Logos and episteme
Arnold CUSMARIU
ABSTRACT: The characterization problem of mathematical logic yields Chisholm’s “particularist” criterion, while the decision problem yields his “methodist” criterion. These connections have not been on anyone’s radar screen. To answer the “so what?” requirement in philosophy since Plato, which the criterion-problem literature has failed to do, the article states the problem in argument form and shows that it entails a new kind of skepticism. This clears a path for a way out that no one imagined, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, which can be interpreted as proving that particularist criteria do not entail methodist criteria. This can solve the Cartesian Circle, which is a version of Moore’s Paradox. However, I only found pyrite in them thar Hegelian hills that Marxists hike. One outstanding question concerns the impact of these findings on prospects for a unified field theory in physics
