Fea Feferman
Fea Feferman
Solomon Feferman
n addition to this being the centenary of Kurt Gdels birth, January marked 75 years since the publication (1931) of his stunning incompleteness theorems. Though widely known in one form or another by practicing mathematicians, and generally thought to say something fundamental about the limits and potentialities of mathematical knowledge, the actual importance of these results for mathematics is little understood. Nor is this an isolated example among famous results. For example, not long ago, Philip Davis wrote me about what he calls The Paradox of Irrelevance: There are many math problems that have achieved the cachet of tremendous significance, e.g., Fermat, four-color, Keplers packing, Gdel, etc. Of Fermat, I have read: the most famous math problem of all time. Of Gdel, I have read: the most mathematically significant achievement of the 20th century. Yet, these problems have engaged the attention of relatively few research mathematicianseven in pure math. What accounts for this disconnect between fame and relevance? Before going into the question for Gdels theorems, it should be distinguished in one respect from the other examples mentioned, which in any case form quite a mixed bag. Namely, each of the Fermat, four-color, and Keplers packing problems posed a stand-out challenge following extended efforts to settle them; meeting the challenge in each case required new ideas or approaches and intense work, obviously of different degrees. By contrast, Gdels theorems were simply unexpected, and their proofs, though requiring novel techniques, were not difficult on the scale of things. Set-
ting that aside, my view of Gdels incompleteness theorems is that their relevance to mathematical logic (and its offspring in the theory of computation) is paramount; further, their philosophical relevance is significant, but in just what way is far from settled; and finally, their mathematical relevance outside of logic is very much unsubstantiated but is the object of ongoing, tantalizing efforts. My main purpose here is to elaborate this last assessment.
Solomon Feferman is professor of mathematics and philosophy, emeritus, at Stanford University. His email address is sf@csli.stanford.edu.
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which does not have 0 in its range, and the Induction Principle is satisfied in the following form: (IP) for any property P (x) , if P (0) holds and if for all x in N , P (x) implies P (s(x)) then for all x in N, P (x) holds.
But this is too indefinite to become the subject of precise logical studies, and for that purpose one needs to say exactly which properties P are admissible in (IP), and to do that one needs to specify a formal language L within which we can single out a class of well-formed formulas (wffs) A which express the admitted properties. And to do that we have to prescribe a list of basic symbols and we have to say which finite sequences of basic symbols constitute well-formed terms and which constitute wffs. Finally, we have to specify which wffs are axioms (both logical and non-logical), and which relations between wffs are instances of rules of inference. The wffs without free variables are those that constitute definite statements and are called the closed formulas or sentences of L . All of this is what goes into specifying a formal axiom system S . In the case of a formal version of the Peano axioms, once its basic symbols are specified, and the logical symbols are taken to be (not), (and), (or), = (implies), (for all), and (there exists), one puts in place of the Induction Principle an Induction Axiom Scheme: (IA) A(0) x(A(x) = A(s(x))) = xA(x) , where A is an arbitrary wff of the language L and A(t) indicates the result of substituting the term t for all free occurrences of the variable x in A . N.B. (IA) is not a single axiom but an infinite collection of axioms, each instance of which is given by some wff A of our language. But what about the basic vocabulary of L ? Besides zero and successor, nothing of numbertheoretical interest can be derived without expanding it to include at least addition and multiplication. As shown by Dedekind, the existence of those operations as given by their recursive defining conditions can be established using (IP) applied to predicates P involving quantification over functions. But for a formal axiom system PA (Peano Arithmetic) for elementary number theory, in which one quantifies only over numbers, one needs to posit those operations at the outset. The basic vocabulary of PA is thus taken to consist of the constant symbol 0 and the operation symbols s, + , and together with the relation symbol = . Then the axioms indicated above for zero and successor are supplemented by axioms giving the recursive characterizations of addition and multiplication, namely: x + 0 = x, x + s(y) = s(x + y), x 0 = 0 , and x s(y) = (x y) + x . APRIL 2006
seminar at the University of Warsaw run by Alfred Tarski. His proof applies the method of elimination of quantifiers to show that every formula is equivalent to a propositional combination of congruences. At its core it makes use of the Chinese Remainder Theorem giving conditions for the existence of solutions of simultaneous congruences.
2 Gdels initial statement of his results was for extensions
of a variant P of the system of Principia Mathematica, but a year later he announced his results more generally for a system like P A in place of P ; no new methods of proof were required. Nowadays it is known that much weaker systems than P A suffice for his results.
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numbers px , each of which is p.r., can all be represented in this way in PA, facts that are not at all obvious.3 Each instance of a p.r. relation is decidable by PA; for example if R is a binary p.r. relation then for each n, m N , either PA proves R(n, m) or it proves R(n, m) .
Automatically, every 1-consistent system is consistent, but the converse is not true: by (1), if S is consistent it remains consistent when we add DS to it as a new axiom, and the resulting system is not 1-consistent. The following is Gdels first incompleteness theorem:5 (2) if S is 1-consistent then DS is undecidable by S ; hence S is not complete.
It turns out that only the first part, (1), is needed for his second incompleteness theorem. Let C be the sentence (0 = 0) , so S is consistent if and only if C is not provable in S ; this is expressed by the -sentence ProvS (#C) , which is denoted ConS . By formalizing the proof of (1) it may be shown that the formal implication ConS = ProvS (#DS ) is provable in PA. But since ProvS (#DS ) = DS in PA by the diagonal construction, we have ConS = DS too. Hence: (3) if S is consistent then S does not prove ConS . That is Gdels second incompleteness theorem. Its impact on Hilberts consistency program has been much discussed by logicians and historians and philosophers of mathematics and will not be gone into here, except to say that it is generally agreed that the program as originally conceived cannot be carried out for PA or any of its extensions. However, various modified forms of the program have been and continue to be vigorously pursued within the area of logic called proof theory, inaugurated by Hilbert as the tool to carry out his program. I recommend Zach (2003) (readily accessible online) for an excellent overview and introduction to the literature on Hilberts program.
Hence, in ordinary informal terms, DS is true, so S cannot establish all arithmetical truths. This is one way that Gdels first incompleteness theorem is often stated, but actually (1) is only the first part of the way that he stated it. For that we need a few more slightly technical notions. A sentence A of the language of PA is said to be in -form if, up to equivalence, it is of the form yR(y) where R defines a p.r. set, and A is said to be in -form if, up to equivalence, A is in -form, or what comes to the same, if A can be expressed in the form yR1 (y) with R1 p.r.4 Thus DS is in -form and its negation is in -form. S is said to be 1-consistent if every -sentence provable in S is true.
3 The way that is done might interest number theorists; see
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Neither argument helped to show that e and , among other reals, are transcendental, but they did at least show that questions of transcendence are non-vacuous. Similarly, Gdels first incompleteness theorem shows that the question of undecidability of sentences by PA or any one of its consistent extensions is non-vacuous. That suggests looking for natural arithmetical statements which have resisted attack so far to try to see whether that is because they are not decided by systems that formalize a significant part of mathematical practice, and in particular to look for such statements in -form. An obvious candidate for a long time was the Fermat conjecture; now that we know it is true, it would be interesting to see just what principles are needed to establish it from a logical point of view. Some logicians have speculated that it has an elementary proof that can be formalized in PA, but we dont have any evidence so far to settle this one way or the other. Another obvious candidate is the Goldbach conjecture; indeed, Gdel often referred to his independent statements as being of Goldbach type, by which he simply meant that they are both expressible in form. A far less obvious candidate is the Riemann Hypothesis; Georg Kreisel showed that this is equivc alent to a -statement (see Davis, Matijasevi, and Robinson (1976), p. 335, for an explicit presentation of such a sentence). No example like these has been shown to be independent of PA or any of its presumably consistent extensions.
p(x1 , . . . , xn ) = 0 , where p is a suitable polynomial with integer coefficients. So each -sentence A is equivalent to the non-solvability of a suitable diophantine equation, in particular, sentences known to be undecidable in particular systems such as the Gdel sentences DS . The trouble with this result compared to open questions in the literature about the solvability of specific diophantine equations in two or three variables or of low degree is that the best value known for the above representation in terms of number of variables is n = 9, and in terms of degree d with a much larger number of variables is d = 4 (cf. Jones 1982).
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latter axiom, roughly speaking, means nothing else but that the totality of sets obtainable by exclusive use of the processes of formation of sets expressed in the other axioms forms again a set (and, therefore, a new basis for a further application of these processes). Other axioms of infinity have been formulated by P. Mahlo. These axioms show clearly, not only that the axiomatic system of set theory as known today is incomplete, but also that it can be supplemented without arbitrariness by new axioms which are only the natural continuation of those set up so far. (Gdel 1947, as reprinted in 1990, p. 182). Whether or not one agreed with Gdel about the ontological underpinnings of set theory and in particular about the truth or falsity of CH, in the following years it was widely believed to be independent of ZFC; that was finally demonstrated in 1963 by Paul Cohen using a new method of building models of set theory. And, contrary to Gdels expectations, it has subsequently been shown by an expansion of Cohens method that CH is undecidable in every plausible extension of ZFC that has been considered so far, at least along the lines of Gdels proposal (cf. Martin 1976 and Kanamori 2003). For the most recent work on CH, see the conclusion of Floyd and Kanamori (this issue). But what about arithmetical problems? For a number of years, Harvey Friedman has been working to produce mathematically perspicuous finite combinatorial -statements A whose proof requires the use of many Mahlo cardinals and even stronger axioms of infinity (such as the so-called subtle cardinals) and has come up with a variety of candidates; for a fairly recent report, including work in progress, see Friedman (2000).9 The strategy for establishing that such a statement A needs a system S incorporating the strong axioms in question is like that above: one shows that A is equivalent to (or in certain cases is slightly stronger than) the 1-consistency of S . In my discussion of this in Feferman (2000), p. 407, I wrote: In my view, it is begging the question to claim this shows we need axioms of large cardinals in order to demonstrate the truth of such A , since this only shows that we need their 1-consistency. However plausible we might find the latter for one reason or another, it doesnt follow that we should accept those axioms
9 More recently, Friedman has announced the need for such
for it was a full proof of the second incompleteness theorem, the idea for which was only indicated in Part I. He later explained that since the second incompleteness theorem had been readily accepted there was no need to publish a complete proof. Actually, the impact of Gdels work was not so rapid as this suggests; the only one who immediately grasped the first incompleteness theorem was John von Neumann, who then went on to see for himself that the second incompleteness theorem must hold. Others were much slower to absorb the significance of Gdels results (cf. Dawson 1997, pp. 7275.) The first detailed proof of the second incompleteness theorem for a system Z equivalent to PA appeared in Hilbert and Bernays (1939).
8 See Floyd and Kanamori in this issue of the Notices.
large cardinal axioms in order to prove a certain combinatorial statement A that can be expressed in -form; see the final section of Davis (this issue). Here, A implies ConS and is itself provable in S for S and S embodying suitable large cardinal axioms.
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Mathematics 28 (1976), Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI. [2] M. DAVIS, The incompleteness theorem (this issue of the Notices). [3] M. DAVIS, Y. MATIJASEVIC, and J. ROBINSON, Hilberts tenth problem. Diophantine equations: positive aspects of a negative solution, in Browder (1976), 323378. [4] J. W. DAWSON JR., Logical Dilemmas. The Life and Work of Kurt Gdel, A. K. Peters, Ltd., Wellesley, MA, 1997. [5] S. FEFERMAN, In the Light of Logic, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998. [6] , Why the programs for new axioms need to be questioned, Bull. Symbolic Logic 6 (2000), 401413. [7] J. FLOYD and A. KANAMORI, How Gdel transformed set theory (this issue of the Notices). [8] H. FRIEDMAN, Normal mathematics will need new axioms, Bull. Symbolic Logic 6 (2000), 434446. [9] T. FRANZN, Inexhaustibility, Lecture Notes in Logic 28 (2004), Assoc. for Symbolic Logic, A.K. Peters, Ltd., Wellesley (distribs.). [10] K. GDEL, ber formal unentscheidbare Stze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I, Monatshefte fr Mathematik und Physik 38 (1931), 173198. Reprinted with an English translation in Gdel (1986), 144195. [11] , What is Cantors continuum problem?, Amer. Math. Monthly 54 (1947), 515525, errata, 55, 151. Reprinted in Gdel (1990), 176187. [12] , Some basic theorems on the foundations of mathematics and their implications, in Gdel (1995), pp. 304323. [The 1951 Gibbs lecture.] [13] , Collected Works, Vol. I. Publications 19291936, (S. Feferman, et al., eds.), Oxford University Press, New York, 1986. [14] , Collected Works, Vol. II. Publications 1938 1974, (S. Feferman, et al., eds.), Oxford University Press, New York, 1990. [15] , Collected Works, Vol. III. Unpublished Essays and Lectures, (S. Feferman, et al., eds.), Oxford University Press, New York, 1995. [16] D. HILBERT and P. BERNAYS, Grundlagen der Mathematik, Vol. II, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1939. Second, revised edition, 1968. [17] J. P. JONES, Universal Diophantine equation, J. Symbolic Logic 47 (1982), 549571. [18] A. KANAMORI, The Higher Infinite, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2nd edition, 2003. [19] D. A. MARTIN, Hilberts first problem: The continuum hypothesis, in Browder (1976), 8192. [20] Y. MATIYASEVICH, Hilberts Tenth Problem, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1993. [21] J. PARIS and L. HARRINGTON, A mathematical incompleteness in Peano Arithmetic, in Handbook of Mathematical Logic, (J. Barwise, ed.), 11331142, NorthHolland, Amsterdam, 1977. [22] S. G. SIMPSON, Subsystems of Second Order Arithmetic, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1999. [23] R. ZACH, Hilberts program, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (E. N. Zalta, ed.), http://plato. stanford.edu/archives/fall2003/entries/ hilbert-program/ (2003).
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