Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

A Note on Wittgenstein's "Notorious Paragraph" about the Gdel Theorem

Author(s): Juliet Floyd and Hilary Putnam
Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 97, No. 11 (Nov., 2000), pp. 624-632
Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
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624

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A NOTE ON WITTGENSTEIN'S "NOTORIOUS PARAGRAPH"

ABOUT THE GODEL THEOREM*
I imagine someone asking my advice; he says: "I have constructed a
proposition (I will use 'P' to designate it) in Russell'ssymbolism,and by
means of certain definitionsand transformationsit can be so interpreted
that it says:'P is not provablein Russell'ssystem'.MustI not say that this
propositionon the one hand is true, and on the other hand is unprovable?
For suppose it were false;then it is true that it is provable.And that surely
cannotbe! And if it is proved,then it is provedthatit is not provable.Thus
it can only be true, but unprovable."
Just as we ask, "'Provable'in whatsystem?,"so we must also ask, "'True'
in what system?""Truein Russell'ssystem"means, as was said, proved in
Russell'ssystem, and "falsein Russell'ssystem"means the opposite has
been provedin Russell'ssystem.-Now what does your "supposeit is false"
mean? In theRussellsenseit means, "supposethe opposite is proved in
Russell'ssystem";if thatis yourassumption
you will now presumablygive up
the interpretationthat it is unprovable.And by "this interpretation"I
understandthe translationinto this Englishsentence. -If you assumethat
the propositionis provablein Russell'ssystem,that means it is true in the
Russellsense,and the interpretation"Pis not provable"againhas to be given
up. If you assumethat the propositionis true in the Russellsense, thesame
thing follows.Further:if the propositionis supposed to be false in some
other than the Russellsense, then it does not contradictthis for it to be
provedin Russell'ssystem.(Whatis called "losing"in chess mayconstitute
winning in another game.)'
believe that this "notorious paragraph"2 contains a philosophical claim of great interest which has been almost
entirely missed in the brouhaha about whether Ludwig
Wittgenstein "misunderstood" Gddel's first Incompleteness Theorem. Our purpose here is to detach that claim, so to speak, from that
disputed question (although the fact that Wittgenstein's critics seem
to have missed it must surely be relevantto the dispute).
WA

te

*Floyd is grateful to Jan Harald Alnes, Akihiro Kanamori, and Rohit Parikh for
conversations on points related to the issues discussed in this paper.
1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarkson theFoundations of Mathematics,G.H. von Wright,
R. Rhees, and G.E.M. Anscombe, eds.; Anscombe, trans. (Cambridge: MIT, 1978,
revised edition), i, Appendix iII, ?8.
2 So-called by Floyd in her "Prose versus Proof: Wittgenstein on G6del, Tarski and
Truth," PhilosophiaMathematica (forthcoming). Floyd gives a detailed reading of this
paragraph in "On Saying What You Really Want to Say: Wittgenstein, G6del and the
Trisection of the Angle," inJaakko Hintikka, ed., FromDedekindto Gddel:Essays on the
Developmentof the Foundations of Mathematics (Boston: Kluwer, 1995), pp. 373-425.
0022-362X/00/9711/624-32

( 2000 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

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A NOTE

ON WITTGENSTEIN

625

The claim is simply this: if one assumes (and, a fortiori if one

actually finds out) that -UPis provable in Russell's system one should
(or, as Wittgenstein actually writes, one "will now presumably") give
up the "translation"of P by the English sentence 'P is not provable'.
To see that Wittgenstein is on to something here, let us imagine
that a proof of -UPhas actually been discovered. Assume, for the time
being, that Russell's system (henceforth PM) has not actually turned
out to be inconsistent,however. Then, by the first Incompleteness
Theorem, we know that PM is w-inconsistent. But what does w-inconsistency show? w-inconsistency shows that a system has no model in
which the predicatewe have been interpretingas 'x is a natural number'
possessesan extensionthat is isomorphicto the natural numbers.
But why did we "translate"P as 'P is not provable in PM'? Well, P
has the form: (3 x) (NaturalNo. (x).Proof(x, t)), where 't' abbreviates
a numerical expression whose value calculates out to be the Godel
number of P itself, 'Proof' abbreviates a predicate that is supposed to
define an effectively calculable relation that holds between two natural numbers nmjust in case n is the Godel number of a proof whose
last line is the formula with Godel number m, and 'NaturalNo. (x)' is
the predicate of PM we interpret as 'x is a natural number'.
But in discovering that PM is w-inconsistent we have discovered
that:
(1) 'NaturalNo.(x)' cannotbe so interpreted.In all admissibleinterpretations of PM (all interpretationsthat fit at least one modelof PM),
there are entities that are not naturalnumbers(and, a fortiori, not
G6del numbersof proofs).
(2) Those predicates of PM (for example, 'Proof(xt)') whose extensions are provablyinfinite, and which we believed to be infinite
subsets of N (the set of all natural numbers), do not have such
extensions in any model. Instead,they have extensions that invariably also contain elements that are not naturalnumbers.
In short, the
untenable in
not, however,
in that proof

"translation" of P as 'P is not provable in PM' is

this case-just as Wittgenstein asserted! This does
affect the correctness of Gddel's proof, for nothing
turns on any such translation into ordinary prose.3

3 In introductory remarks to his 1931 paper, G6del did sketch an argument using
intuitive versions of the notions of truthand proof.But he was quite explicit that this
heuristic sketch plays no essential role in the proof he gives with "full precision" in
the body of the paper; see "On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia
Mathematica and Related Systems I," Kurt GMdel:CollectedWorks,VolumeI, Solomon
Feferman et alia, eds. (New York: Oxford, 1986), pp. 147-51, especially p. 147 note
6, p. 151 paragraph 2, p. 173 note 41.

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626

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Wittgenstein's aim is not to refute the Godel theorem but to

"by-pass" it.4

In addition, we may point out that, if PM is actually inconsistent,

and not merely w-inconsistent, then it has no "admissible interpretations"-which is not to deny that in various contexts, and for various
reasons, we may want to correlate its sentences with sentences in
English.
I. BUT SURELY WITTGENSTEIN COULDN'T
ABOUT THAT STUFF!

HAVE KNOWN

But is it believable that Wittgenstein could have known about the

"numerical insegregativity"5 of w-inconsistent systems? Are we not
being overly charitable in giving this as Wittgenstein's reason for
saying that, if one assumes that --Pis provable in Russell's system, one
"will now presumably give up the interpretation" of P by the English
sentence 'P is unprovable'?
The answer is that we have testimony (and not from a particularly
sympathetic source!) that Wittgenstein thought about what are now
called "nonstandard" models of the natural numbers, and connected
them with the G6del theorem. In 1957, R.L. Goodstein6 wrote:
Wittgenstein with remarkable insight said in the early thirties that
G6del's results showed that the notion of a finite cardinal could not be
expressed in an axiomatic system and that formal number variables must
necessarily take values other than natural numbers; a view which, following Skolem's 1934 publication, of which Wittgenstein was unaware, is
now generally accepted (ibid., p. 551).
And in 1972, Goodstein7 wrote:
I do not think Wittgenstein heard of G6del's discovery before 1935; on
hearing about it his immediate reaction, with I think truly remarkable
insight, was to observe that it showed that the formalization of arithmetic
with mathematical induction and the substitution of numerals for vari-

4 See Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, VII ?19: "My task is, not to talk
about (e.g.) G6del's proof, but to by-pass it."
5 A term introduced by Quine to refer to the model-theoretic fact that W-inconsistent systems have no model in which the "integers" of the model are (isomorphic
to) the natural numbers. See his "On w-inconsistency and the So-called Axiom of
Infinity," in SelectedLogic Papers (Cambridge: Harvard, 1995, enlarged edition), pp.
114-20; compare Set Theoryand Its Logic (Cambridge: Harvard, 1969, revised edition), pp. 305-06.
6"Critical Notice of Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics," Mind, LXVI
(1957): 549-53.
7 "Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics," in A. Ambrose and M. Lazerowitz,
eds., Ludwig Wittgenstein:Philosophyand Language (London: Allen and Unwin, 1972),
pp. 271-86.

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A NOTE

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627

ables fails to capture the concept of natural number, and the variables
must admit values which are not natural numbers. For if, in a system A,
all the sentences G(n) with n a natural number are provable, but the
universal sentence (n)G(n) is not, then there must be an interpretation
of A in which n takes values other than natural numbers for which G(n)
is not true (in fact in 1934, Th. Skolem had shown that this was the case,
independently of G6del's work) (ibid., p. 279).
Interestingly, Goodstein entirely missed the connection between this
"remarkable insight" and the claim we are discussing-which
may not
only be taken to be contained in Appendix I, ?8 of Remarks on the
Foundations of Mathematics, but also as constituting virtually the whole
of ?10 of the same Appendix!8 But, as is well known, the remarks on
G6del's theorem were written as notes for Wittgenstein himself, and
there was no reason for their author to state explicitly everything that
he knew in connection with them. The fact is that Wittgenstein did
understand-"with
remarkable insight"-that
"variables must necessarily take on values other than the natural numbers." (Indeed, this
must be the case whether PM is w-inconsistent or not; the point about
w-inconsistency is that, if PM is w-inconsistent, then there is no
interpretation under which PM's theorems come out true in which
the formal number variables take only the natural numbers as values.)
We know this not only from Goodstein, but also from remarks made
by Wittgenstein's student Alister Watson9 in a 1938 paper in Mind.
Watson explicitly states that his interpretation of the Godel incompleteness result "owes much to lengthy discussions with a number of
people, especially Mr. Turing and Dr. Wittgenstein" (ibid., p. 445). He
then gives an argument very similar to the one we sketched above
8 Remarkson the Foundations of Mathematics, i, Appendix iii, ?10: " 'But surely P
cannot be provable, for, supposing it were proved, then the proposition that it is not
provable would be proved'. But if this were now proved, or if I believed-perhaps
through an error-that I had proved it, why should I not let the proof stand and say
I must withdraw my interpretation 'unprovable'?"
Compare Goodstein's dismissal of Wittgenstein's remarks on G6del, "Critical
Notice of Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics," p. 551, and "Wittgenstein's
Philosophy of Mathematics," p. 279.
9 "Mathematics and Its Foundations," Mind, XLVII (1938): 440-51. According to
Andrew Hodges, Turing's biographer, discussions were held between Watson,
Turing, and Wittgenstein in the summer of 1937, when Turing returned for a
season to Cambridge between his years at Princeton-Alan Turing: TheEnigma (New
York: Touchstone, 1983), pp. 109, 136. The "notorious paragraph" of Remarkson the
Foundations of Mathematics,i, Appendix iII, ?8 was penned on September 23, 1937,
when Wittgenstein was in Norway (see the Wittgenstein papers, CD Rom, Oxford
University Press and the University of Bergen, 1998, Item 118 (Band XIV), pp.
106ff.). According to G.H. von Wright (correspondence with Floyd) Wittgenstein
Wittpraised Watson's paper very highly on more than one occasion-something
genstein did not very often do with colleagues' work.

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628

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about the effect of w-inconsistency on the power of any recursively

axiomatized system of arithmetic to express the notion of natural
number. He does this, he says, in order to show that the intuitive
argument about the true but unprovable proposition P "obscures
rather than illuminates the point" of G6del's theorem.'0 This, as we
have just argued, may be seen to have been Wittgenstein's point as
well in the "notorious paragraph."
II. BUT EVEN SO...

Even though, as we explained, our purpose here is to examine the

valuable and still relatively unappreciated point that Wittgenstein
makes in ?8 (and also in ?10) of Appendix I of Remarkson the
Foundations of Mathematics-that is, that the "translation" of the famous Godel sentence Pas 'Pis unprovable in PM' is not cast in stone,
but is something that we have to give up in certain contexts-rather
10Watson, "Mathematics and Its Foundations," pp. 446-47:
"If we assume for the moment that this axiomatic system is indeed a good basis
for arithmetic, we shall have to conclude that the formula is not provable, and
therefore, since this is just what it says, that it is true. For if it were provable, it would
be false, and the system would be incorrect.
This method of putting the argument, however, obscures rather than illuminates
the point. Suppose we assume the falsity of the formula, we cannot, of course, derive
a contradiction, for this would amount to a proof of the formula. Instead, we reach
the following peculiar situation, which is called by G6del an n0-contradiction (c, is
the "ordinal number" of a sequence). We find that there is a function of a cardinal
variable, say f(n), such that (all on the basis of the falsehood of G6del's formula)
(n)f(n) can be disproved, and yet we can convince ourselves that we can prove in
turn f(O),f(1),f(2) and so on. In other words, we apply mathematical induction to
the proofs of the system, and obtain f(O), and from a proof of f(n) for any particular
value of n, a proof for n+1.
Why should we object to an no-contradiction? Why should we not still say that
G6del's formula may be false? The answer is that if we do this we shall feel
compelled to say that the cardinal numbers cannot be all the values of the variable
n, if f(n) can be true for each particular value of n, and yet (n)f(n) be false....
Thus the notion of a cardinal variable, i.e. of a number in the everyday sense, is
something that cannot be completely expressed in the axiomatic system."
We note that although Watson is right that, if we assume the falsity of G6del's
formula-that is, if we assume "(3x) (NaturalNo. (x).Proof(x,t)) "-then (n) f(n) can
be disproved (taking 'f(n)' to be "- (NaturalNo.(n).Proof(n,t))" and yet "we can
prove in turn f(O),f(1),f(2) and so on," the usual proof of this n-inconsistency does
not proceed by "applying mathematical induction to the proofs of the system."
Rather, one employs the fact that, if PM is inconsistent that it is (trivially) o-inconsistent, and if it is consistent, then by the already proven facts that (i) PM would be
inconsistent if any natural number n were the G6del number of a proof of the
formula with G6del number 't', and (ii) 'Proof(n,t)' represents the recursive
relation "n is a proof of the formula with G6del number t" and "NaturalNo.(0),"
"NaturalNo.(1)," "NaturalNo.(2)"...are all (trivially) provable, it follows that for
each numeral 'n', "- (NaturalNo.(n).Proof(n,t))" is provable in PM, that is, that
there are proofs off(O), f(l), f(2).... We see no way to use mathematical induction
in the way Watson suggests. This error is irrelevant, however to the point Watson was
making.

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A NOTE

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629

than to discuss in detail the dispute (s) about (1) whether Wittgenstein "understood" the Godel theorem, and (2) whether his philosophical remarks about it have any value, we would be remiss if we did
not at least comment on the question of the bearing of the unappreciated point on at least the second of those disputes. (The reader who
has followed us this far should have no doubts about whether Wittgenstein understood the G6del theorem, and hence about the position to take with respect to the first dispute!)
The principal source of the question as to the cogency of Wittgenstein's discussion are the words in the notorious ?8: "'True in Russell's system' means, as was said: proved in Russell's system, and 'false
in Russell's system' means: the opposite has been proved in Russell's
system" (emphasis added). Is Wittgenstein not aware that arithmetical propositions have a meaning and truth value independentof what
system they are formalized in? Is he just identifying "truth" and
"provability"out of some misguided combination of formalist and
constructivist/finitist motives? And so on.
The answer is that one cannot simply ignore the direction (implicit
in the words we italicized) to look at what was said beforeabout 'true
in Russell's system'.
Just one paragraph before (?7), there appear the remarks which
clearly set the stage for the notorious remark:
7. "Butmay there not be true propositionswhich are written in this
symbolism,but are not provablein Russell'ssystem?"-'True propositions', hence propositionswhich are true in another system, i.e. can
rightlybe assertedin anothergame. Certainly;why should there not be
such propositions;or rather:why should not propositions-of physics,
e.g.-be writtenin Russell'ssymbolism?The questionis quite analogous
to: Can there be true propositionsin the languageof Euclid,which are
not provablein his system,but are true?-Why, there are even propositions which are provable in Euclid's system, but are false in another
system.Maynot trianglesbe-in another system-similar (verysimilar)
whichdo not haveequal angles?-"But that'sjust ajoke! For in that case
theyare not 'similar'to one anotherin the same sense!"-Of coursenot;
and a propositionwhichcannotbe provedin Russell'ssystemis "true"or
"false"in a differentsense from a propositionof PrincipiaMathematica.11
If one reads this paragraph with care, one will observe two things:
first, that Wittgenstein is telling us that we should look on PM as a
"system"in the sense in which a system of non-Euclidean geometry is
a "system" of geometry-a

II

sense in which the same sentence

Remarkson the Foundations of Mathematics,i, Appendix iII, ?7.

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can be true in one system and false in another. And, second, that this
paragraph does not deny that a proposition that cannot be proved in
Russell's system (Wittgenstein obviously means one that cannot be
decided, that is, proved or disproved) can, in somesense be "true"or
"false" (outside the system)-he only asserts that this is a "different
sense" from the sense in which it is true or false as a "proposition of
Principia Mathematica."We shall now comment on each of these
points in turn.
(1) Wittgenstein's targets in much of Part I of Remarkson the
Foundations of Mathematicsare Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell,
not as mathematical logicians but as philosophers of mathematics
and logic. These philosophers emphatically did not see themselves as
providing a mere notationinto which one could transcribe the propositions that mathematicians actually utter, write, and publish in
ordinary "mathematical prose," that is, in English or French or German or.... They saw themselves as providing a freestanding "ideal
language" or "concept-language," what W. V. Quine12 has called a
first-grade conceptual scheme, which in some sense supercedesordinary language. Moreover, in providing such a scheme, they saw
themselves as providing mathematics with a foundation. Ordinary
language might be necessary to "lead someone into" the ideal language, but the "elucidations" we offer for this purpose in ordinary
language are, so to speak, a ladder that we can throw away. Frege
explicitly argues that ordinary language sentences that we use to
explain the ideal notation do not and cannot capture the precise
content of the ideal notion.13 It would be utterly foreign to this spirit
to explain the truth of a formula of Principia Mathematicaby merely
writing down an English sentence, and saying this is what it means for
P to be true. To confess that this is what one has to do would be to
abandon the claim for the foundational status of a system such as
Principia Mathematicaentirely. (So that when Wittgenstein writes in
?8: "And by 'this interpretation' I understandthe translationinto this
English sentence,"he is already denying that this notion of an "interpretation" which can only be indicated in English by helpful "hints"'4

12
"Speaking of Objects," OntologicalRelativity and OtherEssays (New York: Columbia, 1969), p. 24.
13 For the case of what Frege takes to be his primitive or undefinable notions (for
example, function, concept), see his CollectedPapers on Mathematics,Logic, and Philosophy,Brian McGuinness, ed., Max Black et alia, trans. (New York: Blackwell, 1984),
pp. 193-94, 300, 302; Posthumous Writings,pp. 207, 214, 235; Grundgesetzeder Arithmetik,I (Hildesheim: Olms, 1966), Appendix 2, n. 1 (p. 240).
14 Compare Frege, "On Concept and Object," CollectedPapers, p. 194.

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A NOTE

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631

and which does not in principle require any dependence on informal

mathematical language, makes any real sense.)
Instead, Wittgenstein is suggesting, there is a sense in which a
formalism can be free-standing, but it is not the sense of a Begriffsschrift or an ideal language. It can be free-standing regarded simply as
a formal system. But then the only sense of "truth" we shall have
available is: being a theorem of the system.15 And in that case, why
should it not be the case that one and the same "proposition" should
be "true in Russell's system" and false in a different system?
Indeed, something of this kind does happen. If there are only finitely
many individuals, thenfor some natural numberx, x= Sx (imagine this
written out in the formal notation) is a theorem of Principia Mathematica,while Thereare onlyfinitely manyindividuals andfor everynatural
numberx, x 0 Sx (imagine this likewise written out in formal notation)
is a consistent proposition (model theoretically as well as proof
theoretically) in Zermelo set theory. Or to change the example, the
formula '(3x) (xE x)' ("some set belongs to itself") is "true in Quine's
system" (Mathematical Logic) and "false in Zermelo set theory"!
Today, of course, few if any philosophers think that a formal system
provides a foundation for either the content or the truth of mathematical propositions. But one of us (Putnam) remembers a delightful
philosophical conversation between C.G. Hempel and one of Hans
Reichenbach's graduate students in Reichenbach's living room in
1950, at which the older attitude and the newer attitude memorably
clashed. Hempel was defending Quine's skepticism with respect to
the analytic-synthetic distinction, and the graduate student said plaintively: "Quine's arguments may show that the analytic-synthetic distinction makes no sense in natural language. But why doesn't it make
clear sense in a formalized language?"; and Hempel replied: "Every
formalized language is ultimately explained in some natural language. The disease [Hempel meant the unclarity of the analyticsynthetic distinction] is hereditary."Here, Hempel-like Wittgenstein
in Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics-was denying that a

15
After the appearance of semantics with Alfred Tarski, one can add another
sense: holding in all models of the system. If we take this to mean all Henkin
models, then even in the case of a higher-order language like PM, this will coincide
with being a theorem. It is a further question, however, whether Tarski's modeltheoretical account of truth definitions for formalized languages exhibits a correct
analysis of our intuitive notion of truth.On the claim that Tarski analyzed the concept
of truth, see Floyd, "Prose versus Proof: Wittgenstein on G6del, Tarski and Truth";
and also Putnam, "A Comparison of Something with Something Else," in his Words
and Life (Cambridge: Harvard, 1994), pp. 330-50. So far as we know, Wittgenstein
never mentioned Tarski's work on truth definitions.

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formal system couldprovide us with a standard of truth or clarity that

is, in principle, inaccessible to a natural language.
(2) What if someone were to have said to Wittgenstein: "When I say
that P is true in Russell's system, what I mean is simply that its
translation into English-any one of its mathematically equivalent
translations, including 'P is unprovable in PM'-is true?"We believe
that Wittgenstein would have pointed out that the notion of truthis
eliminable here.16 To understand 'P is true in PM' as meaning "The
English sentence 'P is unprovable in PM' is true" (or more colloquially, as meaning "It is true that P is unprovable in PM"), would
amount (as we see by "disquoting")just to understanding 'Pis true in
PM' as short for 'Pis unprovable in PM', or understanding P itself (in
PM) as short for 'Pis unprovable in PM'. In short this just is to accept
what Wittgenstein calls "the translation into this English sentence."
And this is something, we have shown, Wittgenstein did discuss in the
"notorious paragraph"-"with remarkable insight."
That the G6del theorem showsthat (1) there is a well-defined notion
of "mathematicaltruth"applicable to every formula of PM;and (2) that,
if PM is consistent, then some "mathematical truths" in that sense are
undecidable in PM, is nota mathematical result but a metaphysicalclaim.
But that if P is provable in PM then PM is inconsistent and if -P is
provable in PM then PM is w -inconsistent is precisely the mathematical
claim that G6del proved. What Wittgenstein is criticizing is the philosophical naivet6 involved in confusing the two, or thinking that the
former follows from the latter. But not because Wittgenstein wants
simply to denythe metaphysicalclaim; rather, he wants us to see how little
sense we have succeeded in giving it.
JULIET

FLOYD

Boston University
HILARY PUTNAM

Harvard University

16 For a discussion of the senses in which Wittgenstein

was and was not a
"disquotationalist," cf. Putnam, Lecture III in Part I (The Dewey Lectures) of his The
ThreefoldCord:Mind, Body, and World(New York: Columbia, 1999).

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