Wittgenstein on mathematical meaningfulness, decidability, and application (Q1381435)

The author especially discusses the ``middle period'' of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics between 1929 and 1944. He focuses on meaningfulness, ``the single most important issue in Wittgenstein's philosophy as a whole'' (p. 195). He distinguishes an earlier part within this period from 1929-1934, when Wittgenstein ``adopts a strong variant of formalism in order to show that mathematical calculi are formal inventions in which meaningfulness and truth are entirely intrasystemic affairs'' (p. 196), and a later part from 1934-1944, when he demanded ``extrasystemic applications as a necessary condition of a meaningful mathematical calculus [\dots], thereby returning to the weak formalism of the \textit{Tractatus}'' (ibid.). The author shows convincingly that the general view according to which Wittgenstein cannot be a formalist because he so obviously disagrees with Hilbert, regarded as the father of twentieth century formalism, an opinion held, e.g., by \textit{P. Fascolla} [Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics, Routledge, London (1994)], has its origins in a mistaken identification of Hilbert's program with formalism. In the first part of the middle period Wittgenstein held an anti-platonistic view according to which the signs and propositions of the mathematical calculus do not refer to anything outside the calculus, maintaining that mathematics is essentially syntactical. The author discusses Wittgenstein's attitude towards cardinal numbers, the status of a mathematical conjecture, the notion of algorithmic decidability, and his demand of strict finitism. Against \textit{S. Shanker} [Wittgenstein and the Turning Point in the Philosophy of Mathematics, Croom Helm, London (1987; Zbl 0648.00017)], and \textit{M. Wrighly} [Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics, Philos. Q. 27, 50-59 (1977)] he argues for Wittgenstein's revisionism, based on Wittgenstein's reserve towards transfinite set theory. Wittgenstein returned in his later philosophy of mathematics of this middle period, as represented in his ``Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics'' [ed. G.H. v. Wright, R. Rhees, and G. E. M. Anscombe, Basil Blackwell, Oxford (1967; Zbl 0444.03001)], to the weak formalism of the \textit{Tractatus}, still keeping ``the core idea of formalism [\dots] that the meaningfulness of `propositions' relative to a given calculus is essentially a syntactical and intrasystematic affair,'' but, ``such a `proposition' is only a mathematical proposition if its calculus has been given an extrasystemic application'' (p. 220).