Dear all, At the final meeting of the SMG this year (and my last as convenor) we will have Wes Wrigley (Cambridge PhD student) presenting a talk entitled 'Is the concept natural number vague?' (abstract below). As usual it will be on Wednesday (the 12th) from 4.30 to 6pm in the Philosophy Faculty Board Room. The talk should last about 45 minutes followed by questions and discussion. All graduate students are welcome. Abstract: Dummett has argued that a consequence of Gödel's incompleteness theorems is that the concept natural number is vague. He takes this to be a corollary of the indefinite extensibility of the concept ground for asserting something of all natural numbers. I argue that this concept is not indefinitely extensible, in light of other mathematical results in the vicinity (particularly Feferman's completeness theorem). Possible escape routes are discussed, but I argue that Dummett's vagueness claim cannot be upheld, even in the context of his constructivism.
I hope to see you there! Nathan Hawkins PhD student in Philosophy Cambridge University _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
