Skip Navigation


Philosophia Mathematica Advance Access originally published online on October 13, 2008
Philosophia Mathematica 2009 17(1):84-94; doi:10.1093/philmat/nkn030
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
17/1/84    most recent
nkn030v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Pelc, A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Why Do We Believe Theorems?{dagger}

Andrzej Pelc*

* Département d'informatique, Université du Québec en Outaouais, Gatineau, Québec J8X 3X7, Canada. pelc{at}uqo.ca

The formalist point of view maintains that formal derivations underlying proofs, although usually not carried out in practice, contribute to the confidence in mathematical theorems. Opposing this opinion, the main claim of the present paper is that such a gain of confidence obtained from any link between proofs and formal derivations is, even in principle, impossible in the present state of knowledge. Our argument is based on considerations concerning length of formal derivations.

{dagger} Thanks to Jody Azzouni for enlightening discussions concerning the subject of this paper and to anonymous referees whose important remarks permitted us to correct the arguments and improve presentation. The remaining flaws remain, of course, solely the responsibility of the author. This research was partially supported by NSERC discovery grant and by the Research Chair in Distributed Computing at the Université du Québec en Outaouais.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.