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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 Ref
-: '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]
| 17448 | In counting, numerals are used, not mentioned (as objects that have to correlated) [Heck] |
| 17449 | We can understand cardinality without the idea of one-one correspondence [Heck] |
| 17450 | Understanding 'just as many' needn't involve grasping one-one correspondence [Heck] |
| 17451 | We can know 'just as many' without the concepts of equinumerosity or numbers [Heck] |
| 17454 | Children can use numbers, without a concept of them as countable objects [Heck] |
| 17456 | Counting is the assignment of successively larger cardinal numbers to collections [Heck] |
| 17455 | Is counting basically mindless, and independent of the cardinality involved? [Heck] |
| 17453 | The meaning of a number isn't just the numerals leading up to it [Heck] |
| 17457 | A basic grasp of cardinal numbers needs an understanding of equinumerosity [Heck] |
| 17458 | Equinumerosity is not the same concept as one-one correspondence [Heck] |
| 17459 | Frege's Theorem explains why the numbers satisfy the Peano axioms [Heck] |