[FOM] methodological thesis

Alex Blum blumal at mail.biu.ac.il
Thu May 1 05:15:56 EDT 2008


Harvey Friedman wrote:

> 
>In other words, I omit writing the P[philosphical,my paraphrase] papers, keeping their essence in  
>my head, to be used to create Q[formal,my rough paraphrase]papers. Only the Q papers are then  
>published.
>  
>
It would indeed be nice to have at least a one pair illustration.
Perhaps following a bit in Richard Hecks footsteps- I can see how the 
formalism comes in, for example, in Quine after he announces, that "to 
be is to be the value of a variable"  and thereby the care which he 
takes in interpreting the predicate letters in fol or in discussions of 
what there is. In Kripke we have the proof of the necessity of identity 
and then the crucial  distinction between identity and statements of 
identity. So it would indeed be nice to see the philosophical 
speculation that lead to the logical theses of Harvey Friedman .
Alex Blum

 




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