Single Idea 17455

[catalogued under 6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 4. Using Numbers / c. Counting procedure]

Full Idea

I am not denying that counting can be done mindlessly, without making judgments of cardinality along the way. ...But the question is whether counting is, as it were, fundamentally a mindless exercise.

Gist of Idea

Is counting basically mindless, and independent of the cardinality involved?

Source

Richard G. Heck (Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity [2000], 5)

Book Reference

-: 'Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic' [-], p.202


A Reaction

He says no. It seems to me like going on a journey, where you can forget where you are going and where you have got to so far, but those underlying facts are always there. If you just tag things with unknown foreign numbers, you aren't really counting.

Related Idea

Idea 17456 Counting is the assignment of successively larger cardinal numbers to collections [Heck]