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From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: how many distinct thoughts can a person have?
Message-ID: <1991Jun20.013412.25164@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 20 Jun 91 01:34:12 GMT
References: <1991Jun19.033316.18773@athena.mit.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Lines: 26

In article <1991Jun19.033316.18773@athena.mit.edu> mlevin@jade.tufts.edu writes:
>   I was just reading Z. Pylyshin's "Computation and Cognition", and
>at one point, he states something like: "the number of distinct human
>thoughts is uncountable." Does anyone have any arguments for or
>against the idea that the number of possible distinct human thoughts
>(or mental states) is uncountably infinite? Note I do not mean
>"astronomicallly large" - I mean infinite (and perhaps uncountably so)
>in the strict mathematical sense. It seems plausible to me; does
>anyone have a good argument either way?

It's arguable that the number of distinct thoughts an individual can have
is finite, but the number of distinct *beliefs* is at least countably
infinite.

e.g. I believe "1 < 2", "1 < 3", "1 < 4", and so on.

The difference being that thoughts presumably have to be explicit, while
beliefs can be implicit (tacit).

One might argue that even a tacit belief has to be finitely specifiable,
in which case there can't be an uncountable number of them.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."