FOM: Kanovei on counting cardinals etc.

[Neil Tennant]

For the second time, Kanovei has misquoted me. In fact, it wasn't even
an attempt to quote me, but rather an attempt to attribute to me a
strange view of his own concoction:

> NT's thesis:
> We cannot say that at the moment C has some number of 
> elements because we do not have full information about C. 
> For instance take as C the "set" of all cardinals in the 
> Roman church. We know, in principle, there are say 9 of them 
> (whom we could know by names). But since they are, generally elderly 
> people one of them could decease (god forbids !) a minute ago, 
> so for safety reasons is is better not to bet on 9 in this case 
> and rather write something like 
> (N)	#xF(x) = n* iff there are exactly n F's
> as the ultimate knowledge on the subject. 

There is not a single sentence here that I recognize as embodying any
view that I hold. So there is really not much point in engaging
Kanovei any further in reply. 

Kanovei ought to re-read my earlier posting about the possible
time-dependency of the extension of a concept before offering such
ridiculous summaries.

Neil Tennant