Logic Seminar

Mingzhong Cai
Unprovability and Beyond

Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - 2:55pm
Malott 206

Abstract: Unprovability is the key phenomenon rooted in the Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. Let P be your favorite mathematical conjecture, and let us suppose that P is indeed unprovable in some common axiom system such as PA or ZFC. Assuming that (or say after prolonged unsuccessful attempts), one may try to prove that P is unprovable, but immediately one encounters the same problem that such fact (P is unprovable) may be hard to prove as well. We will discuss this issue and show that the unprovablity of a true sentence could be arbitrarily hard to prove. Moreover, if P is unprovable, we may try to look for new ways or methods to show that P is true (of course still using mathematics). We demonstrate such a way to "show" that P is true, without proving it.