Re:The Pirahã are off by one (2020)
by thebrainkid on Wednesday December 14, 2022 @02:00AM
(#33980815)
Sounds like ultrafinism or actualism:
So .. if the world has 10 marbles we may only count to 10 ..?
This despite there being ( 10 x 9 ) groupings of pairs of those 10 marbles?
For any of those 90 pairs we can show a physical example of ( this marble, that marble ).
Re:The Pirahã are off by one (2020)
by xyzelement on Wednesday December 14, 2022 @08:44AM
(#33983335)
Someone once said that whatever follows "So..." Is going to be a misrepresentation of what one said :)
In my comment I said "or whatever is the largest domain you think you can count". So in your example we still run out of physical stuff that can be counted (at 90) right?
In my book, something like two or ten exists - because my kid can hold up 2 fingers and say 2 or all of them and say 10. I am saying that you can actually count to those numbers in physical space.
But at some point, the number is like larger than the number of atoms in the universe (or whatever you think is the biggest domain we can count) and once you go past that number, your counts represent abstract numbers that don't have a physical representation.