The priority of arithmetical truth over arithmetical provability (Q1607593)
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English | The priority of arithmetical truth over arithmetical provability |
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The priority of arithmetical truth over arithmetical provability (English)
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26 November 2003
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As is well known, intuitionism regards the notion of intuitive proof as the fundamental semantic notion on which the essential meaning of a theorem is founded: the proof-conditions are primordial. Following \textit{J. Hintikka} [The principles of mathematics revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press (1996; Zbl 0869.03003)], the author aims to criticize this standpoint as resting on a confusion between dertermining and recognizing the truth of a mathematical proposition and then he wants to defend the priority of truth over provability. Sometimes assimilating ``psychological'' intuitionism with rigorous logical constructivism [Heyting, Bishop, Dummet, Troelstra, Van Dalen], the author considers that Heyting's attempt to clarify what are concrete and logical conditions for a complete, receivable proof destroys the very nature of mathematical proof, oriented towards truth. He also emphasizes that the intuitionistic conception of integers entails a sort of ``computational realism'', which rests on the computational activity of an ideal agent in a ideal spatio-temporal world. For him, such a purely imaginary criterion of receivability of a proof should be rejected. As often happens, the interest in logics and in philosophy of mathematics is not supported by a deep mathematical culture, which makes the debate rather narrow in comparison to the explosion of mathematical knowledge.
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truth of a mathematical proposition
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provability
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philosophy of mathematics
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