Undecidable Propositions
itself expressible in PM. Using this fact, G¨odel could construct propositions
in PM that to one who knew the specific code being used could be seen to
express the assertion that some proposition is not provable in PM.Thatis,
he was able to construct propositions A that, read via the encoding, assert
that some proposition B is not provable in PM.Now,someonenotprivyto
the code looking at A wouldseeastringofsymbols expressing some com-
plicated and mysterious proposition about natural numbers. But via the
code, the mystery vanishes: A expresses the proposition that some string of
symbols B represents a proposition not provable in PM. Ordinarily A and
B would be different propositions. G¨odel asked the question: Could they
be the ...