Misunderstanding Gödel: New Arguments about Wittgenstein and New Remarks by Wittgenstein

Dialectica 57 (3):279-313 (2003)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The long‐standing issue of Wittgenstein's controversial remarks on Gödel's Theorem has recently heated up in a number of different and interesting directions [,, ]. In their, Juliet Floyd and Hilary Putnam purport to argue that Wittgenstein's‘notorious’ “Contains a philosophical claim of great interest,” namely, “if one assumed. that →P is provable in Russell's system one should… give up the “translation” of P by the English sentence ‘P is not provable’,” because if ωP is provable in PM, PM is ω ‐inconsistent, and if PM is ω‐inconsistent, we cannot translate ‘P’as ’P is not provable in PM’because the predicate‘NaturalNo.’in ‘P’“cannot be…interpreted” as “x is a natural number.” Though Floyd and Putnam do not clearly distinguish the two tasks, they also argue for “The Floyd‐Putnam Thesis,” namely, that in the 1930's Wittgenstein had a particular understanding of Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem. In this paper, I endeavour to show, first, that the most natural and most defensible interpretation of Wittgenstein's and the rest of is incompatible with the Floyd‐Putnam attribution and, second, that evidence from Wittgenstein's Nachla strongly indicates that the Floyd‐ Putnam attribution and the Floyd‐Putnam Thesis are false. By way of this examination, we shall see that despite a failure to properly understand Gödel's proof—perhaps because, as Kreisel says, Wittgenstein did not read Gödel's 1931 paper prior to 1942‐Wittgenstein's 1937–38, 1941 and 1944 remarks indicate that Gödel's result makes no sense from Wittgenstein's own perspective.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

On Floyd and Putnam on Wittgenstein on Gödel.Timothy Bays - 2004 - Journal of Philosophy 101 (4):197-210.
On some much maligned remarks of Wittgenstein on gödel.Charles Sayward - 2001 - Philosophical Investigations 24 (3):262–270.
The gödel paradox and Wittgenstein's reasons.Francesco Berto - 2009 - Philosophia Mathematica 17 (2):208-219.
Gödel's and Other Paradoxes.Hartley Slater - 2015 - Philosophical Investigations 39 (4):353-361.
Prosa versus Demonstração: Wittgenstein sobre Gödel, Tarski e a Verdade.Juliet Floyd - 2002 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 58 (3):605 - 632.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-02-22

Downloads
22 (#607,190)

6 months
4 (#320,252)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Victor Rodych
University of Lethbridge

Citations of this work

The gödel paradox and Wittgenstein's reasons.Francesco Berto - 2009 - Philosophia Mathematica 17 (2):208-219.
Wittgenstein on Incompleteness Makes Paraconsistent Sense.Francesco Berto - 2008 - In Francesco Berto, Edwin Mares, Koji Tanaka & Francesco Paoli (eds.), Paraconsistency: Logic and Applications. Springer. pp. 257--276.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Philosophical investigations.Ludwig Wittgenstein & G. E. M. Anscombe - 1953 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 161:124-124.
Philosophical Grammar.Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rush Rhees & Anthony Kenny - 1975 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 8 (4):260-262.
Philosophical Remarks.Guy Stock - 1976 - Philosophical Quarterly 26 (103):178-180.
Extensions of some theorems of gödel and church.Barkley Rosser - 1936 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 1 (3):87-91.

View all 23 references / Add more references