On 14 Jul 2014, at 19:59, meekerdb wrote:
On 7/14/2014 7:30 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 13 Jul 2014, at 15:09, David Nyman wrote:
On 12 July 2014 20:34, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
Of course they wouldn't because "17 is a prime number" is a
tautology. It's
true simply in virtue of it's meaning like "x is x". But is it a
fact about
the world or just a fact about language?
I must confess to being somewhat flabbergasted that we're still
debating the semantics and metaphysical provenance of numbers as
if it
were in any way relevant to the fundamental topics under discussion.
Agreed. especially that for numbers (or any Turing-complete
theory), we know that if we assume less, we don't get them.
In fact numbers are assumed in all (scientific) theories, and
people nitpicking on them introduce useless metaphysics about them.
I don't know of any scientific theory that usese infinitely many
integers.
String theory. Not only it uses infinitely many integers, but it uses
an infinite weird sum on them, or if you prefer zeta(-1).
Comp theory. To define the notion of computation. To enunciate Church
thesis.
Quantum theory. To get the infinite dimensional hilbert spaces, or the
von Neuman algebra.
Those using the theory don't need to use infinitely many integers, but
the theory used refers and has to refer to all of them to remain
consistent (and simple).
Bruno
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
