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- Newsgroups: sci.math
- Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!sunic!sics.se!sics.se!torkel
- From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
- Subject: Re: You know, the integers (was: Re: Stupid question about FLT)
- In-Reply-To: mccolm@darwin.math.usf.edu.'s message of 24 Aug 92 15:35:55 GMT
- Message-ID: <1992Aug27.141149.14345@sics.se>
- Sender: news@sics.se
- Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
- References: <1992Aug4.174928.1071@sics.se>
- <1992Aug11.190119.23518@ariel.ec.usf.edu>
- <1992Aug16.172642.13398@sics.se>
- <1992Aug24.153555.1298@ariel.ec.usf.edu>
- Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 14:11:49 GMT
- Lines: 21
-
- In article <1992Aug24.153555.1298@ariel.ec.usf.edu> mccolm@darwin.math.usf.
- edu. (Gregory McColm) writes:
-
- >And what, precisely do you mean by "and so on"??? You may think
- >that it is obvious what you mean, but a number of people, from
- >Aristotle to Brouwer, have had doubts about the murkey depths of
- >that "and so on".
-
- Judging by the responses that have appeared, my simple point - as I thought -
- is difficult to grasp. To repeat:
-
- Any obscurity or ambiguity that you
- find in this explanation carries over to any explanation of what is
- meant by "PA".
-
- In other words, I have not claimed that my explanation of what is
- meant by "the natural numbers" is clear. On the contrary, it is perfectly
- compatible with my claim that that explanation is meaningless,
- unintelligible, or a piece of insane raving. What I *am* claiming is
- that it is exactly as clear as any explanation you may come up with of
- what the phrase "the formal system PA" refers to.
-