Course Outline for Language, Logic, and Thought, with some notes

Craig DeLancey, PHL 309

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0. Preface.


Part I. One Historical Thread: Infinity and Set Theory.

1. Leibniz and The Characteristica Universalis.

2. Galileo's Geometric Vision.

3. Cantor's Paradise, and Earthly Reactions.

4. Logicism I: Frege.

5. Hilbert's Program, and a brief note on Intuitionism.

6. Logicism II: Russell's Program

7. Radical Conventionalism: Kripkenstein

8. Godel's Theorems.

9. The Turing Machine and Universal Turing Machines.

10. The Church-Turing Thesis.

11. The Halting Problem.


Part II. Generalizations and Applications Through Complexity Theory

12. Turing Machines as Complexity Measures.

13. Complexity Theory Generalized.

14. Automata and von Neumann's dream.

15. Conway's life and the determinist unpredictable worlds.