PHL 5031 Godel
Kurt Godel (1906-1978) is one of the most powerful minds of the twentieth century. Aristotle invented logic, but Godel invented the logic of logic. This course serves as an introduction to Godel's work in logic and philosophy, and is also designed to serve as an introduction to metaphysics and to the philosophy of logic and the philosophy of mathematics. We shall pay particular attention to ideas of Godel that sharpen our understanding of these three concepts: Truth, Proof, and Infinity. We will also study provability logic, which is useful for its characterization in an elementary setting of Godel's most famous work, his results on the incompleteness of logic and mathematics.