On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 11:32 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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.
>
>
Just the sentence:
"I'm quite sure you can explain Brent's brain and ideas
without using any number bigger than 10^100."
Takes a number larger than 10^100 to represent. Numbers we think of as very
big, are small in the face of enumerating all possibilities, which is what
the UD happens to do.
Jason
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