From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Mon Jan 23 2006 - 07:59:46 MST
> I don't either; the argument seems to be tripping over vagueness in the use
> of the word "consistent". For example, Newtonian mechanics and relativity
> are inconsistent with each other (they give different outputs from the same
> input, albeit only slightly different for low speeds), and yet it is useful
> to keep both of them to hand. This doesn't imply that mathematics is
> inconsistent!
Classical and relativistic mechanics can easily be expressed in terms
of the same formal system (e.g. Zermelo-Frankel set theory) so there
is no mathematical inconsistency between them in the sense Geddes is
suggesting...
I don't really find Geddes's suggestion very appealing, I was just
pointing out a possible way to make sense of it in more rigorous
language than he was using.
ben
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