Self-Referential Systems

Noson S. Yanofsky
Department of Computer and Information Science
CUNY Brooklyn College, NY

ABSTRACT

There is a feeling that Turing's halting problem, Gödel's incompleteness theorem, the liar paradox, and Cantor's diagonalization theorem are all very similar. They are all talking about limitations of self-referential systems. We shall formulize this feeling by giving a single scheme in which all of the above diverse theorems are instances of that scheme. We shall go through the scheme at tutorial pace and then show the diversity of instances of that scheme.

Short Bio

Noson Yanofsky did an undergraduate degree at Brooklyn College, CUNY. He did his PhD in mathematics at the Graduate Center, CUNY. After doing a post-doc at McGill University, Noson returned to Brooklyn College and is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science.

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