Related papers: Reverse Formalism 16
Did Leibniz exploit infinitesimals and infinities `a la rigueur, or only as shorthand for quantified propositions that refer to ordinary Archimedean magnitudes? Chapter 5 in (Ishiguro 1990) is a defense of the latter position, which she…
Large scale real number computation is an essential ingredient in several modern mathematical proofs. Because such lengthy computations cannot be verified by hand, some mathematicians want to use software proof assistants to verify the…
Infinitesimals are natural products of the human imagination. Their history goes back to the Greek antiquity. Their role in the calculus and analysis has seen dramatic ups and downs. They have stimulated strong opinions and even vitriol.…
We consider debiased inference on finite-dimensional functionals of infinite-dimensional least-squares solutions to inverse problems as a way to avoid having to assume exact solutions exist. Such assumptions are substantive and not…
In the last chapter of his book "The Algebraic Theory of Modular Systems " published in 1916, F. S. Macaulay developped specific techniques for dealing with " unmixed polynomial ideals " by introducing what he called " inverse systems ".…
We are interested in belief revision involving conditional statements where the antecedent is almost certainly false. To represent such problems, we use Ordinal Conditional Functions that may take infinite values. We model belief change in…
In this paper I argue that infinities in the classical computation theory such as the unsolvability of the Halting Problem can be addressed in the same way as Feynman divergences in Quantum Field Theory, and that meaningful versions of…
Challenging the standard notion of totality in computable functions, one has that, given any sufficiently expressive formal axiomatic system, there are total functions that, although computable and "intuitively" understood as being total,…
To enable the study of open sets in computational approaches to mathematics, lots of extra data and structure on these sets is assumed. For both foundational and mathematical reasons, it is then a natural question, and the subject of this…
This article critically reappraises arguments in support of Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers. The following results are reported: i) Cantor's proofs of nondenumerability are refuted by analyzing the logical inconsistencies in…
This article explores the concept of absoluteness in the context of mathematical analysis, focusing specifically on the Riemann integral on $\mathbb{R}^{n}$. In mathematical logic, "absoluteness" refers to the invariance of the truth value…
The example of the calculus is used to explain how simple, practical math was made enormously complex by imposing on it the Western religiously-colored notion of mathematics as "perfect". We describe a pedagogical experiment to make math…
In this article I deal with the notion of observation in the most fundamental sense and its representation by means of formal languages serving as expressional tools of formal-axiomatical theories. In doing so, I have taken this notion in…
It is well known that many theorems in recursion theory can be "relativized". This means that they remain true if partial recursive functions are replaced by functions that are partial recursive relative to some fixed oracle set. Uspensky…
We propose a new paradigm for Belief Change in which the new information is represented as sets of models, while the agent's body of knowledge is represented as a finite set of formulae, that is, a finite base. The focus on finiteness is…
Explainable Artificial Intelligence and Formal Argumentation have received significant attention in recent years. Argumentation-based systems often lack explainability while supporting decision-making processes. Counterfactual and…
We give a~detailed construction of the complete ordered field of real numbers by means of infinite decimal expansions. We prove that in the canonical encoding of decimals neither addition nor multiplication is {\em computable}, but that…
In his Foundations of a General Theory of Manifolds, Georg Cantor praised Bernard Bolzano as a clear defender of actual infinity who had the courage to work with infinite numbers. At the same time, he sharply criticized the way Bolzano…
Drawing primarily on her early work (1931-1934), I argue that Alice Ambrose develops a philosophical project centered on preserving the rigor of extensional logic while rejecting the metaphysical and epistemological endorsements of logicism…
The overarching theme of the following pages is that mathematical logic -- centered around the incompleteness theorems -- is first and foremost an investigation of $\textit{computation}$, not arithmetic. Guided by this intuition we will…