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Article 2533 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: santas@inf.ethz.ch (Filippos Santas)
Subject: Re: Grasping concepts... is it polite?
Message-ID: <1992Jan7.214019.6969@neptune.inf.ethz.ch>
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References: <1992Jan2.131048.18412@news.stolaf.edu> <1992Jan6.092440.25451@etl.go.jp> <1992Jan6.130008.16471@news.stolaf.edu>
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1992 21:40:19 GMT





In article <1992Jan6.130008.16471@news.stolaf.edu> seebs@grendel1.acc.stolaf.edu (The Laughing Prophet) writes:
>In article <1992Jan6.092440.25451@etl.go.jp> andreas@etl.go.jp (Andreas Knobel) writes:
>>Courage, mes braves (aimed at the readers of *.tech and ai.*), why stop
>>at a lousy finite number like 10^10^10? I can imagine aleph_0, it starts
>>here with 0, 1 is next and then it sort of peters out in the distance.
>
>Yes, but can you imagine it in the same way you can imagine 10? It is easy
>to think of 10 marbles; it is nearly impossible (or completely) to imagine
>aleph_0 marbles.

You can imagine 10 in the same way you can imagine aleph_0. The only advantage of
10 is just that you can count it.

>
>>I would contend that I can even see aleph_0^aleph_0,
>
>If memory serves, that's the same thing. Certainly, aleph_0^anythingfinite
>is the same, and aleph_0^aleph_0 may well be - I don't recall it having
>been defined otherwise.
>
>Anyway, yes, you can have a good intellectual understanding of it - but the
>gut understanding seems somewhat more elusive, at least for me.
>

As I have said in a previous posting one does not need to have global
inspection of something in order to understand it:
"747546653688580769479648076457 apples" vs "billions of apples"
Thing of words like "apple", "tomorrow", "I". Sometimes the less you inspect a word the better
you understand it.

Philip Santas

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email: santas@inf.ethz.ch				 Philip Santas
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