine. Accordingly, I propose and defend a weaker version of the first premise that better coheres with the weaker conclusion of the translation argument. Instead of the claim that one should never translate somebody’s speech such that their speech is unintelligible I argue that we should only ascribe to Quine the claim that one should not most of the time translate somebody’s speech in a way that makes it unintelligible. I go on to sum up the results of my discussion and respond to a criticism of my reading. (shrink)