Friedrich Waismann, a little-known mathematician and onetime student of Wittgenstein's, provides answers to problems that vexed Wittgenstein in his attempt to explicate the foundations of mathematics through an analysis of its practice. Waismann argues in favor of mathematical intuition and the reality of infinity with a Wittgensteinian twist. Waismann's arguments lead toward an approach to the foundation of mathematics that takes into consideration the language and practice of experts.

This is a survey of Gödel's perennial preoccupations with the limits of finitism, its relations to constructivity, and the significance of his incompleteness theorems for Hilbert's program, using his published and unpublished articles and lectures as well as the correspondence between Bernays and Gödel on these matters. There is also an important subtext, namely the shadow of Hilbert that loomed over Gödel from the beginning to the end.

David Hilbert’s early foundational views, especially those corresponding to the 1890s, are analysed here. I consider strong evidence for the fact that Hilbert was a logicist at that time, following upon Dedekind’s footsteps in his understanding of pure mathematics. This insight makes it possible to throw new light on the evolution of Hilbert’s foundational ideas, including his early contributions to the foundations of geometry and the real number system. The context of Dedekind-style logicism makes it possible to offer a new (...) analysis of the emergence of Hilbert’s famous ideas on mathematical existence, now seen as a revision of basic principles of the “naive logic” of sets. At the same time, careful scrutiny of his published and unpublished work around the turn of the century uncovers deep differences between his ideas about consistency proofs before and after 1904. Along the way, we cover topics such as the role of sets and of the dichotomic conception of set theory in Hilbert’s early axiomatics, and offer detailed analyses of Hilbert’s paradox and of his completeness axiom (Vollständigkeitsaxiom). (shrink)

This paper applies the theory of conditional elements to mathematical discourse, rather than ordinary natural-language discourse, in which latter context the theory was first introduced.

Hilbert’s program in the philosophy of mathematics comes in two parts. One part is a technical part. To carry out this part of the program one has to prove a certain technical result. The other part of the program is a philosophical part. It is concerned with philosophical questions that are the real aim of the program. To carry out this part one, basically, has to show why the technical part answers the philosophical questions one wanted to have answered. Hilbert (...) probably thought that he had completed the philosophical part of his program, maybe up to a few details. What was left to do was the technical part. To carry it out one, roughly, had to give a precise axiomatization of mathematics and show that it is consistent on purely finitistic grounds. This would come down to giving a relative consistency proof of mathematics in finitist mathematics, or to give a proof-theoretic reduction of mathematics on to finitist mathematics (we will look at these notions in more detail soon). It is widely believed that Gödel’s theorems showed that the technical part of Hilbert’s program could not be carried out. Gödel’s theorems show that the consistency of arithmetic can not even be proven in arithmetic, not to speak of by finitistic means alone. So, the technical part of Hilbert’s program is hopeless, and since Hilbert’s program essentially relied on both the technical and the philosophical part, Hilbert’s program as a whole is hopeless. Justified as this attitude is, it is a bit unfortunate. It is unfortunate because it takes away too much attention from the philosophical part of Hilbert’s program. And this is unfortunate for two reasons. (shrink)

These questions are addressed in this volume by leading mathematical logicians and philosophers of mathematics.A special section is concerned with constructive ...

It is shown that David Hilbert's formalistic approach to axiomaticis accompanied by a certain pragmatism that is compatible with aphilosophical, or, so to say, external foundation of mathematics.Hilbert's foundational programme can thus be seen as areconciliation of Pragmatism and Apriorism. This interpretation iselaborated by discussing two recent positions in the philosophy ofmathematics which are or can be related to Hilbert's axiomaticalprogramme and his formalism. In a first step it is argued that thepragmatism of Hilbert's axiomatic contradicts the opinion thatHilbert style (...) axiomatical systems are closed systems, a reproachposed by Carlo Cellucci. In the second section the question isdiscussed whether Hilbert's pragmatism in foundational issuescomes close to an a-philosophical ``naturalism in mathematics'' assuggested by Penelope Maddy. The answer is ``no'', because forHilbert philosophy had its specific tasks in the general projectto found mathematics. This is illuminated in the concludingsection giving further evidence for Hilbert's foundationalapriorism by discussing his ``axiom of the existence of mind'' andrelating it to the ``one and only axiom'' of the German algebraistof logic, Ernst Schröder, postulating the inherence of signs onthe paper. (shrink)

I outline a variant on the formalist approach to mathematics which rejects textbook formalism's highly counterintuitive denial that mathematical theorems express truths while still avoiding ontological commitment to a realm of abstract objects. The key idea is to distinguish the sense of a sentence from its explanatory truth conditions. I then look at various problems with the neo-formalist approach, in particular at the status of the notion of proof in a formal calculus and at problems which Gödelian results seem to (...) pose for the tight link assumed between truth and proof. (shrink)

Critical study of Michael Potter, Reason's Nearest Kin. Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to Carnap. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000. x + 305 pages.