Abstrakt
In this paper I will attempt to explain why the controversy surrounding the alleged refutation of Mechanism by Gödel's theorem is continuing even after its unani-mous refutation by logicians. I will argue that the philosophical point its proponents want to establish is a necessary gap between the intended meaning and its formulation.
Such a gap is the main tenet of philosophical hermeneutics. While Gödel's theorem does not disprove Mechanism, it is nevertheless an important illustration of the hermeneutic prin-ciple.
The ongoing misunderstanding is therefore based in a distinction between a meta-logical illustration of a crucial feature of human understanding, and a logically precise, but wrong claim. The main reason for the confusion is the fact that in order to make the claim logically precise, it must be transformed in a way which destroys its informal value.
Part of this transformation is a clear distinction between the Turing Machine as a mathe-matical object and a machine as a physical device.