[FOM] Platonism and undecidability

[Neil Tennant]

Harvey Friedman wrote (Mon Oct 27 23:26:39 EST 2003):

> I was proposing that it is hard to convince people that "every sentence
> has a determinate truth value" if truth values cannot be found, or if
> truth values are known to be non findable, or there is absolutely no
> evidence that truth values can be found, or there is no plan or idea for
> finding truth values, etc.

I want to focus on the part

	it is hard to convince people that "every sentence
	has a determinate truth value" if ... 
	truth values are known to be non findable

and then substitute "intuitionists" for "people" (if I may):

	it is hard to convince intuitionists that "every sentence
        has a determinate truth value" if ... 
        truth values are known to be non findable

At this point one has a problem. For an intuitionist, the claim

	the truth-value of p is known to be non findable

is inconsistent, hence cannot play any role in making an *intuitionist*
reluctant to believe that every sentence has a determinate truth value.

Should I conclude that intuitionists are not people?  :-)

Neil Tennant


___________________________________________________________________
Neil W. Tennant
Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Cognitive Science

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