In an interesting thread titled "Recursive" on FOM last week there was a discussion on the history of primitive recursive functions. Of course, already Grassmann, Dedekind, and Peano gave primitive recursive definitions of individual functions such as addition and multiplication, and Skolem's 1923 article

I was asked in email about a good source about Goodstein sequences and the independence of Goodstein's Theorem from Peano Arithmetic. The independence result is due to Kirby and Paris in a 1983 paper in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society (vol. 14), using the method of indicators. Georg Moser suggested the following paper … Continue reading Independence of Goodstein’s Theorem from PA

I'm going to be teaching philosophy of language next term. It's the first time--if you can believe that--we're offering a course with that title. We used to have a course called "Analytical Philosophy", which served that purpose, but it was also a history of analytic philosophy course. Anyway. I'd like to give my students a … Continue reading Philosophy of Language Texts?

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada has posted a list of new Standard Research Grants for 2006. This year's stats: 85 applications (2005: 96, 2004: 92), 32 grants, for a success rate of 37% (2005: 38%, 2004: 48%). This year, new scholars (≤ 5 years beyond PhD) had a 29% success rate … Continue reading SSHRC Grants in Philosophy for 2006

Martin Löb has passed away on August 28. Obituary here.

In Prague this past week, David Miller gave a talk in which (among many other interesting things) he distinguished two notions of logical independence. One he credits to Moore (the mathematician, not the philosopher) and Wittgenstein, and that's the notion of independence at work when we say, e.g., that an axiom system is independent. A … Continue reading Notions of Logical Independence

I am very sorry. There will be more logic blogging very soon, I promise. I'm off to Prague for the Vagueness and Uncertainty workshop, and if the Academy of Sciences also has internet access in the villa they're putting me up in, I will liveblog it. Rosanna Keefe! Stewart Shapiro (who has a new book, … Continue reading Dear Matt