The Incomplete Universe: Totality, Knowledge, and Truth - Hardcover

Grim, Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262071347 ISBN 13: 9780262071345

Publisher: Bradford Books, 1991

Synopsis

The central claim of this powerful philosophical exploration is that within any logic we have, there can be no coherent notion of all truth or of total knowledge. Grim examines a series of logical paradoxes and related formal results to reveal their implications for contemporary epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. He reaches the provocative conclusion that, if the universe is thought of in terms of its truths, it is essentially open and incomplete.

The Incomplete Universe includes detailed work on the liar paradox and recent attempts at solution, Kaplan and Montague's paradox of the knower, the Godel theorems and related incompleteness phenomena, and new forms of Cantorian argument. The emphasis throughout is philosophical rather than formal, with an eye to connection's with possible worlds, the notion of omniscience, and the opening lines of the Tractatus: "The world is all that is the case. "

About this title

About the Author

Patrick Grim is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Review

Clear thorough and elegant Grim's arguments challenge received ideals of completeness of knowledge truth divine omniscience and worlds as totalities of facts. Discussion of these and related topics will never be the same; the very effort to escape Grim's conclusions will yield creative advances in logic and in our understanding of its powers and limits.

(John F. Post, Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University)

Edition details

• Publisher: Bradford Books
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262071347
• ISBN 13: 9780262071345
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 179