scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1446592
Church's thesisdecision problemfoundationsintuitionismlogicismmachine intelligencemathematics as calculusmathematics as gamephilosophy of mathematicssymbolismtautologyTuringWittgenstein
Philosophy of mathematics (00A30) History of mathematics in the 20th century (01A60) Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to mathematical logic and foundations (03-02) History of mathematical logic and foundations (03-03) Philosophical and critical aspects of logic and foundations (03A05) Turing machines and related notions (03D10)
The book under review gives a comprehensive overview of the work of L. Wittgenstein relevant for the philosophy of mathematics. It focusses especially on various aspects of calculation. In a very detailed way the context is provided, possible influences on Wittgenstein and by Wittgenstein on other people are discussed. The material is organized in two parts, the first of which is entitled ``The universal `game' of mathematics, the second ``Conceptual problems in calculations. The first part deals with \textit{L. Wittgenstein}'s early writings, especially with the philosophy of mathematics as presented in the \textit{Tractatus logico-philosophicus} (1922; JFM 48.1128.13), containing a readable presentation of Wittgenstein's `picture theory' (``The `theory of symbolism, pp.\ 56-70). The author corrects the ``common mistake of ascribing to Wittgenstein the opinion that mathematical ideas are classical truth-functional tautologies (p.\ 131). Wittgenstein always restricted the concept of tautology to logic, but never logicistically identified logic and mathematics. After carefully inspecting the similarities between the intuitionistic and the Wittgensteinian approach to mathematics, and considering L. E. J. Brouwer's impact on Wittgenstein, the author turns to Wittgenstein's post-1929 writings on calculus conceptions. Topics treated include the idea of mathematics as calculations, mathematical quasi-empiricism, Wittgenstein's position toward conventionalism, his scepticism toward mathematical prose, his aversion to any normative value of research on mathematical foundations, saying that it is a strange mistake of some mathematicians to believe that something inside mathematics could be dropped on the base of a critique of foundations: ``Once we have calculated something it cannot drop out and disappear (p.\ 236). This position is related to D. Hilbert's meta-mathematical programme, the demand for finding consistency proofs for axiomatic systems, the idea of decidability and K. Gödel's incompleteness theorem (discussing the question whether Wittgenstein had understood Gödel's results. The author answers: Yes). Finally Wittgeinstein's position toward machine intelligence is discussed, especially his relation to A. Turing, to A. Church's thesis and to several conceptions of artificial intelligence.
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