| ▲ | Epa095 an hour ago | |
No. Godel's completeness theorem can not be understood without bringing in first order logic, because it is a statement of the expressitivity of the language(relative to its semantics). Other more expressive languages, like second order logic (with its usual semantics) is not complete. Trying to explain Godel's completeness theorem without bringing in the language is a path to confusion. And your explanation of the first incompleteness theorem is also at best confusing. I must preface this with the comment that your definition of a 'theorem' matches what is usually called a sentence or a statement, and a theorem is usually reserved for a sentence which is proven by a axiomatic system. If the axiomatic system is sound, all theorems will be true in all models. The question of completeness is whether or not all truths(aka sentences true in all models) can be proven(aka they are theorems). With this more common usage of the words, Gödel's incompleteness theorems show that every consistent theory containing the natural numbers has true statements on natural numbers that are not theorems of the theory (that is they cannot be proved inside the theory). Your description of the first incompleteness theorem is also true for complete logics, even for propositional logic (with your definition of 'theorem' as actually meaning statement). It has statements which is true in some models and false in others. This does not make it incomplete. | ||