[FOM] Corrected response to Question on Number Line (Bruckner)

[Robert Tragesser]

Corrected original (wrote 'point' when I meant 'part').
    r tragesser

> From: "Dean Buckner" <d3uckner at btinternet.com>:
>
> I have a quotation that says that Goedel also found this idea
> problematic.  Is this true?
>

At discussion at a talk at SUNY-Buffalo in the early 70's, Harvey  
Friedman referred to the conflict between our intuitive sense, when a  
line is split, that the parts have end points (termini) with no point  
is lost,  and our virtually paradigmatic representation of the line  
continua as composed of points (so that when split, either one part  
has an end-point and the other doesn't, or a point is removed and  
neither part has an endpoint), as "Gödel's Paradox of Geometric  
Intuition".  (So maybe Harvey has some idea of how Gödel understood  
this?)

Dana Scott remarked that this problem arose for Tarski when he was  
working on what became his paper on geometric solids (reprinted in  
Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics)...and he there found a way of  
resolving it.

robert tragesser
nyack-on-the-hudson