February 11, 2005

Artificial Intelligence and Kurt Gödel

To the Editor:

I greatly enjoyed Palle Yourgrau's essay ("Gödel and Einstein: Friendship and Relativity," The Chronicle Review, December 17). This otherwise excellent piece contains one dubious assertion, however: Mr. Yourgrau suggests that Gödel's incompleteness theorem showed that "we, or our minds, are not machines or computers," so that "enthusiasts of artificial intelligence were not amused."

These statements strike me as somewhat misleading. Whereas Gödel

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