Godel, Incompleteness, God

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Posted by iwpoe
1/08/2016 5:45 pm
#1

This is such a bizarre construal of Godel for apologetic purposes that I've no idea where to start with it:

https://www.perrymarshall.com/articles/religion/godels-incompleteness-theorem/

Thoughts?


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 
Posted by Scott
1/08/2016 5:54 pm
#2

Wow, it really is utter rubbish, isn't it?

It's not even a correct statement of the Incompleteness Theorems to begin with (for example, the famous "Gödel sentence" is very obviously not equivalent to the Liar Paradox), so if one simply must "start with it" rather than sensibly hurling it aside and moving on to something less intellectually repellent, that's maybe a good place.

 
Posted by iwpoe
1/08/2016 6:06 pm
#3

Yeah, the article has the salesman effect on me. It has misconstrued and misstated so many small medium and large things in such frequency, that I am no longer able to sort out where everything has gone wrong, and I just sort of want to go along with the reading so that I can actually get through the article.

The person I'm arguing with about this article  seems to think it is gospel. At the moment I'm mainly trying to hold the line that reality itself doesn't amount to a formal system, so it's very hard for me to see how you could use incompleteness to infer God's existence straight away from reality itself. And even if it was, it's not clear told me how what you could infer would be called God rightly. But so far he's having none of that.


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 
Posted by Scott
1/08/2016 11:05 pm
#4

Well, I think you're right that reality doesn't amount to a formal system, but really, in dealing with somebody who thinks this silly article is "gospel," your best bet might be to attack its credibility. And the fact is that it's just plain ill-informed from the get-go, and obviously so: the "Liar statement" is undecidable, and the "Gödel sentence" (for any given formal system) is true. Great heavens, that's why the proof works in the first place.

 
Posted by iwpoe
1/09/2016 2:27 am
#5

He won't yet admit dependence on the article. He's treating it as if it were listed in a bibliography rather than a works cited/reference.


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 
Posted by Greg
1/09/2016 10:23 am
#6

I agree that you should just attack his credibility. Focus on his characterizations of Godel's theorems and point out that they don't seem to be equivalent to Godel's theorem. For instance, ask him to show that the statement in terms of "circles" is equivalent to Godel's statement, or any statement shown by any trained logician.

What is a "closed system"? What are some examples of closed and open systems?

He emphasizes repeatedly the idea that you cannot "prove" anything. He says, "All reasoning ultimately traces back to faith in something that you cannot prove." How does he reconcile that with the fact that Godel, like any logician, takes it to be possible to prove things in incomplete (even in inconsistent) systems?

 
Posted by Scott
1/09/2016 6:07 pm
#7

. . . or for that matter that Gödel thought he'd proven his Incompleteness Theorems? Or that Perry Marshall expressly says he thinks Gödel proved them?

How might someone go about "proving" that nothing can be proven?

 
Posted by Tyrrell McAllister
1/15/2016 11:00 am
#8

I rarely pass up an opportunity to recommend Torkel Franzén's Gödel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse.

 


 
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