From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 22:37:54 GMT

In article ,
CDJ   wrote:
>
>On Fri, 8 Nov 1996, Jim Balter wrote:
>
>> The Lucas view of Godel is trivially wrong, since it ignores the fact that
>> Godel incompleteness only applies to *consistent* systems.  For this and other
>> reasons (e.g., finiteness), Godel has no relevance to systems in the real
>> world.
>
>Is it just me, or is this rather like saying that since the classical
>logician's "and" only applies to truth-functional systems, (and natural
>language is demonstrably not truth-functional) therefore the classical
>logician's "and" "has no relevance to systems in the real world" ?

No, it's nothing like that.  Godel shows that certain sorts of systems have
certain sorts of failures.  But it is *absolutely vital to the proof* that the
nature of the system be *precisely* as Godel formulated it; even the slightest
variation from "consistent" allows the system to escape the imposed limits.
Real reasoning systems, like our own, are heuristic; GODEL DOES NOT APPLY.
The relation between the logician's "and" and the natural language "and" does
not need to be locked up tight as a drum in the same way.

>A bit to quick, I would think.

Speak for your own projection.

>Which is by no means to suggest that I agree with anything Lucas has to
>say in that debate.

Well if not, why not, other than the failure of Godel to apply?


--