10051 | The axiom of infinity is not a truth of logic, and its adoption is an abandonment of logicism |
Full Idea: There is something profoundly unsatisfactory about the axiom of infinity. It cannot be described as a truth of logic in any reasonable use of that phrase, and so the introduction of it as a primitive proposition amounts to the abandonment of logicism. | |
From: W Kneale / M Kneale (The Development of Logic [1962], XI.2) | |
A reaction: It seems that the axiom is essentially empirical, and it certainly makes an existential claim which seems to me (intuitively) to have nothing to do with logic at all. |