[FOM] Feasible and Utterable Numbers

[jean paul van bendegem]

Although myself strongly in favour of a strict finitist view of mathematics
(as a philosophical possibility), the on-going discussion about feasible
and/or utterable numbers seems to me not the right way to address the
problem. Even if I am not capable here and now to write 2^100 strokes on a
sufficient amount of paper, it remains so that I can imagine myself doing
so. Hence, the true challenge for the strict finitist is to show that the
largest number *imaginable* is still a finite number. I think this is
possible as I have tried to demonstrate in a paper 'Why the largest number
imaginable is still a finite number' to be found at the website below.

Jean Paul Van Bendegem

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Jean Paul Van Bendegem
Centrum voor Logica en Wetenschapsfilosofie
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Pleinlaan 2
B-1050 Brussel
Belgium

Managing Editor "Logique et Analyse"
http://www.vub.ac.be/CLWF/L&A

tel: 32 2 629 25 92
fax: 32 2 629 23 74
http://www.vub.ac.be/CLWF/