THE ARGUMENT FOR DIALETHEISM FROM GODEL'S INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM
THE ARGUMENT FOR DIALETHEISM FROM GODEL'S INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM

Summary/Abstract: Dialetheism is a relatively recent intellectual product, which owes most of its present shape to the work of Graham Priest. He is known as a strong believer in the existence of true contradictions. In this paper, we are concerned with the Argument for Dialetheism as given by Professor Priest in the third chapter of [1]. We closely outline and discuss the argument together with the possible objections identi_ed in the book. We analyse the author's commitments and the main points that make the deployment of Godel's result possible. Our main contribution is showing that the argument is fallacious, by analyzing the use of Godel's First Incompleteness Theorem, found in the book. The argument in the book fails to give a correct Interpretation to the conditions required for the Theorem to be legitimately applied. We show the correct line of reasoning and argue that Godel's result cannot be used in this context. We continue with criticizing the author's view that the informal Mathematical English used in proving Theorems of Mathematics could be formalized. We claim that the author is committed to a view of Mathematical Practice as automatizable, at least in principle. We use an Information-Theoretic argument as found in [5] to show that this view cannot be sustained.

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