The conveyability of intuitionism, an essay on mathematical cognition (Q1111535): Difference between revisions

M. Dummett has argued, on several occasions, basing himself upon Wittgensteinian ideas on language and communication, that, in mathematics, classical logic should be abandoned in favour of intuitionistic logic. The gist of his argument is that the classical meaning of a statement cannot be obtained from the use of that statement, and, therefore, cannot be obtained at all. The author advances the view that an actualist, i.e. someone who refuses to accept the intuitionistic notion of the set of natural numbers, might decide to discard intuitionistic logic for reasons similar to those for which the intuitionist refused to accept classical logic. The intuitionist cannot properly explain himself to an actualist, as even the notion of logical implication involves the notion of effective procedure, i.e. a procedure which always terminates in a finite number of steps: he needs the notion of finiteness, and therefore the notion of natural number. The author shows in some detail why it is impossible to reduce this notion to more basic ones. He ends his paper with a plea for further study of the process of communication in mathematics.