FOM: Comments on a paper by Hartry Field

[Torkel Franzen]

  Martin Schlottmann asks:

   >What, exactly, is this reasoning of yours which leads to
   >the determinate content of "finitely many"?

  I don't know of any such reasoning. It is only when we start from
some idea of the indeterminateness or indefiniteness of "finitely
many" (or "the power set of the natural numbers", or "mathematically
provable", or some other notion) that we can argue for its
determinateness or definiteness. Thus, my comment "I would argue that
'finitely many' isn't indeterminate at all" meant that I don't regard
the view that "finitely many" is somehow indeterminate as justified by
the justification commonly presented for that view.

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Torkel Franzen
Computer Science, Lulea technical university