Non-algorithmic Truth and the Structure of Reality: Distinguishing the Mental and Real Lucas-Penrose Arguments

Vollständiger Abstract

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Abstract Can physical reality be fully captured by an algorithmic Theory of Everything? We argue not. Gödelian incompleteness shows that no sound, recursively axiomatizable formalism proves all truths of a sufficiently rich domain, while Tarskian undefinability shows that no such formalism defines its own truth predicate. This combined obstruction is not merely epistemic: undecidability in quantum logic, quantum measurement, and spectral gap problems demonstrates the existence of physically determinate questions that no algorithm can decide. We distinguish the Mental Lucas-Penrose (MLP) argument, concerning human cognition, from the Real Lucas-Penrose (RLP) argument introduced here, which transfers the Gödel-Tarski obstruction to the ontology of the physical world. Since truth for sufficiently rich domains is necessarily external, and spacetime is emergent from deeper formal structure, a non-algorithmic semantic layer prior to spacetime is required. Standard objections to MLP do not apply to RLP. A non-algorithmic truth principle is therefore foundational to physics.