Monthly Archives: July 2007

Absolute Generality 2: Showing and saying

Posted on July 11, 2007

Suppose I think that there is something problematic about absolutely general quantification. So I try to say “You can’t quantify over absolutely everything”. But either that “everything” is absolutely general, and I’ve illustrated how you can quantify over absolutely everything … Continue reading →

Posted in Logic | 9 Comments

Me and J.K. Rowling

Posted on July 11, 2007

Good heavens! Amazon UK reports the Gödel book this morning as 3,069 in the sales ranking. That makes me and J.K. Rowling, who lives permanently at number 1, practically neighbours. I’m preparing myself for the inevitable change of life-style. Googling … Continue reading →

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Isaacson again

Posted on July 9, 2007

Hooray! A version of my talk at the Isaacson day we had in Cambridge a couple of months ago has been accepted by Analysis, and will appear in January. Michael Clark has kindly agreed to publish it as a preprint … Continue reading →

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Absolute Generality 1: Kit Fine and the All in One Principle

Posted on July 5, 2007

OK, time to make a start on blogviewing Absolute Generality, edited by Augustín Rayo and Gabriel Uzquiano (OUP, 2006). As in the Church’s Thesis volume, the editors take the easy line of printing the papers in alphabetical order by the … Continue reading →

Posted in Logic | 2 Comments

Gödel mangled

Posted on July 2, 2007

Here is E. T. Jaynes writing in Probability Theory: The Logic of Science (CUP, 2003). A famous theorem of Kurt Gödel (1931) states that no mathematical system can provide a proof of its own consistency. … To understand the above … Continue reading →

Posted in Logic | 6 Comments

Hurry, hurry, while stocks last …

Posted on July 2, 2007

A knock on my office door an hour ago, and the porter brought in two boxes, with half a dozen pre-publication copies each of the hardback and the paperback of my Gödel book. It looks terrific. Even though I did … Continue reading →

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