RE: Mathematicians who are finitists.
April 5, 2019 at 4:04 pm
(This post was last modified: April 5, 2019 at 4:05 pm by Smaug.)
(April 5, 2019 at 3:14 pm)Jehanne Wrote:(April 4, 2019 at 4:49 pm)Smaug Wrote: Interesting. Never heard of it before.
I'd say that rejecting infinite mathematical objects is pointless. In Math everything goes as long as it satisfies certain set of pre-defined rules. Mathematical objects can be purely abstract.
There are a small group of mathematicians and a somewhat larger group of philosophers (such as William Lane Craig) who reject the fact that the set of natural numbers is an actual infinite, that is, a set of objects (albeit, "abstract") that has an infinite cardinality, that is, an infinite number of members.
But how do they deal with the "recursive arguement" (i. e. "N+1"), I wonder? Also, what about Real numbers? Not only the set itself is infinite it's also any interval from it contains infinite number of objects.