ELI5: How does philosophy answer mathematical questions?

Mathematics

For context, I watched Veritasium's video about math's fundamental flaw and I could not understand how does Gödel's Incomplete Theorem prove that math not complete and is inconsistent? Same goes with Turing's halting problem because I don't understand how does the thought experiment about a computer could be used as prove that math is not decidable (no algorithm that can always determine if a statement is derivable from the axiom, according to Veritasium)

I had thought that a math formula/equation needed to be discovered/published to show that math is incomplete, inconsistent, and solvable/decidable since the original questions were about math.

How do mathematicians know these philosophy (such as self reference paradox) is answering whether mathematics is complete, consistent, decidable, or not?

Posted Apr 7, 2026, 11:28 AM UTC

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