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    There exist sentences (such as the Fermat-like primality ... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Formalist positions of Goodman and Quine's persuasion are refuted by reductio ad absurdum

    There exist sentences (such as the Fermat-like primality claim) that are decidable in the formal sense but for which no concrete proof or refutation exists or could be manipulated by any human

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    Key Terms

    Fermat-like primality claim(mathematics and philosophy of mathematics)
    A mathematical statement similar to Fermat's famous unsolved problems—statements about prime numbers (numbers only divisible by 1 and themselves) that seem simple to ask but extremely hard to prove or disprove.
    decidable (in the formal sense)(mathematical logic and philosophy of mathematics)
    A problem is decidable if there's a set of logical rules that can theoretically determine whether a statement is true or false, even if we can't actually figure out the answer in practice.

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    Related propositions within the same area of thought.
    manipulated by any human(epistemology (theory of knowledge) and philosophy of mind)
    Worked through or solved by a person using calculation, logic, or other mental/computational methods—even with unlimited time and effort.
    proof(Frege's formal system; the definition still used by logicians today)
    Any finite sequence of statements such that each statement is either an axiom of the formal system or follows from previous members of the sequence by a valid rule of inference.
    refutation(SR 6 168a37)
    A proof of the contradictory of the thesis maintained by the answerer

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    Philosophy of Language3 linked

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    A consequence that destroys current mathematical practice constitutes a reductio...Formalist positions of Goodman and Quine's persuasion are refuted by reductio ad...Treating decidable mathematical sentences as neither true nor false would requir...Under Goodman and Quine's formalism, a sentence is true or false only if a concr...
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    Under Goodman and Quine's formalism, such sentences would be neither true nor fa...

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    There are countless mathematical sentences for which no concrete proof...82%Turning this implication around: if the set of valid L-sentences is no...78%FACTORIZATION is not currently known to be feasibly decidable78%Under Goodman and Quine's formalism, a sentence is true or false only ...77%

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    (That is—with ‘2^\(n\)’ representing ‘2 to the power \(n\)’—‘[2^(2^(2^(2^(2^2))))]\(+1\) is prime’; cf. Tennant, 1997 p. 152.) They cannot deny the sentence exists, for there is the token before our very eyes. But there are strong grounds for thinking that no concrete proof or disproof will exist, for the only methods available may use up more time, space and material than any human could have at her disposal, perhaps than actually exists. There are countless sentences with this property: concre

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