On 1/20/2014 12:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
And to answer this properly, you have to define "physical existence of Brent" without
using arithmetic.
Brent:=the being who typed this sentence. (Or next time you're in California, come by
and I'll give an ostensive definition - and a cup of coffee.)
Thanks very much for the coffee cup, I appreciate. But frankly this will not work. If I
need to define number by invoking a being typing a sentence in a post dated the 19
janvier 2014, oops: I am using some numbers here.
You didn't ask to define a number, you asked to define "physical existence of Brent". And
19 January 2014 can easily be defined as when Brent typed the above message. I think you
(understandably as a logician) are so immersed in the axiomatic method that you lose of
sight of its connection to the physical world. Definitions become nothing but relations
between symbols if you never ground them in pointing.
Don't ask someone who want to compute 2+2=4 to come in California and drink four cups of
coffee, if all computers have to do that I am afraid the net will become extremely slow ...
I find much more plausible that I can explain numbers behavior, and Brent's brain and
ideas, from elementary arithmetical axioms, than explain arithmetic from Brent and other
humans ideas. Come on ...
I'm quite sure you can explain Brent's brain and ideas without using any number bigger
than 10^100.
Brent
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