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Re: Cantor's absurdity, once again, why not?
Posted:
Mar 14, 2013 10:35 PM
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david petry <david_lawrence_petry@yahoo.com> writes:
> On Thursday, March 14, 2013 6:49:46 PM UTC-7, Jesse F. Hughes wrote:
>
>> Here's my intuitions. The statement
>
>> All ravens are black.
>
>> is falsifiable, since the discovery of a white raven would prove it
>> false.
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>> The statement
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>> Not all ravens are black.
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>> is not falsifiable,
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>
>
> Yeah, you've got it.
>
Okay, so Fermat's last theorem is, in your view, a properly
mathematical statement, while it's negation doesn't belong in
mathematics.
Similarly, Goldbach's conjecture is a properly mathematical statement,
but its negation is not.
You're okay with this, are you?
Because, I always assumed that if any particular statement counts as
"mathematical", then so does its negation.
By the way, the statement "The universe is finite," is not
falsifiable, given certain assumptions, while its negation may well be
falsifiable. That would mean that it's fair to take as a scientific
hypothesis the claim that the universe is infinite, but not the
assumption that it's finite.
You okay with that, too?
--
Jesse F. Hughes
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In
practice there is." -- Yogi Berra
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