Turing on “Common Sense”: Cambridge Resonances
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BWS Newsletter No 18 24/11/2015, 20:45
BWS Newsletter no 18 24/11/2015, 20:45 From: British Wittgenstein Society [[email protected]] Subject: Newsletter no.18 BWS website home August 2013 BWS Newsletter Issue no 18 Contents Nota Bene The Wittgenstein-Skinner Archive Pdf version (216 kb) Nota Bene Arthur Gibson on Wittgenstein’s Conferences rediscovered archive Around the world Wittgenstein postings In early October 1941 German bombers Lecture series attacked Oakington RAF base. Victims Pastures new were rushed to hospital in Cambridge. Housekeeping The only slightly later admission of a Executive Committee polio patient was unnoticed, by-passed, being left untreated for very many hours in a corridor. This is how Wittgenstein’s closest friend Francis Skinner came to die at the age of 29. About BWS Within the week of Skinner’s funeral, in a state of trauma, Ludwig attempted to resign his Philosophy Chair; arranged to leave Cambridge for Guy’s Hospital working to fulfil his, now memorial, plan with Francis; attended Francis’ funeral; reclaimed from Skinner’s family the Wittgenstein- BWS is a British focal point for research and exchange Skinner Archive, and posted them to Skinner’s school of ideas among Wittgenstein scholars and students friend, Reuben Goodstein. Eventually Goodstein gave the throughout the world. Archive to the Mathematical Association. It was a much- appreciated invitation from the Association (and full This Newsletter will be sent exclusively to members of acknowledgement to it in references here), with the the BWS, on a regular basis, in order to draw attention support of Trinity College, for me to research and prepare to updates on the website, or to share as yet unpublished this unpublished Archive for book publication. -
“Gödel's Modernism: on Set-Theoretic Incompleteness,” Revisited
“G¨odel'sModernism: on Set-Theoretic Incompleteness," revisited∗ Mark van Atten and Juliette Kennedy As to problems with the answer Yes or No, the con- viction that they are always decidable remains un- touched by these results. —G¨odel Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Questions of incompleteness On Friday, November 15, 1940, Kurt G¨odelgave a talk on set theory at Brown University.1 The topic was his recent proof of the consistency of Cantor's Con- tinuum Hypothesis, henceforth CH,2 with the axiomatic system for set theory ZFC.3 His friend from their days in Vienna, Rudolf Carnap, was in the audience, and afterward wrote a note to himself in which he raised a number of questions on incompleteness:4 (Remarks I planned to make, but did not) Discussion on G¨odel'slecture on the Continuum Hypothesis, November 14,5 1940 There seems to be a difference: between the undecidable propo- sitions of the kind of his example [i.e., 1931] and propositions such as the Axiom of Choice, and the Axiom of the Continuum [CH ]. We used to ask: \When these two have been decided, is then everything decided?" (The Poles, Tarski I think, suspected that this would be the case.) Now we know that (on the basis of the usual finitary rules) there will always remain undecided propositions. ∗An earlier version of this paper appeared as ‘G¨odel'smodernism: on set-theoretic incom- pleteness', Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 25(2), 2004, pp.289{349. Erratum facing page of contents in 26(1), 2005. 1 1. Can we nevertheless still ask an analogous question? I.e. -
Wittgenstein in Exile
Wittgenstein in Exile “My thoughts are one hundred per cent Hebraic.” -Wittgenstein to Drury, 19491 Wittgenstein was born in 1889 into one of the richest families in Central Europe. He lived and learned at home, in Vienna, until 1903, when he was 14. We have no record of his thoughts about the turn of the last century, but it is unlikely that it seemed very significant to him. The Viennese of the time had little inclination to consider the possibilities of change, and the over-ripe era in which Wittgenstein grew up did not really end until Austria-Hungary’s defeat, in World War I, and subsequent dismantling. But the family in which Wittgenstein grew up apparently felt that European culture had already come to an end in the 1840’s. And Wittgenstein himself felt he belonged to an era that had vanished with the death of the composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856).2 Somewhere in the middle of the Nineteenth Century there was an important change into the contemporary era, of which Wittgenstein did not feel a part. Wittgenstein’s understanding of history, and his consequent self-understanding in relation to his times, was deeply influenced by Oswald Spengler, who in 1918 published The Decline of the West [Der Untergang des Abenlandes]. This book, expanded to a second volume in 1922, and revised in 1923, became a best-seller in post-war Europe. Wittgenstein made numerous references to it in 1930-1931, and acknowledged Spengler as one of his ten noteworthy influences.3 According to Spengler, cultures grow, flower, and deteriorate naturally, according to their own internal form, much as a human being does. -
Turing, Gödel and the Bright Abyss
Turing, Gödel and the “Bright Abyss” Juliet Floyd ! 2/5/2015 9:25 AM Comment [1]: 1. Check phone number okay to use this ong?; Also need 2. ABSTRACT of 1 Introduction 150-200 words and 3. a CONTRIBUTOR bi- ography of up to 100 words! Xxx, J. They have completely forgotten what is a mathematical creation: a vision that decants little by little over months and years, bringing to light the obvious [evident] thing that no one had seen, taking form in an obvious assertion of which no one had dreamed ... and that the first one to come along can then prove in five minutes, using techniques ready to hand [toutes cuites] • A. Grothendiek, Recoltes et Sémailles, 1986 Mathematics: there is that which is taken on faith and that which is proved; there is that which is buried deep inside the heart of the mathematician1 and that which is wholly public; there is intuition and fact and the “bright abyss” in be- tween; there is the raw, one might say, and the cooked. I hold up my hand and I count five fingers. I take it on faith that the mapping from fingers onto numbers is recursive in the sense of the mathematician’s defi- nition of the informal concept, “human calculability following a fixed routine.” I cannot prove the mapping is recursive—there is nothing to prove! Of course, mathematicians can prove many theorems about recursiveness, moving forward, so to speak, once the definition of the concept “recursive” has been isolated. Moving backwards is more difficult and this is as it should be: for how can one possibly hope to prove that a mathematical -
6 X 10.5 Long Title.P65
Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-83843-6 - Seeing Wittgenstein Anew Edited by William Day and Victor J. Krebs Frontmatter More information Seeing Wittgenstein Anew Seeing Wittgenstein Anew is the first collection to examine Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remarks on the concept of aspect-seeing. These essays show that aspect-seeing was not simply one more topic of in- vestigation in Wittgenstein’s later writings, but, rather, that it was a pervasive and guiding concept in his efforts to turn philosophy’s attention to the actual conditions of our common life in language. Arranged in sections that highlight the pertinence of the aspect- seeing remarks to aesthetic and moral perception, self-knowledge, mind and consciousness, linguistic agreement, philosophical therapy, and “seeing connections,” the sixteen essays, which were specially commissioned for this volume, demonstrate the unity of not only Philosophical Investigations but also Wittgenstein’s later thought as a whole. They open up novel paths across familiar fields of thought: the objectivity of interpretation, the fixity of the past, the acquisition of language, and the nature of human conscious- ness. Significantly, they exemplify how continuing consideration of the interrelated phenomena and concepts surrounding aspect- seeing might produce a fruitful way of doing philosophy. William Day is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Le Moyne College. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he has written articles on aesthetics and moral per- fectionist thought, with particular focus on the work of Wittgenstein, Cavell, Emerson, and Confucian thinkers. Victor J. Krebs is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. -
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951) by Craig Kaczorowski
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951) by Craig Kaczorowski Encyclopedia Copyright © 2015, glbtq, Inc. Entry Copyright © 2004, glbtq, inc. Reprinted from http://www.glbtq.com The Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is considered one of the most significant thinkers of the twentieth century, especially for his valuable contributions within the field of Linguistic Philosophy. His major works on language and linguistics include Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), and Philosophical Investigations (1953), which was published posthumously. Early Life and Education Born Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein in Vienna on April 26, 1889, he was the youngest of eight children raised in a wealthy and cultured Jewish family. Initially educated privately at home, at the age of 14 he began attending a school in Linz, Austria that specialized in mathematics and natural science. In 1906, he went to Berlin to study mechanical engineering and two years later registered at the University of Manchester in England to study for his doctorate in engineering. Over time, however, Wittgenstein developed a greater interest in mathematics and mathematical logic, and he transferred to Trinity College, University of Cambridge, where he took courses from 1912 to 1913 given by the distinguished philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell. In November 1912, on the recommendation of fellow student John Maynard Keynes, Wittgenstein was elected to the elite Cambridge society known as the Apostles, which at that time had an aura of homoeroticism. This homoerotic atmosphere made Wittgenstein uncomfortable, however, and he stopped attending meetings. Finding Cambridge a less than ideal place to work, since he felt that his fellow academics lacked depth, Wittgenstein went to Skjolden in Norway and continued his mathematical and philosophical investigations in seclusion. -
'Solved by Sacrifice' : Austin Farrer, Fideism, and The
‘SOLVED BY SACRIFICE’ : AUSTIN FARRER, FIDEISM, AND THE EVIDENCE OF FAITH Robert Carroll MacSwain A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St. Andrews 2010 Full metadata for this item is available in the St Andrews Digital Research Repository at: https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/920 This item is protected by original copyright ‘SOLVED BY SACRIFICE’: Austin Farrer, Fideism, and the Evidence of Faith Robert Carroll MacSwain A thesis submitted to the School of Divinity of the University of St Andrews in candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The saints confute the logicians, but they do not confute them by logic but by sanctity. They do not prove the real connection between the religious symbols and the everyday realities by logical demonstration, but by life. Solvitur ambulando, said someone about Zeno’s paradox, which proves the impossibility of physical motion. It is solved by walking. Solvitur immolando, says the saint, about the paradox of the logicians. It is solved by sacrifice. —Austin Farrer v ABSTRACT 1. A perennial (if controversial) concern in both theology and philosophy of religion is whether religious belief is ‘reasonable’. Austin Farrer (1904-1968) is widely thought to affirm a positive answer to this concern. Chapter One surveys three interpretations of Farrer on ‘the believer’s reasons’ and thus sets the stage for our investigation into the development of his religious epistemology. 2. The disputed question of whether Farrer became ‘a sort of fideist’ is complicated by the many definitions of fideism. -
Kreisel and Wittgenstein
Kreisel and Wittgenstein Akihiro Kanamori September 17, 2018 Georg Kreisel (15 September 1923 { 1 March 2015) was a formidable math- ematical logician during a formative period when the subject was becoming a sophisticated field at the crossing of mathematics and logic. Both with his technical sophistication for his time and his dialectical engagement with man- dates, aspirations and goals, he inspired wide-ranging investigation in the meta- mathematics of constructivity, proof theory and generalized recursion theory. Kreisel's mathematics and interactions with colleagues and students have been memorably described in Kreiseliana ([Odifreddi, 1996]). At a different level of interpersonal conceptual interaction, Kreisel during his life time had extended engagement with two celebrated logicians, the mathematical Kurt G¨odeland the philosophical Ludwig Wittgenstein. About G¨odel,with modern mathemat- ical logic palpably emanating from his work, Kreisel has reflected and written over a wide mathematical landscape. About Wittgenstein on the other hand, with an early personal connection established Kreisel would return as if with an anxiety of influence to their ways of thinking about logic and mathematics, ever in a sort of dialectic interplay. In what follows we draw this out through his published essays|and one letter|both to elicit aspects of influence in his own terms and to set out a picture of Kreisel's evolving thinking about logic and mathematics in comparative relief.1 As a conceit, we divide Kreisel's engagements with Wittgenstein into the \early", \middle", and \later" Kreisel, and account for each in successive sec- tions. x1 has the \early" Kreisel directly interacting with Wittgenstein in the 1940s and initial work on constructive content of proofs. -
Westphal Says That His Exhibition of Two Sources of a Commitment in Kant to Mental Content Externalism Ought to Be Understood
Can Mental Content Externalism Prove Realism?1 (Axel Mueller, Northwestern University) Recently, Kenneth Westphal has presented a highly interesting and innovative reading of Kant's critical philosophy.2 This reading continues a tradition of Kant- scholarship of which, e.g., Paul Guyer's work is representative, and in which the anti- idealistic potential of Kant's critical philosophy is pitted against its idealistic self- understanding. Much of the work in this tradition leaves matters at observing the tensions this introduces in Kant's work. But Westphal's proposed interpretation goes farther. Its attractiveness derives for the most part from the promise that it permits an internal critique of Kant's transcendental idealism (TI), that is, a critique that is based on the very resources of Kantian transcendental philosophy.3 In contrast to these resources, which currently seem to go through a sort of revival in an enormous array of fields, TI is notorious for dismaying even sympathetic interpreters. How attractive and needed such an internal critique of TI would be becomes all the more patent when we place such a promise in the context of some of the contemporary discussions about TI after Allison's famous defense of it. Before directly engaging with Westphal's interpretation, I would therefore like to quickly sketch on what background it acquires its force (I). After characterizing the main features of Westphal's view (II), and supporting it in more detail by an account of Kant's theory of cognitive significance (III), I then want to review the extent of its success to present Kant as issuing an anti-skeptical argument (IV.1), or semantic views that are incompatible with TI (IV.2), or a 'proof of not merely empirical realism' (IV.3). -
2.2 Glock Et Al
Journal for the History of Book Symposium: Analytical Philosophy Hans-Johann Glock, What is Analytic Philosophy? Volume 2, Number 2 Introduction Hans-Johann Glock..................... 1 Editor in Chief Mark Textor, King’s College London Commentaries Guest Editor Leila Haaparanta......................... 2 Mirja Hartimo, University of Helsinki Christopher Pincock....................6 Editorial Board Panu Raatikainen........................11 Juliet Floyd, Boston University Graham Stevens.......................... 28 Greg Frost-Arnold, Hobart and William Smith Colleges Ryan Hickerson, University of Western Oregon Replies Henry Jackman, York University Hans-Johann Glock..................... 36 Sandra Lapointe, McMaster University Chris Pincock, Ohio State University Richard Zach, University of Calgary Production Editor Ryan Hickerson Editorial Assistant Daniel Harris, CUNY Graduate Center Design Douglas Patterson and Daniel Harris ©2013 The Authors What is Analytic Philosophy? shall not be able to respond to all of the noteworthy criticisms and questions of my commentators. I have divided my responses ac- Hans-Johann Glock cording to commentator rather than topic, while also indicating some connections between their ideas where appropriate. Let me start by thanking the Journal for the History of Analytical Phi- losophy for offering me this opportunity to discuss my book What is Analytical Philosophy? (Cambridge, 2008). I am also very grateful Hans-Johann Glock for the valuable feedback from the contributors. And I thank both University of Zurich the journal and the contributors for their patience in waiting for [email protected] my replies. I was pleased to discover that all of my commentators express a certain sympathy with the central contention of my book, namely that analytic philosophy is an intellectual movement of the twentieth-century (with roots in the nineteenth and offshoots in the twenty-first), held together by family-resemblances on the one hand, ties of historical influence on the other. -
Wittgenstein, Anxiety, and Performance Behavior
Incapacity Incapacity Wittgenstein, Anxiety, and Performance Behavior Spencer Golub northwestern university press evanston, illinois Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu Copyright © 2014 by Spencer Golub. Published 2014 by Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Golub, Spencer, author. Incapacity : Wittgenstein, anxiety, and performance behavior / Spencer Golub. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8101-2992-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889–1951. 2. Language and languages—Philosophy. 3. Performance—Philosophy. 4. Literature, Modern—20th century—History and criticism. 5. Literature—Philosophy. I. Title. B3376.W564G655 2014 121.68—dc23 2014011601 Except where otherwise noted, this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. In all cases attribution should include the following information: Golub, Spencer. Incapacity: Wittgenstein, Anxiety, and Performance Behavior. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2014. For permissions beyond the scope of this license, visit http://www.nupress .northwestern.edu/. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. For my mother We go towards the thing we mean. —Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §455 . -
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Development: Phenomenology, Grammar, Method, and the Anthropological View
Nordic Wittgenstein Review 5 (2) 2016 INVITED PAPER Juliet Floyd jfloyd @ bu.edu Chains of Life: Turing, Lebensform, and the Emergence of Wittgenstein’s Later Style Abstract This essay accounts for the notion of Lebensform by assigning it a logical role in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. Wittgenstein’s additions of the notion to his manuscripts of the PI occurred during the initial drafting of the book 1936-7, after he abandoned his effort to revise The Brown Book. It is argued that this constituted a substantive step forward in his attitude toward the notion of simplicity as it figures within the notion of logical analysis. Next, a reconstruction of his later remarks on Lebensformen is offered which factors in his reading of Alan Turing’s “On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem“ (1936/7), as well as his discussions with Turing 1937-1939. An interpretation of the five occurrences of Lebensform in the PI is then given in terms of a logical “regression” to Lebensform as a fundamental notion. This regression characterizes Wittgenstein’s mature answer to the question, “What is the nature of the logical?” 1. Introduction Lebensform is an important gauge of the development of Wittgenstein’s thought. It represents, from a regressive point of view, the place he finally chased down to. In foundational matters such as these, it is often the simplest, naïve perspective that comes last in a thinker’s (or a tradition’s) evolution, the working through 7 Juliet Floyd CC-BY of how to get back home to the primordial basis, the extraction of fundamentals from a jungle of technical accretions.