Tyrrell_McAllister comments on Rationality Quotes September 2012 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 03 September 2012 05:18AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (1088)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 07 September 2012 04:05:36PM *  5 points [-]

First, Spinoza is not using infinite in its modern mathematical sense. For him, "infinite" means "lacking limits" (see Definition 2, Part I of Ethics). Second, Spinoza distinguished between "absolutely infinite" and "infinite in its kind" (see the Explication following Definition 6, Part I).

Something is "infinite in its kind" if it is not limited by anything "of the same nature". For example, if we fix a Euclidean line L, then any line segment s within L is not "infinite in its kind" because there are line segments on either side that limit the extent of s. Even a ray r within L is not "infinite in its kind", because there is another ray in L from which r is excluded. Among the subsets of L, only the entire line is "infinite in its kind".

However, the entire line is not "absolutely infinite" because there are regions of the plane from which it is excluded (although the limits are not placed by lines).