Mechanism

This book grew out of a graduate student paper [261] in which I set down some criticisms of J. R. Lucas attempt to refute mechanism by means of G6dels theorem. I had made several such abortive attempts myself and had become familiar with their pitfalls, and especially with the double- edged nature of incompleteness arguments. My original idea was to model the refutation of mechanism on the almost universally accepted G6delian refutation of Hilberts formalism, but I kept getting stuck on questions of mathematical philosophy which I found myself having to beg. A thorough study of the foundational works of Hilbert and Bernays finally convinced me that I had all too naively and uncritically bought this refutation of formalism. I did indeed discover points of surprisingly close contact between formalism and mechanism, but also that it was possible to under- mine certain strong arguments against these positions precisely by invok- ing G6dels and related work. I also began to realize that the Church- Turing thesis itself is the principal bastion protecting mechanism, and that G6dels work was perhaps the best thing that ever happened to both mechanism and formalism. I pushed these lines of argument in my dis- sertation with the patient help of my readers, Raymond Nelson and Howard Stein. I would especially like to thank the latter for many valuable criticisms of my dissertation as well as some helpful suggestions for reor- ganizing it in the direction of the present book.