The Frog and Mouse Battle
Logic\, po
litics and justice
Abstract:
The 1920 s saw the rise of modern logic: Hilbert’s formalist programme\, Gödel’s the orems\, and Brouwer’s intuitionism offered competing visions for the founda tions of mathematics. At the centre was a clash between Hilbert and Brouwer over the law of excluded middle—a dispute that turned political in the wak e of WWI. It ended with Hilbert expelling Brouwer from the Mathematisch e Annalen\, prompting high-profile resignations\, including Einstein’s . While the episode had political dimensions\, it also reveals a form of ep istemic injustice that is logical in nature. Drawing on my recent work in l ogic\, I’ll offer a fresh analysis of the logical injustice at the heart of the coup that ultimately ended Brouwer’s career.
Bio:
Dr. Patrick Girard is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Uni versity of Auckland. Specialising in philosophical logic and non-classical meta-theory\, he brings a distinctive perspective to traditional logical fr ameworks. He holds a PhD from Stanford University and has a sustained commi tment to exploring and challenging the boundaries of logic. In his recent b ook\, Logic in the Wild\, he reclaims logic from the confines of m athematical formalities and restores its relevance to ordinary reasoning an d daily experience. His recent work takes seriously the challenges posed by critical theory and seeks to rehabilitate logical praxis to make it more e quitable and epistemically just.
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