Re: article on schools of foundations of mathematics

From: George Cox (george_coxanti_at_spambtinternet.com.invalid)
Date: 01/23/05 

Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2005 20:24:58 +0000 (UTC)

examachine@gmail.com wrote:
>
> ... They seem to think that logic
> is the true foundation of mathematics, and that it is made up of
> meaningless tautologies.

Tautologies aren't meaningless. P or not-P may be considered
meaningless up to a point but to discover that it is a tautology one
must assign truth values (true and false) to P. And to assign truth
values to P is to give meaning to P, and thus to P or not-P.

Also mathematics goes beyond tautologies: not every theorem of first
order logic is a tautology.

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