Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science

From: Chairman of the David Hilbert Appreciation Society (mathgeekXXXXII_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 02/10/05 

Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 15:30:48 -0500

Albert wrote:
> Chairman of the David Hilbert Appreciation Society wrote:
> <snip>
>
>> The successor operation is a primitive operation. It's
>> equivalent to addition by 1, but according to this axiomatization,
>> we must define addition in terms of the successor operation because
>> it's all that we've got.
>
>
> Somehow, that just doesn't sound very professional.

That's probably because I'm not a professional.

Since you seem to doubt what I wrote above, you must
have some reason to think that the existence of the
addition function can be proven from the first order
Peano axioms; without reference to the successor operation.

Could you show us a proof or at least give an outline
of how it works?

Relevant Pages