FOM: weak realism, bivalence, and Godel

[Neil Tennant]

Randall Holmes wrote:

> ... I agree that "bivalence" can be viewed as a separate issue from
> ontology.
> 
> But I find the attempt to construe Godel as a "weak realist" of this
> kind quite incredible.  It is very clear from his essay on the continuum
> problem (and even from the excerpts exhibited on the list) that he was
> a realist in the strong sense that mathematical propositions, whether
> we know how to decide them or not, are either true or false.

No one is denying that Godel was a realist in the strong sense.
What is being denied is that he ever *derived* such realism from a belief
in the objective existence of mathematical *objects*. The recent
discussion on fom about ontological realism and realism about truth-value
is whether the former *implies* the latter.

Neil Tennant