FOM: determinate truth values, coherent pragmatism

[Martin Davis]

At 12:02 PM 9/5/00 -0400, in a very interesting posting, Harvey Friedman wrote:

>I'm saying that the general mathematical community may be compelled to
>accept some new axioms that are not self evident. But this is going to
>happen only through what I call coherent pragmatism. Issues of truth will
>not enter the picture, as far as they are concerned. Only the issue of
>consistency will be of concern. The analogy with the situation in the
>sciences breaks down right here.

Since consistent axioms can have false arithmetic consequences, consistency 
is not enough.

Martin



                           Martin Davis
                    Visiting Scholar UC Berkeley
                      Professor Emeritus, NYU
                          martin at eipye.com
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