In 1928 Edmund Husserl wrote that “The ideal of the future is essentially that of phenomenologically based (“philosophical”) sciences, in unitary relation to an absolute theory of monads” (“Phenomenology”, Encyclopedia Britannica draft) There are references to phenomenological monadology in various writings of Husserl. Kurt Gödel began to study Husserl’s work in 1959. On the basis of his later discussions with Gödel, Hao Wang tells us that “Gödel’s own main aim in philosophy was to develop metaphysics—specifically, something like the monadology of (...) Leibniz transformed into exact theory—with the help of phenomenology.” (A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy, p. 166) In the Cartesian Meditations and other works Husserl identifies ‘monads’ (in his sense) with ‘transcendental egos in their full concreteness’. In this paper I explore some prospects for a Gödelian monadology that result from this identification, with reference to texts of Gödel and to aspects of Leibniz’s original monadology. (shrink)

In this paper the reader is asked to engage in some simple problem-solving in classical pure number theory and to then describe, on the basis of a series of questions, what it is like to solve the problems. In the recent philosophy of mind this “what is it like” question is one way of signaling a turn to phenomenological description. The description of what it is like to solve the problems in this paper, it is argued, leads to several morals (...) about the epistemology and ontology of classical pure mathematical practice. Instead of simply making philosophical judgments about the subject matter in advance, the exercise asks the reader to briefly engage in a mathematical practice and to then reflect on the practice. (shrink)