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Well...I think about Godel's theorem as the mathematical implementation of Kant's ideas about the limits of reason based upon human experience, i.e. there are some truths which are inaccessible because time and space are preconditions of all human experience.

Not to dwell on arguments about whether or not time and space actually exist independently of human experience, what Kant was getting at is that the way in which humans experience the world limits our ability to draw conclusions to a particular subset of all truths.

If Godel's theorem is true, then from a Kantian perspective, mathematics no longer enjoys a uniquely privileged place in regards to human rationality. That's pretty important philosophically - at least to some people.

Positivists may take a different view.



I've just spent about an hour trying to explain how the comparision between Godel's incompleteness theorem and the ideas of Kant is flawed, but I couldn't come up with anything, because they have nothing to do with each other. It's like trying to explain how the number 2 is different from a rhinoceros; there's no explanation that would satisfy anyone who already believes that the number 2 and a rhino are comparable.


That's close to Jacques Lacan's famous argument that there is a philosophical equivalence between the square root of -1 and an erect penis.


Godel doesn't talk about space, time, human experience, truths that exist independently of human experience. I fail to see how he's relevant.


He does. Learn more about his biography and his interest in mysticism and philosophy: http://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Logic-John-L-Casti/dp/07382...


Perhaps he does, but I don't think he does so in the proofs of his incompleteness theorems.




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