FOM: infinity of the universe...Hazen's Moral

[Matt Insall]

Professor Hazen:
    Moral.  I don't feel attracted to the sort of ultra-finitism and
anti-platonism Kanovei and Sazonov have been arguing for, but I don't think
it is easy to use physical cosmology to establish the meaningfulness
(independent of proof) of infinitistic mathematical assertions.


Matt Insall:
Your analogy seems like a good one, and your invocation of the
model-theoretic examples lends support to your Moral.  However, I do not
think we should presume that it is impossible to use physical cosmology to
establish the meaningfulness of infinitistic mathematical assertions.  There
are many things that are worth trying to do that are not easy.





Matt Insall