Title: Minds, Machines and Godel
đź”— https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/727219EDEB5DD3679E56CF3D335C90C1/S0031819100057983a.pdf/minds_machines_and_godel1.pdf
Abstract: In this article, Lucas maintains the falseness of Mechanism – the attempt to explain minds as machines – by means of Incompleteness Theorem of Gödel. Gödel’s theorem shows that in any system consistent and adequate for simple arithmetic there are formulae which cannot be proved in the system but that human minds can recognize as true; Lucas points out in his turn that Gödel’s theorem applies to machines because a machine is the concrete instantiation of a formal system: therefore, for every machine consistent and able of doing simple arithmetic, there is a formula that it can’t produce as true but that we can see to be true, and so human minds and machines have to be different. Lucas considers as well in this article some possible objections to his argument: for any Gödelian formula we could, for instance, construct a machine able to produce it (indeed the procedure whereby a Gödelian formula is constructed is a standard procedure) or we could put the Gödelian formulae that we had proved as axioms of a further machine. However for every of such machines we could again formulate another Gödelian formula, the Gödelian formula of these machines, that they are not able to proof but that we can recognize as true.
Speaker: Matteo Berta
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🗓️ Friday, June 27, 2025, Time 12:00-13:00
📍 Meeting Room 1 – DAUIN
đź’» Zoom Meeting