Since their inception, the Perspectives in Logic and Lecture Notes in Logic series have published seminal works by leading logicians. Many of the original books in the series have been unavailable for years, but they are now in print once again. This volume, the fifteenth publication in the Lecture Notes in Logic series, collects papers presented at the symposium 'Reflections on the Foundations of Mathematics' held in celebration of Solomon Feferman's 70th birthday (The 'Feferfest') at Stanford University, California in 1988. Feferman has shaped the field of foundational research for nearly half a century. These papers reflect his broad interests as well as his approach to foundational research, which emphasizes the solution of mathematical and philosophical problems. There are four sections, covering proof theoretic analysis, logic and computation, applicative and self-applicative theories, and philosophy of modern mathematical and logic thought.
New Essays on Tarski and Philosophy aims to show the way to a proper understanding of the philosophical legacy of the great logician, mathematician, and philosopher Alfred Tarski (1902-1983). The contributors are an international group of scholars, some expert in the historical background and context of Tarski's work, others specializing in aspects of his philosophical development, others more interested in understanding Tarski in the light of contemporary thought. The essays can be seen as addressing Tarski's seminal treatment of four basic questions about logical consequence. (1) How are we to understand truth, one of the notions in terms of which logical consequence is explained? What is it that is preserved in valid inference, or that such inference allows us to discover new claims to have on the basis of old? (2) Among what kinds of things does the relation of logical consequence hold? (3) Given answers to the first two questions, what is involved in the consequence relationship itself? What is the preservation at work in 'truth preservation'? (4) Finally, what do truth and consequence so construed have to do with meaning?
This volume discusses the theoretical foundations of a new inter- and intra-disciplinary meta-research discipline, which can be succinctly called cognitive metamathematics, with the ultimate goal of achieving a global instance of concrete Artificial Mathematical Intelligence (AMI). In other words, AMI looks for the construction of an (ideal) global artificial agent being able to (co-)solve interactively formal problems with a conceptual mathematical description in a human-style way. It first gives formal guidelines from the philosophical, logical, meta-mathematical, cognitive, and computational points of view supporting the formal existence of such a global AMI framework, examining how much of current mathematics can be completely generated by an interactive computer program and how close we are to constructing a machine that would be able to simulate the way a modern working mathematician handles solvable mathematical conjectures from a conceptual point of view. The thesis that it is possible to meta-model the intellectual job of a working mathematician is heuristically supported by the computational theory of mind, which posits that the mind is in fact a computational system, and by the meta-fact that genuine mathematical proofs are, in principle, algorithmically verifiable, at least theoretically. The introduction to this volume provides then the grounding multifaceted principles of cognitive metamathematics, and, at the same time gives an overview of some of the most outstanding results in this direction, keeping in mind that the main focus is human-style proofs, and not simply formal verification. The first part of the book presents the new cognitive foundations of mathematics’ program dealing with the construction of formal refinements of seminal (meta-)mathematical notions and facts. The second develops positions and formalizations of a global taxonomy of classic and new cognitive abilities, and computational tools allowing for calculation of formal conceptual blends are described. In particular, a new cognitive characterization of the Church-Turing Thesis is presented. In the last part, classic and new results concerning the co-generation of a vast amount of old and new mathematical concepts and the key parts of several standard proofs in Hilbert-style deductive systems are shown as well, filling explicitly a well-known gap in the mechanization of mathematics concerning artificial conceptual generation.
A comprehensive collection of historical readings in the philosophy of mathematics and a selection of influential contemporary work, this much-needed introduction reveals the rich history of the subject. An Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics: A Reader brings together an impressive collection of primary sources from ancient and modern philosophy. Arranged chronologically and featuring introductory overviews explaining technical terms, this accessible reader is easy-to-follow and unrivaled in its historical scope. With selections from key thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume and Kant, it connects the major ideas of the ancients with contemporary thinkers. A selection of recent texts from philosophers including Quine, Putnam, Field and Maddy offering insights into the current state of the discipline clearly illustrates the development of the subject. Presenting historical background essential to understanding contemporary trends and a survey of recent work, An Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics: A Reader is required reading for undergraduates and graduate students studying the philosophy of mathematics and an invaluable source book for working researchers.
Philosophical Approaches to the Foundations of Logic and Mathematics consists of eleven articles addressing various aspects of the "roots" of logic and mathematics, their basic concepts and the mechanisms that work in the practice of their use.
Original anthology features less-technical essays discussing logic, topology, abstract algebra, relativity theory, and the works of David Hilbert. Most have been long unavailable or previously unpublished in book form. 2012 edition.
To mark the centenary of the 1910 to 1913 publication of the monumental Principia Mathematica by Alfred N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, this collection of fifteen new essays by distinguished scholars considers the influence and history of PM over the last hundred years.
What do words have to do with the world? Do our concepts make the world the way it is for us? If concepts do make the world what it is for us, is this making complete, without residue of a natural world, and how does this making occur? Is there a real world to which word and concepts refer that anchors their meaning? What is the role of the imagination in making words have meaning? Is understanding embodied, conceptual, or both? A Modest Realism explores these questions through its examination of the foundations of articulatable experience. It joins language and experience in a non-essentialist realism, while avoiding the non sequiturs and practical impossibilities of most twentieth century postmodern philosophers.
There is an urgent need in philosophy of mathematics for new approaches which pay closer attention to mathematical practice. This book will blaze the trail: it offers philosophical analyses of important characteristics of contemporary mathematics and of many aspects of mathematical activity which escape purely formal logical treatment.
