FOM: Infinite sequences in the physical world

Fred Richman richman at fau.edu
Wed Jan 31 14:09:37 EST 2001


JoeShipman at aol.com wrote:
 
> In particular, if our best theories of physics lead us to conclude
> that a certain reproducible experimental procedure will generate a
> sequence that is mathematically definable but not computable, then
> CT-phys will be false,

I'm not sure what this means. "Reproducible" seems to refer to an
actual procedure that can be carried out. Although we are constantly
going back and forth between our mathematical models and the real
world, isn't it some sort of categorical mistake to talk about a
procedure of this sort generating an infinite sequence of positive
integers?

--Fred




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