Quantcast
Channel: Active questions tagged soft-question - Mathematics Stack Exchange
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 1252

Why isn't finitism nonsense?

$
0
0

This is a by product of this recent question, where the concept of ultrafinitism came up. I was under the impression that finitism was just "some ancient philosophical movement" in mathematics, only followed by one or two nowadays, so It sounded like a joke to me.

But then I got curious and, after reading a bit, It seems to me that the only arguments against infinite mathematics that finitists seem to have are that "there are numbers so big that we couldn't computate in a lifetime" or the naive set theory paradoxes. The former doesn't seem like a serious argument, and the latter is not a problem now that mathematics relies on consistent axioms.

Are there some (maybe arguably) good mathematical reason to deny the existence of $\infty$ or is it just a philosophical attitude? The concept of unboundedness seems pretty natural to me, so what could be a reason to avoid it? Does this attitude even make any sense?

In short, why today-finitists have a problem with $\infty$?

Edit: First of all, thank you so much for your answers (and comments), they have been enormously illuminating. :)

I didn't know that "finitism vs. infinitism" was such a polemic topic. Now I myself agree this question might look as primarily opinion-based. However, It was not my intention to open a debate about "which posture is better"; I was just meaning to ask about what specific mathematical reason (argued and not-primarily opinion based) do finitists have to reject the "infinitists" use of infinity.

Based on the two excellent answers I've already had (thank you again :) It is my understanding that their main problem with the use of $\infty$ is that it leads to mathematical results (like the Banach-Tarski paradox) which they don't recognize as true when looked through the glasses of our real-world experience.

Final edit: After reading every answer and comment (specially Asaf Karagila's) I've came to the conclussion that there are not strictly mathematical reason to avoid the use of infinite. That my specified question on the last edit has no answer, and that the motivation to stick to finitists or infinitists view of mathematics relies on how much one expects mathematics to describe each one's "real world". As Wildcard's answer is the one that clarifies that matter best to me, I am accepting it. Thank you all again for your answers and comments!


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 1252

Trending Articles



<script src="https://jsc.adskeeper.com/r/s/rssing.com.1596347.js" async> </script>