Today at 4pm in the Philosophy Faculty Common Room: Christopher Porter (Paris 7) will talk on "Chaitin Incompleteness, Randomness, and Arithmetical Reasoning" The seminar will end in good time for those attending the Routledge Lecture, which is at 5.30pm that day.
Michael Potter Abstract: In the mid-1970s, Gregory Chaitin proved a novel incompleteness theorem, formulated in terms of Kolmogorov complexity, a measure of complexity that features prominently in the theory of algorithmic randomness. Chaitin further claimed that his theorem provides insight into both the source and scope of incompleteness, a claim that has been subject to much criticism. In this talk, I will consider a new strategy for vindicating Chaitin's claim, one informed by recent work on the relationship between algorithmic randomness and arithmetic. As I will argue, this strategy, though more promising than previous attempts, fails to vindicate Chaitin's claim. Lastly, I will suggest an alternative interpretation of Chaitin's theorem, according to which the theorem indicates a fundamental limitation in the task of reasoning arithmetically about randomness. (No background in algorithmic randomness will be presupposed in this talk.) _____________________________________________________ Sent by the CamPhilEvents mailing list. To unsubscribe or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents Posts are archived here: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive
