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Impredicativity
In mathematics, logic and philosophy of mathematics, something that is impredicative is a self-referencing definition. Roughly speaking, a definition is impredicative if it invokes (mentions or quantifies over) the set being defined, or (more commonly) another set that contains the thing being defined. There is no generally accepted precise definition of what it means to be predicative or impredicative. Authors have given different but related definitions. The opposite of impredicativity is predicativity, which essentially entails building stratified (or ramified) theories where quantification over a type at one 'level' results in types at a new, higher, level. A prototypical example is intuitionistic type theory, which retains ramification (without the explicit levels) so as to discard impredicativity. The 'levels' here correspond to the number of layers of dependency in a term definition. Russell's paradox is a famous example of an impredicative construction—namely the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Axiom Of Reducibility
The axiom of reducibility was introduced by Bertrand Russell in the early 20th century as part of his ramified theory of types. Russell devised and introduced the axiom in an attempt to manage the contradictions he had discovered in his analysis of set theory. History With Russell's discovery (1901, 1902) of a paradox in Gottlob Frege's 1893 ''Grundgesetze der Arithmetik'' and Frege's acknowledgment of the same (1902), Russell tentatively introduced his solution as "Appendix B: Doctrine of Types" in his 1903 ''The Principles of Mathematics''. This Russell's paradox, contradiction can be stated as "the class of all classes that do not contain themselves as elements". At the end of this appendix Russell asserts that his "doctrine" would solve the immediate problem posed by Frege, but "there is at least one closely analogous contradiction which is probably not soluble by this doctrine. The totality of all logical objects, or of all propositions, involves, it would seem a fundamental ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vicious Circle Principle
The vicious circle principle is a principle that was endorsed by many predicativist mathematicians in the early 20th century to prevent contradictions. The principle states that no object or property may be introduced by a definition that depends on that object or property itself. In addition to ruling out definitions that are explicitly circular (like "an object has property ''P'' iff it is not next to anything that has property ''P''"), this principle rules out definitions that quantify over domains which include the entity being defined. Thus, it blocks Russell's paradox, which defines a set ''R'' that contains all sets which do not contain themselves. This definition is blocked because it defines a new set in terms of the totality of all sets, of which this new set would itself be a member. However, it also blocks one standard definition of the natural numbers. First, we define a property as being " hereditary" if, whenever a number ''n'' has the property, so does ''n''+ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self Reference
Self-reference is a concept that involves referring to oneself or one's own attributes, characteristics, or actions. It can occur in language, logic, mathematics, philosophy, and other fields. In natural or formal languages, self-reference occurs when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philosophy, self-reference also refers to the ability of a subject to speak of or refer to itself, that is, to have the kind of thought expressed by the first person nominative singular pronoun "I" in English. Self-reference is studied and has applications in mathematics, philosophy, computer programming, second-order cybernetics, and linguistics, as well as in humor. Self-referential statements are sometimes paradoxical, and can also be considered recursive. In logic, mathematics and computing In classical philosophy, paradoxes were created by self- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl (; ; 9 November 1885 – 8 December 1955) was a German mathematician, theoretical physicist, logician and philosopher. Although much of his working life was spent in Zürich, Switzerland, and then Princeton, New Jersey, he is associated with the University of Göttingen tradition of mathematics, represented by Carl Friedrich Gauss, David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski. His research has had major significance for theoretical physics as well as purely mathematical disciplines such as number theory. He was one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century, and an important member of the Institute for Advanced Study during its early years. Weyl contributed to an exceptionally wide range of fields, including works on space, time, matter, philosophy, logic, symmetry and the history of mathematics. He was one of the first to conceive of combining general relativity with the laws of electromagnetism. Freeman Dyson wrote that Weyl alone bore comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russell's Paradox
In mathematical logic, Russell's paradox (also known as Russell's antinomy) is a set-theoretic paradox published by the British philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell, in 1901. Russell's paradox shows that every set theory that contains an unrestricted comprehension principle leads to contradictions. According to the unrestricted comprehension principle, for any sufficiently well-defined property, there is the set of all and only the objects that have that property. Let ''R'' be the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. (This set is sometimes called "the Russell set".) If ''R'' is not a member of itself, then its definition entails that it is a member of itself; yet, if it is a member of itself, then it is not a member of itself, since it is the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. The resulting contradiction is Russell's paradox. In symbols: : Let R = \. Then R \in R \iff R \not \in R. Russell also showed that a version of the paradox co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematical Logic
Mathematical logic is the study of Logic#Formal logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory (also known as computability theory). Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of formal systems of logic such as their expressive or deductive power. However, it can also include uses of logic to characterize correct mathematical reasoning or to establish foundations of mathematics. Since its inception, mathematical logic has both contributed to and been motivated by the study of foundations of mathematics. This study began in the late 19th century with the development of axiomatic frameworks for geometry, arithmetic, and Mathematical analysis, analysis. In the early 20th century it was shaped by David Hilbert's Hilbert's program, program to prove the consistency of foundational theories. Results of Kurt Gödel, Gerhard Gentzen, and others provided partial resolution to th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naive Set Theory
Naive set theory is any of several theories of sets used in the discussion of the foundations of mathematics. Unlike axiomatic set theories, which are defined using formal logic, naive set theory is defined informally, in natural language. It describes the aspects of mathematical sets familiar in discrete mathematics (for example Venn diagrams and symbolic reasoning about their Boolean algebra), and suffices for the everyday use of set theory concepts in contemporary mathematics. Sets are of great importance in mathematics; in modern formal treatments, most mathematical objects (numbers, relations, functions, etc.) are defined in terms of sets. Naive set theory suffices for many purposes, while also serving as a stepping stone towards more formal treatments. Method A ''naive theory'' in the sense of "naive set theory" is a non-formalized theory, that is, a theory that uses natural language to describe sets and operations on sets. Such theory treats sets as platonic absolute o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cantor's Paradox
In set theory, Cantor's paradox states that there is no set of all cardinalities. This is derived from the theorem that there is no greatest cardinal number. In informal terms, the paradox is that the collection of all possible "infinite sizes" is not only infinite, but so infinitely large that its own infinite size cannot be any of the infinite sizes in the collection. The difficulty is handled in axiomatic set theory by declaring that this collection is not a set but a proper class; in von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory it follows from this and the axiom of limitation of size that this proper class must be in bijection with the class of all sets. Thus, not only are there infinitely many infinities, but this infinity is larger than any of the infinities it enumerates. This paradox is named for Georg Cantor, who is often credited with first identifying it in 1899 (or between 1895 and 1897). Like a number of "paradoxes" it is not actually contradictory but merely indicative ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic philosophy, concentrating on the philosophy of language, logic, and mathematics. Though he was largely ignored during his lifetime, Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), and, to some extent, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) introduced his work to later generations of philosophers. Frege is widely considered to be the greatest logician since Aristotle, and one of the most profound philosophers of mathematics ever. His contributions include the development of modern logic in the ''Begriffsschrift'' and work in the foundations of mathematics. His book the '' Foundations of Arithmetic'' is the seminal text of the logicist project, and is cited by Michael Dummett as where to pinpoint the linguistic turn. His philosophical p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many areas of mathematics, which include number theory (the study of numbers), algebra (the study of formulas and related structures), geometry (the study of shapes and spaces that contain them), Mathematical analysis, analysis (the study of continuous changes), and set theory (presently used as a foundation for all mathematics). Mathematics involves the description and manipulation of mathematical object, abstract objects that consist of either abstraction (mathematics), abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicspurely abstract entities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. Mathematics uses pure reason to proof (mathematics), prove properties of objects, a ''proof'' consisting of a succession of applications of in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Begriffsschrift
''Begriffsschrift'' (German for, roughly, "concept-writing") is a book on logic by Gottlob Frege, published in 1879, and the formal system set out in that book. ''Begriffsschrift'' is usually translated as ''concept writing'' or ''concept notation''; the full title of the book identifies it as "a formula language, modeled on that of arithmetic, for pure thought." Frege's motivation for developing his formal approach to logic resembled Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Leibniz's motivation for his ''calculus ratiocinator'' (despite that, in the foreword Frege clearly denies that he achieved this aim, and also that his main aim would be constructing an ideal language like Leibniz's, which Frege declares to be a quite hard and idealistic—though not impossible—task). Frege went on to employ his logical calculus in his research on the foundations of mathematics, carried out over the next quarter-century. This is the first work in Analytical Philosophy, a field that later British and Anglo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Van Heijenoort
Jean Louis Maxime van Heijenoort ( ; ; ; July 23, 1912 – March 29, 1986) was a historian of mathematical logic. He was also a personal secretary to Leon Trotsky from 1932 to 1939, and an American Trotskyist until 1947. Life Van Heijenoort was born in Creil, France. His parents had immigrated from the Netherlands before his birth. When van Heijenoort was only two years old, his father passed away, leaving his family in financial hardship. Despite these challenges, he pursued his education and became proficient in French. Throughout his life, he maintained strong connections with his extended family and friends in France, making biannual visits after he obtained American citizenship in 1958. Political views In 1932, van Heijenoort was recruited by Yvan Craipeau to join the Trotskyist movement. He joined the Communist League in the same year. After Trotsky was exiled, he hired van Heijenoort as a secretary and bodyguard, primarily because of his fluency in French, Russian, G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
