FOM: actual infinite

[Joseph Vidal-Rosset]

Le Mercredi 1 Mai 2002 19:07, Neil Tennant a écrit :
> On Wed, 1 May 2002, Thomas Forster wrote:
> > It has always seemed to me that one ought to be able to give
> > a satisfactory answer to the old puzzle about how finite beings
> > can apprehend actual infinities by use of IT ideas like lazy
> > evaluation.
>
> "I who am finite would not have the idea of infinite substance in me
> unless it came from a substance that really was infinite ... it's
> clear to me there is more reality in an infinite than in a finite
> substance and, hence, that my grasp of the infinite must somehow be prior
> to my grasp of the finite ..."
>
> Descartes, Meditation III
>
> Maybe Ren'e would have pointed out, also, that lazy evaluation would at
> best yield grasp of potential infinities, not actual ones.
>
>
> Neil Tennant

Maybe... Except the fact that Rene reserved the actual infinite for God, and 
for God only, assuming only the "indefinite" about numbers, no the actual 
infinite. But I agree that it is interesting to think the Divine actual 
infinite thanks to the model of our mathematical infinite, even if Descartes 
would have surely refused such this hypothesis. 

-- 
Joseph Vidal-Rosset
Université de Bourgogne
Département de Philosophie
Faculté des Lettres
2 bd Gabriel,
21 000 Dijon

Page web: http://www.u-bourgogne.fr/PHILO/joseph.vidal-rosset

-- 
Joseph Vidal-Rosset
Université de Bourgogne
Département de Philosophie
Faculté des Lettres
2 bd Gabriel,
21 000 Dijon

Page web: http://www.u-bourgogne.fr/PHILO/joseph.vidal-rosset