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From: zafrany@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Samy Zafrany)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Emotion and Logic
Message-ID: <15708@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Thu, 18-Sep-86 01:09:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.15708
Posted: Thu Sep 18 01:09:19 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 23-Sep-86 00:08:57 EDT
References: <15679@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <6068@alice.uUCp>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: zafrany@brahms.UUCP (Samy Zafrany)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <6068@alice.uUCp> ark@alice.UucP (Andrew Koenig) writes:
>>   If we were lucky to live in a world with infinite objects in it,
>>we would probably have another natural number incorporated to our
>>arithmetic, i.e. the number used to count an infinite set of chairs (or
>>splitzleboards), which we may call: INF. Our arithmetic will be like:
>>19+INF=INF, INF*INF=INF, "INF is the greatest natural number" (note
>>that we don't have such natural number in our current arithmetic!),
>>and so on.
>
>Maybe yes, maybe no.  The trouble is that once you introduce INF,
>you give up some other useful properties of natural numbers,
>such as cancellation (x+z=y+z implies x=y).

  Well, no one said that all arithmetics have to have similar properties,
what we view as a useful property on Earth might seem like a strange one
on Ork and vice versa. Again concepts like "useful", "coherent", "nice"
and so forth (even concepts like "exact" and "universal") are
culture-dependent, deeply has to do with elementary common forms of
life and so on....  . 


ucbvax!brahms!zafrany  Samy Zafrany/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720

Imagine a place in which the less money you have the better life you
have. In this place 0 will be the greatest number.