Gödel’s Theorem and The Mind…Again

Abstract

Attempts to establish, a priori, the nature and structure of the mind go back to the very origins of philosophy, and have continued apace ever since. The things on the basis of which, people have tried to establish this are many and varied: the phenomenology of consciousness, the nature of action, end even the nature of the state (to take but a few examples). Logic, as traditionally (though incorrectly) conceived, is precisely a compendium of the laws of thought. Hence it is unsurprising that some philosophers have tried to use logic as a basis in the inquiry. The high point of this enterprise was undoubtedly Kant and his successors. Kant thought that the structure of the mind could be read off from the categories of logic – which was, for him, the somewhat bowdlerised form of Aristotelian Logic of his day; and under Hegel, not only the number of categories blossomed, but so did the nature of the mind in question; until it came to encompass everything – literally.