Related papers: The Antinomy of the Liar and Provability
We take an argument of G\"odel's from his ground-breaking 1931 paper, generalize it, and examine its validity. The argument in question is this: the sentence $G$ says about itself that it is not provable, and $G$ is indeed not provable;…
If no optimal propositional proof system exists, we (and independently Pudl\'ak) prove that ruling out length $t$ proofs of any unprovable sentence is hard. This mapping from unprovable to hard-to-prove sentences powerfully translates facts…
This short note present a "proof" of $P\neq NP$. The "proof" with double quotation marks is to indicate that we do not know whether the proof is correct or not (We're confused because we do know in which we make the mistakes).
When a proposition has no proof in an inference system, it is sometimes useful to build a counter-proof explaining, step by step, the reason of this non-provability. In general, this counter-proof is a (possibly) infinite co-inductive proof…
The $P$ versus $NP$ problem is still unsolved. But there are several oracles with $P$ unequal $NP$ relative to them. Here we will prove, that $P\not=NP$ relative to a $P$-complete oracle. In this paper, we use padding arguments as the proof…
The P versus NP problem is addressed in a context of provability and limitations on the possibility of finding sound axioms for formal theories. It is shown that if the term "constructible theory" is defined in a way which satisfies certain…
We analyze the informal semantic conception of proof and axiomatize the proof relation and the provability operator. A self referential propositional calculus which admits provable liar type sentences is introduced and proven consistent. We…
The proofs that the real numbers are denumerable will be shown, i.e., that there exists one-to-one correspondence between the natural numbers $N$ and the real numbers $\Re$. The general element of the sequence that contains all real numbers…
This somewhat unusual proof for the fact that the reals are uncountable, which is adapted from one of Bourbaki's proofs in "Fonctions d'une variable reelle", may be of some interest.
General acceptance of a mathematical proposition $P$ as a theorem requires convincing evidence that a proof of $P$ exists. But what constitutes "convincing evidence?" I will argue that, given the types of evidence that are currently…
In contrast with software-generated randomness (called pseudo-randomness), quantum randomness is provable incomputable, i.e.\ it is not exactly reproducible by any algorithm. We provide experimental evidence of incomputability --- an…
Recently it was shown that it is undecidable whether a term rewrite system can be proved terminating by a polynomial interpretation in the natural numbers. In this paper we show that this is also the case when restricting the…
In the paper it is demonstrated that Bells theorem is an unprovable theorem.
The paper demonstrates that falsifiability is fundamental to learning. We prove the following theorem for statistical learning and sequential prediction: If a theory is falsifiable then it is learnable -- i.e. admits a strategy that…
We give a procedure for counting the number of different proofs of a formula in various sorts of propositional logic. This number is either an integer (that may be 0 if the formula is not provable) or infinite.
We distinguish finitarily between algorithmic verifiability, and algorithmic computability, to show that Goedel's 'formally' unprovable, but 'numeral-wise' provable, arithmetical proposition [(Ax)R(x)] can be finitarily evidenced as:…
It is well known that the resolution method (for propositional logic) is complete. However, completeness proofs found in the literature use an argument by contradiction showing that if a set of clauses is unsatisfiable, then it must have a…
In this note, we give an alternate proof of the multinomial theorem using a probabilistic approach. Although the multinomial theorem is basically a combinatorial result, our proof may be simpler for a student familiar with only basic…
The relationship between the complexity classes P and NP is an unsolved question in the field of theoretical computer science. In this paper, we look at the link between the P - NP question and the "Deterministic" versus "Non Deterministic"…
In logic there is a clear concept of what constitutes a proof and what not. A proof is essentially defined as a finite sequence of formulae which are either axioms or derived by proof rules from formulae earlier in the sequence.…