Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-picayune.mit.edu!news From: mlevin@jade.tufts.edu Subject: how many distinct thoughts can a person have? Message-ID: <1991Jun19.033316.18773@athena.mit.edu> Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system) Organization: Me, Myself, and I, inc. Distribution: usa Date: Wed, 19 Jun 91 03:33:16 GMT Lines: 10 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? Mike Levin