FOM: actual infinite

[Neil Tennant]

On Wed, 1 May 2002, Thomas Forster wrote:

> It has always seemed to me that one ought to be able to give
> a satisfactory answer to the old puzzle about how finite beings
> can apprehend actual infinities by use of IT ideas like lazy
> evaluation.   

"I who am finite would not have the idea of infinite substance in me
unless it came from a substance that really was infinite ... it's
clear to me there is more reality in an infinite than in a finite
substance and, hence, that my grasp of the infinite must somehow be prior
to my grasp of the finite ..."

Descartes, Meditation III

Maybe Ren'e would have pointed out, also, that lazy evaluation would at
best yield grasp of potential infinities, not actual ones.


Neil Tennant