Why does Gödel Bother People?

Abram Demski

December 31, 2010

Abstract
Jon Cogburn and Jason Megill show that Gödel's rst incompleteness
theorem implies an inconsistency between inferentialism and computa-
tionalism. I review the argument, take the view that it formalizes part
of our intuitive uneasiness with Gödel, and examine possible responses to
this state of aairs.
The syntactic version of Gödel's rst incompleteness theorem tells us that any
consistent logical system which is able to interpret elementary number theory
will necessarily be incomplete we can construct statements which it can neither
prove nor disprove. The semantic version of the theorem goes one step further:
given any sound logical system which interprets number theory, we can construct
true statements which that system cannot prove.
The semantic version is easily proven from the syntactic version, as follows:
given that a system is sound (that is, only tells us true things), we know that it
must be consistent (since contradictions are not true). Thus, by the syntactic
version of the theorem, we know there are some statements which the system
can neither prove nor disprove. But all statements are either true or false; so
either the assertion or denial of such statements must be true. So, clearly, there
are some true statements which the system cannot prove.
One common response, on rst hearing the theorem, is to think that it
implies some diculty for the view that the mind is a machine (computational-
ism). This may either concern or excite people, depending on their predisposi-
tion. Those who are excited will often start using the theorem as an argument
against computationalism. These are sometimes referred to as lucas-penrose
arguments. Those who are concerned, though, usually realize that such argu-
ments are too quick often missing the critical distinction between the semantic
version of the theorem and the syntactic version, for example. The proponents
of the mechanical view of the mind are usually satised with this victory; the
lucas-penrose arguments are simply mistaken, so it appears that Gödel's incom-
pleteness theorem is not a problem for computationalism after all.
Yet, Gödel's incompleteness theorems (rst and second) maintain a certain
air of mystery; there are many counterintuitive results in mathematics, but
Gödel's work is often seen as downright paradoxical. Why should this be? Is
something so very wrong with our logical intuitions?

1
 In the above story, it seems as though our uneasiness is caused simply by
the temptation to make lucas-penrose style arguments: once we realize these
arguments don't work, we can stop worrying. But is this the case? Perhaps the
lucas-penrose arguments are not, after all, the best formalization of our intuitive
double-take. I will argue the position of Jon Cogburn and Jason Megill, who
have published an argument[1] that Gödel does, in fact, cause trouble for the
computational theory of mind.
Cogburn and Megill show that computationalism is in fact incompatible
with a related view, inferentialism. Rougly speaking, inferentialism is the view
that the meaning of a concept in our mind is captured completely by the set
of associated inferences we have for that concept; ie, the meaning is just the
inferences. (Cogburn and Megill use a more specic statement of inferentialism
which has historical roots, but I will prefer to keep a somewhat broader range
of possible inferentialist positions.)
At rst blush, inferentialism appears to follow simply from computational-
ism: if the mind is a machine, then the only way to represent a concept will
be with patterns of interactions within the machine; so in a strong sense, the
concept is just the inferences. (This requires a fairly broad interpretation of the
word inference; for example, we must include a machine's input and output
as part of its patterns of inference, as well.) If a concept is nothing but a set
of potential inferences, then how can the concept's meaning be derived from
anything else then that set of inferences?
However, Gödel's theorem drives a wedge between the two: if we understand
natural numbers, and understand the meaning of statements in elementary num-
ber theory, then we should be able to make the relevant inferences. However,
any computable inference system is incomplete! Therefore, either minds are not
computers, or they cannot understand the concept of numbers.
If we assume that we can in fact understand basic number theory, then we've
shown that two initially very plausible ideas are incompatible: either we must
give up computationalism, so that some non-computable power is allowing us to
recognize the relevant inferences, or we give up inferentialism, so that meaning
is imposed on our concepts from somewhere beyond our inferences.
In my view, this nicely formalizes the puzzling aspect of the theorem or at
least a portion of it. (Another portion is the puzzling nature of self-reference, but
one might argue that that has more to do with Gödel's second incompleteness
theorem, which I won't discuss much in this essay.) So, although lucas-penrose
arguments turn out to be incorrectly formulated, it appears that there really is
a problem to be solved here. How can we resolve the conict?
One possible response is to deny that we understand number theory. Clinging
to computationalism and inferentialism, one has only to point out that we can't,
after all, write down a set of rules which determine whether a proof is acceptable
or not. In practice, we can rely almost entirely on widely accepted conventions;
in principle, however, we know that these are incomplete. On this basis, one
might argue that we don't know exactly what we are talking about after all;
perhaps we are working with a patchwork of assumptions which sound good to
us for various reasons.

2
 Going back to the syntactic version of Gödel's rst incompleteness theorem,
we can argue that no complete concept can be had which shares the basic features
of the natural numbers; ie, there is no way to nish o  the denition in a way
that works. An inferentialist computationalist might then think that what Gödel
gives us is a criteria for the rejection of a mathematical system: if the system is
strong enough to interpret basic number theory, then it is nonsense and should
be rejected.
There is a problem, however: Gödel's incompleteness theorems must them-
selves be formalized in a logic which is that strong. To reject a foundational
logic which can interpret number theory is to reject the very machinery by which
the argument is made. Indeed, it seems that computationalism must also be
rejected at the same time: the formal notion of computer is strong enough to
be problematic.
Good then! the proponent of this path might respond: This shows that
Gödel's theorem was really just an illusion to begin with; a paradox symptomatic
of a faulty mathematics. Perhaps some decidable subset of number theory
1
would then be oered as a less troublesome way of talking about numbers, with
a corrospondingly limited notion of computation with which to understand
the computationalist thesis.
This path is called nitism : if we are to talk about numbers at all, we must
stick to nite, or at least nitey decidable, statements. (I can't argue that this
is precisely the view self-named nitists would give, but I suspect it is close, and
I will use that term for the remainder of this essay.)
One way of judging nitist views is to check whether they are understand-
able by their own lights. One might expect to nd that whatever denition
of computation might be oered, it could not be dened in itself, so that any
theory of meaning would be self defeating: if we accept the theory, we must also
accept that the theory is not understandable. This would follow from Tarski's
undenability theorem, except that Tarski's theorem is not applicable to these
theories, because they are too weak! So, there is some hope .
2
Of course, the major disadvantage to these sorts of responses is that one
must give up most of standard mathematics.
A somewhat less devestating route is to claim that some particular formal
system does, in fact, reect the set of characteristic inferences behind the concept
of natural numbers (or even mathematics as a whole). This is to accept the
syntactic version of the theorem, but reject the semantic version. How can
we deny the semantic version of the theorem? By denying that all statements
must be determinately true or false: some may be indeterminate. (That all
statements are either true or false is known as the law of excluded middle, so this
response denies that law.) Mercifully, the problem dissolves: we can maintain
both inferentialism and computationalism. The truth of statements of number
theory is really just their provability.

1 Primitive Recursive Arithmetic is one such subset.

2 Perhaps Dan Willard's self-verifying arithmetic (which proves itself consistent, escaping
Gödel's second incompleteness theorem, but is still incomplete) would be a good starting point
for this sort of investigation.

3
 This response ts into the tradition called intuitionism.
One way of understanding what's going on here is: we are denying Gödel's
denition of complete in favor of our own. The relevant sense of completeness
is not that all statements are decided to be true or false by the system. Instead,
we are picking some formal system to use as the measuring stick. Another formal
system will be considered complete exactly when it makes the inferences which
our chosen yardstick system makes. (This doesn't mean we pick the yardstick
arbitrarily, though!)
Perhaps the most direct criticism of intuitionism is the plausibility of the law
of excluded middle. The semantic version of the rst incompleteness theorem
gives us statements which should be true, despite being unprovable in the chosen
system. Do we really want to think these are merely indeterminate?
3
One consolation is that indeterminate is not necessarily a permanent sta-
tus. An intuitionist can be open to the possibility of adopting additional rules
in the future. The chosen yardstick system can be thought of as a minimal
requirement, rather than the nal word. This naturally leads to the question
of how additional axioms are chosen. This must be answered very carefully,
however the wrong answer may endanger the intuitionist position.
4 Further-
more, if one can describe the system for adding new axioms, why wasn't it part
of the original system put forward as the yardstick?
5
The third response that I'll consider makes a more direct and controversial
attack on the rst and second incompleteness theorems.
What if we deny that the proper understanding of the natural numbers is
consistent? What if the proper understanding of mathematics is contradictory?
In other words, what if there are true contradictions? (This is a denial of the
law of non-contradiction.)
This is known as dialetheism.
Dialetheism denies the need to resolve paradoxes. Instead, paradoxes can be
taken as bald proof of a contradiction the contradiction is unproblematic. Since
Gödel's theorems assume consistent systems, they no longer apply directly; so,
the argument that computationalism and inferentialism contradict one another
is blocked at its root.
Despite the incompleteness theorems not directly applying, though, I think
it is still straightforward to argue that these systems are incomplete in some

3 Gödel's second incompleteness theorem tells us, specically, that one of the statements
which a system X will leave indeterminate will be mathematically equivalent to System X
is consistent. It seems as if any advocate of system X will hope this is true! Yet, it seems
that intuitionists must refrain from arguing this. Again, we could turn to Dan Willard's
self-verifying logic to get around this; however, we must be willing to give up most of basic
number theory.
4 One rule which might seem plausible, for example: if adding the negation of a statement
would result in a contradiction, but adding the statement would not, then it is acceptable to
add the statement. This leads directly to the law of excluded middle.
5 It's possible, on the other hand, that one can't describe one's system for adding new
rules it may even be unknowable to oneself. If this is the case, then the yardstick system is
only intended to convey our current self-knowledge reguarding the inferential structure which
represents the natural numbers. The truth is that they are characterized by the yardstick
system plus the unknown rules for accepting new axioms.

4
sense if they interpret number theory in some sense. For example, we might
take the interpretation that anything we prove and do not later refute is a
true statement of number theory. Interpreting the system in that way, we can
still prove that it must be incomplete, and arrive once again at a contradiction
between inferentialism and computationalism. Perhaps this specic way of in-
terpreting number theory might be unsound; but it seems to me that we should
hope for some such sense, or else we've once again lost quite a bit of mathemat-
ics. But in any such case, we can interpret Gödel's theorems, and again have a
contradiction between computationalism and inferentialism. Of course, it may
be a true contradiction, so that we can still believe in both!
In any case, as for intuitionism, the most important argument against it may
be that that the law which it denies is a very plausible one. Can there really be
such a thing as a true contradiction? In an area so innocent as number theory?
What would this mean, exactly?
It's interesting that three major non-classical trends in the foundations of
mathematics emerge fairly naturally as dierent responses to the problem un-
covered by Cogburn and Megill. To me, this supports the centrality of their
argument; much of the work in non-classical foundations can be viewed as a
pre-emptive response to it, suggesting that the result was already implicitly rec-
ognized. However, I should not be too hasty to make such claims! Dialetheism,
in particular, is more naturally seen as a response to paradoxes such as Russel's.
One view is noticably absent from the list: platonism. How would platonism
t into this? It seems to me that a platonist will be unwilling to give up
classical mathematics, and so is forced to take the argument at face value: either
computationalism or inferentialism must be abandoned. However, a platonist
might be happy to give up one or both views.
Keeping inferentialism will force us to abandon computationalism in favor
of the view that the mind can, in fact, recognize the truth of mathematical
principles in a way which cannot be captured mechanically. (This does not, of
course, mean that a mathematician can instantly recognize whether any math-
ematical statement is true or false!) An extreme platonist could claim that this
power comes from an ability to directly perceive the platonic truths. Modern
thought more often looks to physics for the source, as exemplied by Roger
Penrose's account which relies on quantum phenomena in the brain. One name
given to this school of thought is hypercomputationalism. The quality of all
such approaches would apparently rely on a scientic question: how plausible is
it that something essentially non-computational is going on? This can only be
answered by weighing the evidence.
Keeping computationalism, on the other hand, would force us to reject infer-
entialism. A dierent theory of where meaning comes from would be in demand.
It seems to me that denying inferentialism (while keeping computationalism) re-
quires the meaning to be imposed from outside in some manner: a concept
is just a structure of inference mechanisms (thanks to computationalism), yet
its meaning is not. Again, the extreme platonist could point to the platonic
realm of truths. According to strict platonism, objects of the material world are
imperfect, and can only partially participate in a given etermal form, to the

5
extent that they resemble that form. Accordingly, a human concept would par-
ticipate in a concept-form to the extent that its structure of inferences matched
the perfect structure present in the form.
This, however, brings up the question of what determines which form a
human concept should be taken to refer to who is to say that we aren't referring
to some nonstandard model of arithmetic (assuming these also exists as platonic
forms), rather than the standard one? Perhaps some measure of simplicity is
at work, so that the simplest form matching a concept is the one which it most
strongly participates in? Even if this is the case, though, it's hard to see how
it would make any dierence to a computationalist: since the mind is purely
mechanical, it has no access to forms or the platonic truths, so it has no means
to asses the criteria for meaning. Hence, a strict platonist would do better to
reject both inferentialism and computationalism.
It is hard to say what less strictly platonist accounts of meaning might look
like this seems wide open. Where might meaning come from? This is a question
of intentionality, and my assertion that meaning must come from outside is a
form of a view called externalism. However, most theories of intensionality are
drawn along inferentialist lines, and it is dicult to see how even an externalist
theory can bear the weight of referring to non-computable meanings like those
of number theory.
Perhaps one might claim that we don't, in fact, need an account of meaning.
All that really exists is the computations; meaning is a sort of convenient ction.
This view is somewhat self-undermining, since it can't be meaningfully asserted
by its own statement! On the other hand, it may have a certain practical
appeal: it brushes aside the logical issues for which it is dicult to understand
how there can be an empirical fact of the matter. Since it is merely a matter
of convenience, we are free to ignore the problem of how we understand what
computationalism is yet still believe in it. We'd also be free to adopt one of
the other positions if it became convenient in a specic context; there would be
no need to feel overly comminted to a particular view.
A more conservative version of this view might hold that there are many
things which we can meaningfully talk about, but the natural numbers (and
perhaps most mathematical entities) are not amoung them. This view is called
formalism : mathematics is just a sort of formal game played with symbols, the
results of which nonetheless may be useful. Again, this allows us to dodge the
question of where mathematical meaning comes from, or even adopt dierent
answers as is convenient.
One way to attack this view is to argue that at least a bare minimum of
mathematics seems to be meaningful; namely, if mathematics is just a symbol-
manipulating game, then the mathematics of symbol manipulation should be
meaningful. For example, if we are correctly following the rules of the game
of addition, then 2 and 2 should always give us 4. This seems to at least
imply a sort of nitism.
A less direct attack is to concede that mathematics might be a sort of game,
but argue that we should at least be able to agree on the rules. Gödel's rst
incompleteness theorem still gives us some trouble, then: no complete set of

6
rules for the natural numbers can be set out. This means that we are once
again forced to consider the alternatives already set out. Of these, intuitionism
may be particularly appealing for the game view of mathematics: given that
it's just a formal game, there is no need to think that all statements are true or
false. Indeed, Gödel's theorem shows that no set of rules actually has this prop-
erty (if we want true and false to coincide with provable and refutable).
Dialetheism is also an option here, since there is no special reason why the game
should not ever prove both a statement and its negation, either.
Combining the two attacks, however, returns us to earlier objections: if we at
least accept that the mathematics which studies symbol games is meaningful,
then we are at risk of accepting that provable and refutable are factual
properties with meaning in the context of the set of rules we've chosen. Then
we can return to the earlier argument against intuitionism: presumably, to say
that there is a fact of the matter implies that these properties are either true
or false (asserting the law of excluded middle). The semantic version of the
incompleteness theorem can once again be applied. Similarly, we can argue
against dialetheism, on the grounds that real properties should not be both
true and false. Whatever set of rules we choose, we can argue that it is either
incomplete or inconsistent concerning matters of fact. The conict between
intuitionism and computationalism then returns in full force. This attack can
still be denied, however, if it is held that the law of excluded middle or non-
contradiction can fail even for real propertes or alternatively, if we pick a set
of rules which are too weak for Gödel's incompleteness theorems to hold.
So, that is the state of aairs. Altogether, the options I've described are:

• Finitism: Since basic number theory cannot be completed in a consis-

tent way, it must be incoherent. All the mathematical concepts we can
understand are codied by complete rule-systems (ie, all mathematical
statements can be decided one way or the other).

• Intuitionism: Basic number theory only has meaning in the context of a

specic formal system. Since Gödel's rst incompleteness theorem shows
that no acceptable system can prove all statements either true or false, we
must reject the idea that all statements are either true or false.

• Dialetheism: Our concept of number is contradictory, so that Gödel's

theorems don't apply to begin with.

• Hypercomputationalism: Computationalism is simply false; minds can do

things which computers fundamentally can't do.

• Non-inferentialism: The meaning of a concept relies on more than just the

inferential structure associated with that concept.

• Formalism: Mathematical concepts to not need to be ascribed a meaning;

it is better to think of them as a formal game which happens to be useful.

It should be clear that these views are far from mutually exclusive. I take
the view that it is desirable to give up as few of the common assumptions as

7
possible. However, if we think certain assumptions should be given up, then
there is no problem with giving up more than the minimal number. What is
hopefully clear is that something must be give up. We cannot believe that we
understand the natural numbers with their usual properties (including the laws
of excluded middle and non-contradiction as usual properties), and that the
mind is essentially a machine, and that the meaning of a concept in our mind
is purely rooted in the structure of inferences for that concept.

References
[1] Jon Cogburn and Jason Megill. Are turing machines platonists? Minds and
Machines.