[FOM] Did Goedel "read philosophy"?

[Charles Parsons]

At 9:13 AM -0700 3/7/07, Jim Hardy wrote:
>Actually, Godel even did some philosophy.  There's a version of the
>Ontological argument due to Godel.  Here's the reference.
>
>Kurt Sobel, "Goedel's Ontological Proof" in {\it On Being and Saying},
>Judith Thomson ed., Cambridge MA, 1987.
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: fom-bounces at cs.nyu.edu [mailto:fom-bounces at cs.nyu.edu] On Behalf Of
>Martin Davis
>Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 11:20 PM
>To: fom at cs.nyu.edu
>Subject: [FOM] Did Goedel "read philosophy"?
>
>Surprisingly, Dean Buckner wrote:
>
>  > As for Godel, did he read any philosophy?
>
>As I thought subscribers to this list knew perfectly well, Goedel
>studied Kant in his youth, and in his later years studied Leibniz and
>then Husserl in his usual ultra-intensive manner.
>
>Martin

Neither Mr. Buckner nor Mr. Hardy seems to be aware that there are 
five volumes of Goedel's Collected Works in print (Oxford University 
Press, 1986-2003). There are several papers in volumes II and III 
that would be described as philosophical, including his notes on the 
ontological argument. Other items in these volumes, including the 
correspondence in volumes IV-V, give quite a bit of evidence about 
his engagement with philosophy and what he read.

Another source is the two books by Hao Wang, _Refelctions on Kurt 
Goedel_ (MIT Press, 1987) and _A Logical Journey: From Goedel to 
Philosophy_ (MIT Press, 1986), as well as papers in various 
publications, in particular the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic.

Charles Parsons