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Douglas Hofstadter built on this thinker’s mathematical exploration of self-reference to introduce the idea of consciousness existing as a “strange loop” in a book partially titled for him. For 10 points each:
[10e] Name this thinker who formulated a version of the liar’s paradox to prove the incompleteness of mathematics.
ANSWER: Kurt Gödel [or Kurt Friedrich Gödel] (The Hofstadter book is Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.)
[10h] Gödel used his second incompleteness theorem to argue that numbers have content, part of his commitment that these abstract entities exist. Gödel defines these entities as “properties and relations of things existing independently of our definitions and constructions” in contrast to classes.
ANSWER: concepts (The referenced argument is in “Is Mathematics a Syntax or a Language?”)
[10m] Gödel’s logic has this property, meaning it uses continuous values between zero and one to express degrees of truth. Logic with this property emerged after Lotfi Zadeh applied it to sets.
ANSWER: fuzzy logic [prompt on many-valued logic]
<BW, Philosophy>

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