>
> On Fri, 22 Sep 2000 10:04:40 +0200 (SAST) Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com>
> wrote:
>
[description of the halting problem snipped]
> >
> > Now, a computer can't solve this problem. My question is, can anyone?
>
> ? If I'm not mistaken, Hegel's distinction between bad and true infinity
> 'solves' (hahhahahhha) this problem. A bad infinity is where one finite H is
> defined through not being something else (H halting other programs -
> determinate negation). The true infinity is when it returns to itself (H fed to
> itself) - it forms an impossible circle and the 'vanishing mediator' of H is
> the 'remainder' - which, of course, is nothing (Hegel's pure being)... the
> essence of H is its own self-relating negativity... quality, quantity,
> quantum...
Yeah, but we're all pretty much agreed that Hegel was talking bollocks here, right?
Anyway, I'm no authority on Hegel, but it seems to me that this 'solution' requires a constant state of not examining itself. Which doesn't get you much further than a state of paranoid indecision.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844