[FOM] Did Goedel "read philosophy"?

[John Steel]

Perhaps in one important instance, Godel was too much a philosopher for 
his own good.

I'm thinking of the story that he discovered the basics
of forcing some time around 1940, and got the independence
of AC from the theory of finite types that way. The story is
that he never made the result public because he thought
of AC as clearly true, and the result purely a technical
one.

If Godel had indeed discovered the basics of forcing,
making his work public might have soon led to the full
development, and Godel himself would have been in a
position to think more productively about CH. As it
was, Godel was 57 when Cohen disccovered forcing.

Here's a well-known passage by Einstein that seems to
me to get it right:
-------------------------
The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy 
kind. They are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact 
with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is -- 
insofar as it is thinkable at all -- primitive and muddled. However, no 
sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his 
way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the 
thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject 
whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot 
afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far. 
He accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual analysis; but the 
external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do 
not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction 
of his conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. He 
therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of 
unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to 
describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist 
insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as free inventions of 
the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); 
as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified 
only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of 
relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or 
Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as 
an indispensible and effective tool of his research. 
----------------------------


John Steel


On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, Charles Parsons wrote:

> At 9:13 AM -0700 3/7/07, Jim Hardy wrote:
> >Actually, Godel even did some philosophy.  There's a version of the
> >Ontological argument due to Godel.  Here's the reference.
> >
> >Kurt Sobel, "Goedel's Ontological Proof" in {\it On Being and Saying},
> >Judith Thomson ed., Cambridge MA, 1987.
> >
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: fom-bounces at cs.nyu.edu [mailto:fom-bounces at cs.nyu.edu] On Behalf Of
> >Martin Davis
> >Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 11:20 PM
> >To: fom at cs.nyu.edu
> >Subject: [FOM] Did Goedel "read philosophy"?
> >
> >Surprisingly, Dean Buckner wrote:
> >
> >  > As for Godel, did he read any philosophy?
> >
> >As I thought subscribers to this list knew perfectly well, Goedel
> >studied Kant in his youth, and in his later years studied Leibniz and
> >then Husserl in his usual ultra-intensive manner.
> >
> >Martin
> 
> Neither Mr. Buckner nor Mr. Hardy seems to be aware that there are 
> five volumes of Goedel's Collected Works in print (Oxford University 
> Press, 1986-2003). There are several papers in volumes II and III 
> that would be described as philosophical, including his notes on the 
> ontological argument. Other items in these volumes, including the 
> correspondence in volumes IV-V, give quite a bit of evidence about 
> his engagement with philosophy and what he read.
> 
> Another source is the two books by Hao Wang, _Refelctions on Kurt 
> Goedel_ (MIT Press, 1987) and _A Logical Journey: From Goedel to 
> Philosophy_ (MIT Press, 1986), as well as papers in various 
> publications, in particular the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic.
> 
> Charles Parsons
> _______________________________________________
> FOM mailing list
> FOM at cs.nyu.edu
> http://www.cs.nyu.edu/mailman/listinfo/fom
>