[FOM] Paradise vs. Hell

[Timothy Y. Chow]

Dana Scott wrote:
> Thanks for the reply.  We all could use some peaceful sleep
> these days, but I really wish you would take a peek at Harvey's
> brief paper on his new incompleteness results.

Probably at the same time as Dana Scott's message was sent, I emailed 
Zeilberger, mentioning the same Harvey Friedman paper, and asking him 
whether he thought that Pi-0-1 statements were meaningful.  His prompt, 
but terse, reply was that any statement of the form "For all positive 
integers n..." is prima facie meaningless, but that it can be salvaged if 
rephrased as "For all n of type `symbolic integer'..."  I didn't ask him 
what he meant by this, but it sounds like a fairly strong form of 
finitism.

Tim