The Hilbert program was actually a specific approach for proving consistency, a kind of constructive model theory. Quantifiers were supposed to be replaced by ε-terms. εxA(x) was supposed to denote a witness to $\exists xA(x)$ , or something arbitrary if there is none. The Hilbertians claimed that in any proof in a number-theoretic system S, each ε-term can be replaced by a numeral, making each line provable and true. This implies that S must not only be consistent, but also 1-consistent ( ${\Sigma}_1^0$ -correct). Here we show that if the result is supposed to be provable within S, a statement about all ${\Pi}_2^0$ statements that subsumes itself within its own scope must be provable, yielding a contradiction. The result resembles Gödel’s but arises naturally out of the Hilbert program itself.

In his paper on the incompleteness theorems, Gödel seemed to say that a direct way of constructing a formula that says of itself that it is unprovable might involve a faulty circularity. In this note, it is proved that ‘direct’ self-reference can actually be used to prove his result.

The present paper attempts to state and prove a completeness theorem for the system S5 of [1], supplemented by first-order quantifiers and the sign of equality. We assume that we possess a denumerably infinite list of individual variables a, b, c, …, x, y, z, …, xm, ym, zm, … as well as a denumerably infinite list of n-adic predicate variables Pn, Qn, Rn, …, Pmn, Qmn, Rmn,…; if n=0, an n-adic predicate variable is often called a “propositional variable.” A formula Pn(x1, …,xn) is an n-adic prime formula; often the superscript will be omitted if such an omission does not sacrifice clarity.