Related papers: Paradoxes of Randomness
Practicing mathematicians often assume that mathematical claims, when they are true, have good reasons to be true. Such a state of affairs is "unreasonable", in Wigner's sense, because basic results in computational complexity suggest that…
I think we can agree that dealing with uncertainty is not easy. Probability is the main tool for dealing with uncertainty, and we know there are many probability-related puzzles and paradoxes. Here I describe a rather idiosyncratic…
The fact that the famous Godel incompleteness theorem and the archetype of all logical paradoxes, that of the Liar, are related closely is, of course, not only well known, but is a part of the common knowledge of logician community.…
This paper revisits the foundations of mathematical proof through the lens of Aristotle's threefold conception of truth: sensory evidence, axiomatic definition, and syllogistic deduction. I argue that modern mathematics has too often…
Goedel's results have had a great impact in diverse fields such as philosophy, computer sciences and fundamentals of mathematics. The fact that the rule of mathematical induction is contradictory with the rest of clauses used by Goedel to…
It is a widespread belief that results like G\"odel's incompleteness theorems or the intrinsic randomness of quantum mechanics represent fundamental limitations to humanity's strive for scientific knowledge. As the argument goes, there are…
Consider the following story: A teacher announces to her students a test for the following week, such that the test will be ``surprising''. The students use this as the basis for a ``logical derivation'' and reach a contradiction, which…
The famous G\"odel incompleteness theorem says that for every sufficiently rich formal theory (containing formal arithmetic in some natural sense) there exist true unprovable statements. Such statements would be natural candidates for being…
Paradoxes are interesting puzzles in philosophy and mathematics, and they could be even more fascinating, when turned into proofs and theorems. For example, Liar's paradox can be translated into a propositional tautology, and Barber's…
We re-examine the old question to what extent mathematics may be compared with a game. Mainly inspired by Hilbert and Wittgenstein, our answer is that mathematics is something like a rhododendron of language games, where the rules are…
The 20th century has revealed two important limitations of scientific knowledge. On the one hand, the combination of Poincar\'e's nonlinear dynamics and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle leads to a world picture where physical reality is,…
Not any geometry can be axiomatized. The paradoxical Godel's theorem starts from the supposition that any geometry can be axiomatized and goes to the result, that not any geometry can be axiomatized. One considers example of two close…
First-order Goedel logics are a family of infinite-valued logics where the sets of truth values V are closed subsets of [0, 1] containing both 0 and 1. Different such sets V in general determine different Goedel logics G_V (sets of those…
A new computational method that uses polynomial equations and dynamical systems to evaluate logical propositions is introduced and applied to Goedel's incompleteness theorems. The truth value of a logical formula subject to a set of axioms…
Most work on computational complexity is concerned with time. However this course will try to show that program-size complexity, which measures algorithmic information, is of much greater philosophical significance. I'll discuss how one can…
G\"odel's argument for the First Incompleteness Theorem is, structurally, a proof by contradiction. This article intends to reframe the argument by, first, isolating an additional assumption the argument relies on, and then, second, arguing…
The multiplicative theory of a set of numbers (which could be natural, integer, rational, real or complex numbers) is the first-order theory of the structure of that set with (solely) the multiplication operation (that set is taken to be…
Defeasible statements are statements that are likely, or probable, or usually true, but may occasionally be false. Plausible reasoning makes conclusions from statements that are either facts or defeasible statements without using numbers.…
Astrophysical paradoxes are the paradoxes of physics. The main motivation of a formulated paradox is clearly recognized in the scientific environment because the phenomenon of a paradox itself has become interesting. There is an explanation…
Wittgenstein's paradoxical theses that unproved propositions are meaningless, proofs form new concepts and rules, and contradictions are of limited concern, led to a variety of interpretations, most of them centered on the rule-following…