The British Society for the Philosophy of Science

Gdel's Theorem and the Mind Author(s): Peter Slezak Source: The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Mar., 1982), pp. 4152 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Society for the Philosophy of
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Brit.J. Phil. Sci. 33 (1982), 41-52

Printedin GreatBritain

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G6del's Theorem and the Mindi

by PETER i 2 3 4 SLEZAK Truth and Provability The Dialectical Argument Self Reference Speculative Conclusions

J. R. Lucas has articulated and defended the view that Godel's theorems
imply the falsity of mechanism as a theory of the mind. In this paper I offer a novel analysis of Lucas's argument which shows why it is, in fact, a compelling one, but also that it derives its persuasiveness from a certain kind of subtle confusion which has not been noticed in subsequent discussions. Clarifying this confusion provides further illumination by suggesting some quite different implications of G6del's theorem for the mind.
I

TRUTH

AND PROVABILITY discussion it is helpful to have Lucas's

For the purposes of the following own statement of his argument:

G6del's theorem must apply to cybernetical machines, because it is of the essence of being a machine, that it should be a concrete instantiation of a formal system. It follows that given any machine which is consistent and capable of doing simple arithmetic, there is a formula which it is incapable of producing as being true-i.e., the formula is unprovable-in-the-system-but which we can see to be true. It follows that no machine can be a complete or adequate model of the mind, that minds are essentially different from machines. (Lucas [1961], p. 44) It is important to notice that throughout his argument Lucas repeatedly uses the expression we see here 'produce as true' to state his central point regarding the alleged import of Godel's theorem for mechanism. Chihara [1972] has noted the vagueness of this expression and the consequent difficulty of evaluating Lucas's claims. However, I believe that there is no such difficulty since it is possible to go beyond merely noting the vagueness of Lucas's expression: by paying close attention to G6del's theorem, it is possible to see precisely what Lucas must have in mind and, moreover, that this involves a certain kind of mistake, albeit a compelling one. If we consider carefully Godel's result independently of Lucas's argument and

1The

author is grateful to Dan Hausman, Mark Steiner, Frank Vlach and an anonymous referee of this Journal for valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. Received zz January 1980

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articulate precisely the kind of limitation which it reveals for machines, then we may reconstruct what Lucas must intend with his locution and thereby evaluate his thesis. Lucas's notion of 'produce as true' is intended to capture both what a machine is precluded from doing and also what a mind can do. Accordingly, whatever may be the case with minds, at least we need leave no unclarity with regard to the meaning of this notion in connection with Turing machines in view of the formal rigour of Godel's result. In speaking of what a machine cannot 'produce as true' it is clear that Lucas is referring to G6del's first incompleteness theorem according to which it is possible to express a statement within the formal system concerned (i.e., in the machine's language), but neither the statement nor its negation can be formally derived in the system. In other words, the precise limitation on formal systems revealed by G6del's theorem concerns what can be obtained from its axioms by following its rules of derivation. It is important to emphasise that the limitation on formal systems or machines is precisely expressed in terms of formal derivability or provability-in-thesystem and it is this strict notion which must underlie Lucas's vague notion 'produce as true'. It is worth noting how the exact concept of the limitation is expressed for Turing machines: the limitation is on the instantaneous descriptions which can be terminal in a computation of the Turing machine consisting of a finite sequence of such instantaneous descriptions. Thus, for Turing machines the limitation can be expressed entirely in terms of the notion of computability. Now it is clear that the limitation shown to exist can be expressed without any mention of the notion of truth which appears in Lucas's expression. The equivalent notions of Turing computability and Lambda-definability of Church's theorem define the same class of functions as G6del's notion of a 'general recursive function', and the limitations on formal systems which can be expressed by these notions do not involve the idea of truth at all. Accordingly, the specifically relevant facet of G6del's theorem is the undecidability of the statement which is expressible in the system. Now it is only in coming to the further conclusion about the necessary incompleteness of any formal system that we use the idea of truth, and it is the very essence of G6del's result that the notion of truth belongs to the metalinguistic proof and not to the object language. The profound import of G6del's theorem was, indeed, in showing exactly that Hilbert's formalist program was unrealizable since provability in a given system cannot be identified with mathematical truth. It seems evident that Lucas fails to pay sufficient attention to these crucial distinctions, for he conflates them all in his expression 'produce as true'. This locution permits Lucas to establish his thesis only by equivocating between provability and truth, since his repeated use of it to express his central point serves only to obscure the precise import of G6del's theorem, namely, that although the undecidable sentence cannot be formally derived within the system, its truth can be known from outside the system. In other words, our basis for asserting the truth of the undecidable sentence is a proof

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in the metalanguage which is a vantage point outside the system or outside the machine defined by the formal system. When the machine is conceived in the physical sense, rather than in the mathematical sense, the term 'outside' here must be understood literally as meaning a numerically different object from the machine in question. I believe that it is on this point that Lucas's argument is particularly confused: I will try to show more clearly later that Lucas fails to pay attention to the further important distinction between the difference of tokens and the difference of types. It is the latter which he would obviously require to establish his thesis against mechanism, but it is only the former which follows from G6del's theorem and is utterly trivial. Thus, when expressed precisely, G6del's theorem shows that, in so far as we are concerned with the limitations on a machine, we do not need the notion of truth at all. The limitation can be expressed in terms of what can be generated by mechanical procedures, and this involves only the combinatorial notion of the manipulation of uninterpreted symbols. The significance of this point is perhaps easily missed (if it were not for G6del's result!) in view of the close association of provability with truth. However, the point can be appreciated even without the actual conclusion of G6del's theorem, for the association of a truth value with the output of a machine reflects nothing intrinsic to the behaviour of the machine or any of its states. Rather, the attribution of truth values to the states of the machine (outputs) reflects our particular interests in, and uses of, these states. Even to speak of 'statements' in connection with the behaviour of a machine tends to disguise the fact that we choose to interpret the behaviour of the machine in particular ways, though we need not do so. Indeed, to speak of a Turing machine as performing 'computations' as we generally do, is already to have taken a step away from what is, strictly speaking, the actual behaviour of the machine: a 'tape expression' for a Turing machine consisting of symbols in its alphabet is intrinsically no different from any other component of the machine; its special status derives from the fact that we associate our numerals with the tape expressions, and we are then able to regard the operations of the machine as calculations on numbers. These facts are clear even on the formalists' view prior to G6del's result, since they simply express the methodology of their enterprise and not its ambitions. The notion of truth is a semantic one involving the relation of statements to the world. In the present context, the statements of interest are in the metalanguage and represent what we (minds) know, while the 'world' here corresponds to the formal system or machine. Now, in spite of the crucial difference between truth and provability, Lucas incorporates them both in his notion of 'produce as true', and he is thereby able to rely on the In defending the resulting equivocation to establish his conclusions. superiority of minds, Lucas employs this notion of his to express both what it is that a machine is unable to do, and also what it is that he or any mind is able to do. Thus, he makes the contrast 'between what was provable-in-the-

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system (the machine's system) and what could be produced by me as true' ([1968], p. 147). Lucas's notion is, therefore, central to his argument in this way because it provides the link between the limitations of any machine and the abilities of any mind: it is in the ability to 'produce as true' the Godel sentence that minds are supposed to prevail over machines. It is in this way that Lucas's case is crucially dependent on conflating truth with provability: he is unable to state his thesis without it. Avoiding Lucas's expression, then, we might ask: What is the precise significance of our being able to know something is true but which the machine cannot prove? From the above discussion it is already clear that what we can do is know the truth of the Godel sentence by being able to compare what it says (about itself) with the facts (i.e., that it is not derivable within the system). However, since this is done in the metalanguage, to say this much is, in fact, only to re-state Godel's result and not to establish anything about the relative abilities of minds and machines. As we have seen, the limitation for the machine concerns what it can grind out as theorems in a mechanical way from its axioms. For these reasons Lucas's comparison of the machine's abilities with our knowledge of the truth is not warranted because we have not yet made sense of the machine knowing the truth of any statement at all-that is, semantics as opposed to syntax. We see, therefore, that Lucas's locution obscures both the precise character of the limitations on machines, and also what is involved in our knowing the truth of the unprovable sentence. Criticisms by Benacerraf [1967] have prompted Lucas [1968] to make an attempt at clarifying his notion 'produce as true' and its relation to truth and provability. In doing so, however, I believe that Lucas succeeds only in bringing clearly into relief his confusions on the matter. Pressed into explaining his notion, Lucas tries to distinguish it from the formal notion of for he says: provability-in-the-system, I took care not to use the word in such a sense, but to frame the contrast between what was provable-in-the-system (the machine's system) and what could be produced by has been construed by mathematical logicians for a me as true. .... Provability generation as a syntactical term with a very precise definition, and it could be confusing to import loose notions of what I can see to be true into this welldisciplined and useful concept. (Lucas [1968], p. 147) Indeed! But while these motives are laudable, the remarks are plainly inconsistent with what Lucas had written in his original [1961] paper. For there, as we have already seen, Lucas explicitly identifies the two notions: . . given any machine . .. there is a formula which it is incapable of producing as being true-i.e., the formula is unprovable-in-the-system ... ([196I], p. 44) Lucas's later disclaimer simply belies the clear, indeed only intelligible, intent of his argument. This argument, such as it is, can only go through if

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Lucas's expression serves to characterise both the limitations on a machine and also that respect in which a mind is allegedly not limited. Hence the argument requires the conflation of truth and provability to reach its conclusion. Clear support for this analysis of Lucas's argument comes from the fact that he is forced into making our knowing the truth of a statement into a mysterious affair. He asserts ([1968], p. 148) 'I think I know what truth is, but I know I cannot tell anybody else exactly what it is.' Then, after some obscure discussion Lucas simply concludes: 'And therefore truth cannot be precisely defined.' However, for the purpose at hand we need no further understanding of the concept beyond the observation that the truth of the undecidable sentence is learned by comparing what it says with the facts. That a machine is unable to do this does not follow in any way from G6del's proof. The problem of determining the truth of a sentence (i.e., understanding its meaning) is, indeed, one which we have good reason to believe is tractable and not any limitation in principle on the capacities of machines. This is the problem of 'semantic information processing' and an area of important research in 'artificial intelligence'. However, be that as it may, my point here is only that there is no reason to believe that machines have limitations in this regard and, in particular, none which follow from G6del's theorem. It is interesting to notice further that Lucas even imputes precisely his own mistake to the mechanist, claiming that it is the mechanist who must identify truth with provability: The mechanist, regarding man as something less than men, namely machines, regards their concept of truth as again something less, namely provability-in-agiven-system ... ([1968], p. 148) Lucas has his straw-mechanist ask: 'If truth is not provability-in-a-givensystem, what is it?', as if the mechanist is somehow unable to understand or to cope with the implication of G6del's theorem concerning the divergence of truth and provability. Needless to say, 'the mechanist' need not use Lucas's special locution as he further suggests ([1968], p. 148). All of this is obviously unwarranted and only reflects Lucas's conviction that G6del's theorem must, somehow, be an embarrassment to the mechanist. However, in so far as the notion of truth is concerned, making it vague and mysterious only serves Lucas's purpose by suggesting that it is somehow essentially involved in our little-understood mental processes and not in the behaviour of machines.
2 THE DIALECTICAL ARGUMENT

The separation of truth from provability and the fact that the truth of the undecidable sentence is known by argument in the metalanguage are significant facts which must be kept in mind if Lucas's argument is to be

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Peter Slezak These facts are intimately related to the peculiar strategy that Lucas insists must be employed in establishing his to turn the vice of his confusions into a virtue by claiming is of a particular, special kind:

fully understood. of argumentation case. He attempts that his argument

The argument is dialectical. It is an argument between two persons, not a proof sequence constructed by one. I believe that the dialectical form reveals the underlying logic better than any monologue can.... (Lucas [1968], p. 154) I want show to to that this form of argumentation However, contrary Lucas, reveals only a confusion over the object language-metalanguage distinction. So far I wanted to show that by his argument about what a machine 'cannot produce as true', if Lucas has said anything at all, it is nothing beyond what ca'n be stated more precisely and more perspicuously in stating G6del's result. In other words, at best, Lucas has only re-stated G6del's theorem. I want now to show that in attempting to exploit G6del's result to prove the superiority of minds over machines, it is the metalinguistic character of the proof which forces Lucas to present his argument in the dialectical form. He explains: We can use [the argument] . . .against those who, finding a formula their first machine cannot produce as being true, concede that that machine is indeed inadequate, but thereupon seek to construct a second, more adequate, machine, in which the formula can be produced as true. This they can indeed do: but then the second machine will have a G6delian formula all of its own, constructed by applying G6del's procedure to the formal system which represents its (the second machine's) own enlarged scheme of operations. And this formula the second machine will not be able to produce as being true, while a mind will be able to see that it is true. ... And so it will go on. However complicated a machine we construct, it will, if it is a machine, correspond to a formal system, which in turn will be liable to the G6del procedure for finding a formula unprovable-in-that-system. This formula the machine will be unable to produce as being true, although a mind can see that it is true. And so the machine will still not be an adequate model of the mind. ... the mind always has the last word. (Lucas [196i], p. 48) This argument is remarkable for its intuitive compellingness and, indeed, allowing for Lucas's misleading locution, it is correct as far as it goes in stating the G6delian limitation on any machine. Notice in particular that the dialectical argumentation reflects the way in which the truth of the machine's G6del sentence is known, and so it is intimately related to the problems we have already seen. Thus, in spite of its superficial plausibility, I want to show that the argument is misleading in subtle ways. In beginning to bring this out clearly, it is helpful to look more closely at what is involved in the dialectical form of argument. Lucas ([1968], p. 146) explains further: The argument is a dialectical one. It is not a direct proof that the mind is something more than a machine, but a schema of disproof for any particular version of mechanism that may be put forward. If the mechanist maintains any specific thesis, I show that a contradiction ensues. But only if. It depends on the mechanist making the first move and putting forward his claim for inspection.

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It is necessary to ask the mechanist, not the machine. The machine cannot answer the question whether it can prove-or cannot prove-the G6delian formula in-itssystem. But the question is an askable one, and one which we can press on the mechanist.... ([I968], p. 152) From these quotations I think it can be clearly seen that Lucas is introducing a further confusion into the situation in claiming a special status for his argument. It should be obvious that the relevant facts in assessing the thesis of mechanism are what the machine can or cannot do, and not whether we can ask it of the mechanist to tell us or whether he makes the first move. We are concerned with objective facts about the machine's capabilities vis-a-vis those of minds, and these facts are not inherently or exclusively obtainable by engaging the mechanist in debate. To the extent that it makes sense to talk of any competition here, it must be between minds and machines, not between minds and any mechanist thesis. With this further confusion Lucas is just obscuring what could be the only force of his own argument: There is nothing 'dialectical' or otherwise peculiar about the argument. It must simply amount to the claim that in any competition between a mind and a machine, there is a certain respect in which the mind can always beat the machine. In fact, of course, Lucas is forced to equivocate in presenting his discussion, for on some occasions he speaks of his argument as applying against 'any form of mechanism' which might be put forward as a thesis, and on other occasions he correctly speaks of the specific machine which must be suggested as a model of the mind. It seems clear that the truth or falsity of mechanism could hardly depend, as Lucas insists, on whether anybody actually put forward any particular thesis. On this account mechanism could lose by default. To see Lucas's mistake more precisely, we may usefully look at his response to a possible objection to his argument. Since the procedure for constructing the G6del formula for any machine is a standard procedure, a machine could be constructed which would carry it out and it could repeat the procedure as often as required. This would amount to adding the successive G6del sentences as axioms to the formal systems. Lucas ([1961], p. 48) responds to this objection in a most revealing way: Yet even so, the matter is not settled: for the machine with a G6delizing operator, as we might call it, is a different machine from the machines without such an operator; and, although the machine with the operator would be able to do those things in which the machines without the operator were outclassed by a mind, yet we might expect a mind, faced with a machine that possessed a G6delizing operator, to take this into account and out-G6del the new machine, G6delizing operator and all. This has, in fact, proved to be the case. Even if we adjoin to a formal system the infinite set of axioms consisting of the successive G6delian formulae, the resulting system is still incomplete, and contains a formula which cannot be proved-in-the-system, although a rational being can, standing outside the system, see that it is true .... In a sense, just because the mind has the last word, it can always pick a hole in any formal system presented to it as a model of its own workings.

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Although Lucas does not notice it, it is evident that he has given here a 'reductio ad absurdum' of his own case. It need not be a 'rational being' or a mind which could play this game and always have the last word. Just such a machine as Lucas describes here could repeatedly 'out-G6del' any other machine whose machine table (i.e., program or G6del number) it was given simply by virtue of being outside the formal system in the relevant sense. Lucas himself acknowledges that it is through being outside the system that the truth of the G6del formula can be known, but he gives no reason for thinking that this must be a rational being or a mind as opposed to another machine. Thus, following Lucas's argument, a machine with a G6delizing operator could play this game of 'one-upmanship' against another machine and conclude that it (the first machine) is not a machine at all! Being able to play the game is a consequence only of being a numerically different entity or token and not something other than a machine. Lucas might just as well have claimed not to be a machine on the grounds that however high a number any machine could produce, he could always have the last word by producing a number which is higher. Lucas's ability to play his dialectical game rests entirely on the fact that he is able to determine the truth of its unprovable sentence by virtue of being 'outside the system', that is outside the machine. This does, in fact, mean that he is 'not the same' as the machine, but this is only in the sense that he is a numerically different object, perhaps a different machine. Of course, this conclusion is entirely trivial in its consequences for mechanism and amounts only to another way of stating the metalinguistic character of G6del's proof. To refute mechanism, however, Lucas needs to show that he is 'not the same' in the sense of being a different kind or type from any machine, but this latter conclusion does not follow from his argument. By being able to know the truth of a machine's G6del sentence, Lucas proves that he cannot be 'it', i.e., not the same machine in the sense of necessarily having a different program or 'software' and in this sense a different token, but he claims to have shown that he is a different kind in not being a machine at all.

3 SELF REFERENCE At a first approximation, then, I believe we have exposed in its essentials the fatal flaw in Lucas's refutation of mechanism. However, the interest of the issues raised has by no means been exhausted, and I want to show that it is through pursuing the matters in more detail that we can see what might be the genuine import of G6del's theorem for mechanism. In discussing the role of truth in G6del's theorem, I noted that it is not the incompleteness result as such which is specifically relevant to mechanism. Rather it is the notion of undecidability which is pertinent, for it is in terms of this notion that the limitations on formal systems can be precisely expressed. Now a fundamentally important feature of the undecidable sentence (which is clear from its form) is that it is essentially 'self-

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referential'. It is self-referential in the precise sense that it is constructed by the process of 'diagonalisation' as used in Cantor's proof of the nondenumerability of the real numbers. Corresponding to G6del's arithmetisation, any Turing machine can be represented in the symbols used by the machine itself. This representation corresponds to the Godel number of the machine. Now, in the case of Turing machines, the diagonal argument rests precisely on this fact that any Turing machine can be described by a finite sequence of symbols, and such finite sequences of symbols are just what Turing machines themselves act upon. The undecidable sentence is selfreferential in the sense that it results from the operation of diagonalisation, and it is the attempt to compute this sentence by the machine whose G6del number it refers to which is impossible. Thus, the limitation on any Turing machine is one which is essentially concerned with the machine's relation to itself as this is embodied in the uncomputable sentence. The limitation on any formal system is with regard to a sentence expressible in the system which says of itself that it cannot be proved in that very system. In this sense, the G6del limitation involves a sentence which is capable of an 'indexical' interpretation in view of its specificity to the formal system in which it is expressed. Thus, if we are to speak at all of the limitations on machines with a view to deriving any possible consequences for mechanism, we must keep in mind the precise nature of these limitations in the respects I have just indicated. That is, in comparing the abilities of minds and machines, the kind of task in question must be accurately characterised before any verdict can be reached. I am concerned to suggest that, in fact, Lucas's dialectical argument relies on improperly formulating the task on which minds are alleged to prevail over machines. In understanding the nature of the task that a Turing machine is unable to perform, it must be noticed that there are two quite different kinds of self-reference at play. The first is that of the G6del sentence in relation to itself as just indicated. However, the second kind of selfreference is that of the formal system or machine in relation to itself. This is simply the fact that the G6del sentence can be expressed in the symbolism of the formal system. Thus, the relation 'being a proof in the system' can be expressed in the symbolism of the system itself. This second kind of selfreference is just the idea of mapping employed by G6del through which metamathematical statements about a formalised system can be translated into actual arithmetical statements within the system itself. So, in the former kind of self-reference we have a statement which, as Godel himself points out, resembles the statement of the Liar paradox, for it says of itself that it is not provable. However, in the latter kind of self-reference it is the formal system or machine which is able to refer to its self. Here we have statements which are by the machine, but which are also about the machine. Now, the specific limitations on any formal system or machine involve a statement which is self-referential in both of these ways. It is in terms of this characterisation of the task that we must assess the relative abilities of minds
D

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and machines in any competition between them. However, we do not even need to consider the relatively obscure questions of what the mind can do regarding the task in order to perceive Lucas's error (though I will return to these obscure questions later). Since the inherent limitation encountered by a machine is a specific one concerning itself insofar as it is unable to compute a self-referring statement, It is utterly trivial for Lucas to observe that he can surmount this specific limitation for this specific machine. Clearly, this is just what Lucas's dialectical argument amounted to, but it is neither surprising nor interesting that a mind or another machine is able to prove the particular statement which is undecidable for a specified machine. Since the limitation for a machine is a peculiar one concerning itself, it is of no consequence for the thesis of mechanism that Lucas can overcome it. An analogy can perhaps illustrate Lucas's logic here: If a person P is unable to bend over and touch his own toes, and Lucas claims that he is better than P because he can do that task, if Lucas means by 'that task' that he can bend over and touch P's toes, it is only a joke. In the same way Lucas claims to be better than any machine because he can prove what is undecidable for it. Again, Lucas is clearly correct in claiming that he can perform the task which the machine cannot, and that this shows that he is not the same as the machine, but the subtle and misleading error is that this is only true in the trivial sense that he is a different token. He could well be the same typenamely, another machine. Thus, in appraising the relevance of Godel's theorem to mechanism, the appropriate question, if it makes sense at all, is whether Lucas could prove his own Godel formula from his own axioms and his own rules. However we might manage to interpret this question, we must at least be clear that it is the relevant one to ask in comparing minds and machines in relation to G6del's theorem. The problem, then, is not what Lucas can know about the machine, but rather what Lucas can know about himself.

4 SPECULATIVE CONCLUSIONS From his own reconstruction of Lucas's argument, Benacerraf ([1967], p. 30) concludes that, if we are Turing machines, then it seems that we may be precluded from obeying the injunction 'know thyself '. Benacerraf construes this in a sense which suggests that empirical psychology appears to be impossible. However, this radical and paradoxical conclusion does not follow directly from Godel's theorem, but only from Benacerraf's reconstruction of certain assumptions in Lucas's argument. In fact, although space does not permit it here, I believe that Benacerraf 's conclusion can be shown to follow from a failure to observe the indexical, self-referential features of the relevant statements and to this extent is an accurate reconstruction of Lucas. However, I believe that properly interpreted, the indexicality implicit in Benacerraf's own reconstruction entails the same that the limitations which may conclusions I want to suggest here-namely,

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be seen to arise concern self-knowledge only in the sense of first-person or knowledge-a quite different matter from empirical introspective psychology. Quite apart from Lucas's argument, however, if we follow Benacerraf in speaking of the set S* as the closure of my 'deductive output' and we take this to be the set of my consciously assertable statements, then G6del's theorem can be roughly held to entail that there is something about S* which cannot be in S*. Now, it is perhaps not altogether surprising that there may be some facts about this output which cannot be stated within it. That is, there may be certain facts about myself that I am unable to articulate or to know. In otherwords, even if we are Turing machines, there may well be certain inherent limitations on the contents of our deductive output if these are to include statements about these very contents. Of course, we are immediately reminded here of the familiar paradoxes of self-reference arising in just this way, and especially of Russell's principle for dealing with whatever involves all of a collection cannot be one of the them-namely, collection. Stated conversely, the principle is: if, provided a dertain collection had a total, it would have members only definable in terms of that total, then the said collection has no total. By this Russell meant that statements about all its members are nonsense. Now, the implications of this for the notion of S* are highly suggestive, for, as the totality of one's deductive output, S* might plausibly be seen as corresponding to the notion of the self or 'I' of introspection. On this construal, Russell's principle appears to correspond strikingly with Wittgenstein's 'no ownership' view of the self and with his arguments for the non-referring character of the term 'I'. More generally, the common structural features of the formal paradoxes of self-reference' appear to have such suggestive correspondences with independent theses on the introspective perplexities of the mind and selfsuch as Gunderson's and those [1970] 'investigational asymmetries', discussed by Popper [1950], MacKay [196o] and Minsky [1968]. If we are Turing machines, an interesting question to consider is: What are the manifestations of the inevitable Godel limitations? The intriguing speculation which suggests itself here is that there may be an intimate connection between the notorious peculiarities of 'diagonalisations' and the perplexities of introspective knowledge. Presumably any system of internal representation or 'language of thought' would share the fundamental properties of formal systems. The introspective perplexities of the self could be the embodiments or realisation of the formal self-referential schematathat is, abstract 'competence' models of inherent, shared intuitions. Far from refuting mechanism, G6del's theorem may even provide the most persuasive support for it.2

The University of New South Wales

See H. Herzberger [I970]. 2 These ideas are developed in detail in Slezak (unpublished) and have recently been suggestively discussed in D. R. Hofstadter [1979].

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Peter Slezak

REFERENCES C. [1972]: 'On Alleged Refutations of Mechanism Using G6del's Incompleteness CHIHARA, Results', Journal of Philosophy, 64, pp. 507-26.
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