Logic Lectures: Gödel's Basic Logic Course at Notre Dame

Abstract

An edited version is given of the text of Gödel's unpublished manuscript of the notes for a course in basic logic he delivered at the University of Notre Dame in 1939. Gödel's notes deal with what is today considered as important logical problems par excellence, completeness, decidability, independence of axioms, and with natural deduction too, which was all still a novelty at the time the course was delivered. Full of regards towards beginners, the notes are not excessively formalistic. Gödel presumably intended them just for himself, and they are full of abbreviations. This together with some other matters (like two versions of the same topic, and guessing the right order of the pages) required additional effort to obtain a readable edited version. Because of the quality of the material provided by Gödel, including also important philosophical points, this effort should however be worthwhile. The edited version of the text is accompanied by another version, called the source version, which is quite close to Gödel's manuscript. It is meant to be a record of the editorial interventions involved in producing the edited version (in particular, how the abbreviations were disabridged), and a justification of that later version.