The Consistency of Arithmetic: And Other Essays

McCall, Storrs

ISBN 10: 0199316546 / ISBN 13: 9780199316540

Published by Oxford University Press, 2014

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Consistency of Arithmetic: And Other Essays
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199316546
• ISBN 13: 9780199316540
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

This volume contains six new and fifteen previously published essays -- plus a new introduction -- by Storrs McCall. Some of the essays were written in collaboration with E. J. Lowe of Durham University. The essays discuss controversial topics in logic, action theory, determinism and indeterminism, and the nature of human choice and decision. Some construct a modern up-to-date version of Aristotle's bouleusis, practical deliberation. This process of practical deliberation is shown to be indeterministic but highly controlled and the antithesis of chance. Others deal with the concept of branching four-dimensional space-time, explain non-local influences in quantum mechanics, or reconcile God's omniscience with human free will. The eponymous first essay contains the proof of a fact that in 1931 Kurt Gödel had claimed to be unprovable, namely that the set of arithmetic truths forms a consistent system.

About the Author

Storrs McCall studied philosophy at McGill University and at Oxford. He taught for six years at the University of Pittsburgh and for five years at Makerere University, Uganda, where he initiated the subject and was the first instructor of philosophy. He works in logic and analytic philosophy and has written extensively on the metaphysics of space and time.