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A Computational Perspective on Metamathematics

A Computational Perspective on Metamathematics

FromMCMP – Philosophy of Mathematics


A Computational Perspective on Metamathematics

FromMCMP – Philosophy of Mathematics

ratings:
Length:
63 minutes
Released:
Feb 10, 2015
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

Vasco Brattka (UniBwM Munich) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (29 January, 2015) titled "A Computational Perspective on Metamathematics". Abstract: By metamathematics we understand the study of mathematics itself using methods of mathematics in a broad sense (not necessarily based on any formal system of logic). In the evolution of mathematics certain steps of abstraction have led from numbers to sets of numbers, from sets to functions and eventually to function spaces. Another meaningful step in this line is the step to spaces of theorems. We present one such approach to a space of theorems that is based on a computational perspective. Theorems as individual points in this space are related to each other in an order theoretic sense that reflects the computational content of the related theorems. The entire space is called the Weihrauch lattice and carries the order theoretic structure of a lattice enriched by further algebraic operations. This space yields a mathematical framework that allows one to classify theorems according to their complexity and the results can be essentially seen as a uniform and somewhat more resource sensitive refinement of what is known as reverse mathematics. In addition to what reverse mathematics delivers, a Weihrauch degree of a theorem yields something like a full "spectrum" of a theorem that allows one to determine basically all types of computational properties of that theorem that one would typically be interested in. Moreover, the Weihrauch lattice is formally a refinement of the Borel hierarchy, which provides a well-known topological complexity measure (and the relation of the Weihrauch lattice to the Borel hierarchy is very much like the relation between the many-one or Turing semi-lattice and the arithmetical hierarchy). Well known classes of functions that have been studied in algorithmic learning theory or theoretical computer science have meaningful and very succinct characterizations in the Weihrauch lattice, which underlines that this lattice yields a very natural model. Since the Weihrauch lattice is defined using a concrete model, the lattice itself and theorems as points in it can also be studied directly using methods of topology, descriptive set theory, computability theory and lattice theory. Hence, in a very true and direct sense the Weihrauch lattice provides a way to study metamathematics without any detour over formal systems and models of logic.
Released:
Feb 10, 2015
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (22)

Mathematical Philosophy - the application of logical and mathematical methods in philosophy - is about to experience a tremendous boom in various areas of philosophy. At the new Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, which is funded mostly by the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, philosophical research will be carried out mathematically, that is, by means of methods that are very close to those used by the scientists. The purpose of doing philosophy in this way is not to reduce philosophy to mathematics or to natural science in any sense; rather mathematics is applied in order to derive philosophical conclusions from philosophical assumptions, just as in physics mathematical methods are used to derive physical predictions from physical laws. Nor is the idea of mathematical philosophy to dismiss any of the ancient questions of philosophy as irrelevant or senseless: although modern mathematical philosophy owes a lot to the heritage of the Vienna and Berlin Circles of Logical Empiricism, unlike the Logical Empiricists most mathematical philosophers today are driven by the same traditional questions about truth, knowledge, rationality, the nature of objects, morality, and the like, which were driving the classical philosophers, and no area of traditional philosophy is taken to be intrinsically misguided or confused anymore. It is just that some of the traditional questions of philosophy can be made much clearer and much more precise in logical-mathematical terms, for some of these questions answers can be given by means of mathematical proofs or models, and on this basis new and more concrete philosophical questions emerge. This may then lead to philosophical progress, and ultimately that is the goal of the Center.