Why isn't finitism nonsense?

Question

This is a by product of this recent question, where the concept of ultrafinitism came up. I was under the impression that finitism was just "some ancient philosophical movement" in mathematics, only followed by one or two nowadays, so It sounded like a joke to me.

But then I got curious and, after reading a bit, It seems to me that the only arguments against infinite mathematics that finitists seem to have are that "there are numbers so big that we couldn't computate in a lifetime" or the naive set theory paradoxes. The former doesn't seem like a serious argument, and the latter is not a problem now that mathematics relies on consistent axioms.

Are there some (maybe arguably) good mathematical reason to deny the existence of $\infty$ or is it just a philosophical attitude? The concept of unboundedness seems pretty natural to me, so what could be a reason to avoid it? Does this attitude even make any sense?

In short, why today-finitists have a problem with $\infty$?

Edit: First of all, thank you so much for your answers (and comments), they have been enormously illuminating. :)

I didn't know that "finitism vs. infinitism" was such a polemic topic. Now I myself agree this question might look as primarily opinion-based. However, It was not my intention to open a debate about "which posture is better"; I was just meaning to ask about what specific mathematical reason (argued and not-primarily opinion based) do finitists have to reject the "infinitists" use of infinity.

Based on the two excellent answers I've already had (thank you again :) It is my understanding that their main problem with the use of $\infty$ is that it leads to mathematical results (like the Banach-Tarski paradox) which they don't recognize as true when looked through the glasses of our real-world experience.

Final edit: After reading every answer and comment (specially Asaf Karagila's) I've came to the conclussion that there are not strictly mathematical reason to avoid the use of infinite. That my specified question on the last edit has no answer, and that the motivation to stick to finitists or infinitists view of mathematics relies on how much one expects mathematics to describe each one's "real world". As Wildcard's answer is the one that clarifies that matter best to me, I am accepting it. Thank you all again for your answers and comments!

Answer 1

To add to Reese's excellent answer, I will say first that I don't consider myself a finitist, but I can understand why finitists postulate as they do—even the ultrafinitists.

First, to quote the Wikipedia article already cited in a comment (emphasis added):

Even though most mathematicians do not accept the constructivist's thesis, that only mathematics done based on constructive methods is sound, constructive methods are increasingly of interest on non-ideological grounds. For example, constructive proofs in analysis may ensure witness extraction, in such a way that working within the constraints of the constructive methods may make finding witnesses to theories easier than using classical methods. Applications for constructive mathematics have also been found in typed lambda calculi, topos theory and categorical logic, which are notable subjects in foundational mathematics and computer science.

Now my own explanation of ultrafinitism has less to do with belief than practicality. But first, a discussion of ideas themselves.

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Numbers, ultimately, are ideas, as are every other element in mathematics.

You say (emphasis added):

Are there some (maybe arguably) good mathematical reason to deny the existence of ∞ or is it just a philosophical attitude? The concept of unboundedness seems pretty natural to me, so what could be a reason to avoid it?

This is inherently a subjective position, and a perfectly valid one: "I can think of this idea, so how can someone say this idea doesn't exist?"

Of course it would be ludicrous to claim that the idea of infinity doesn't exist. You just thought of it (thought about it), didn't you?

I'll be an ultrafinitist for a moment and explain the position.

It's not that infinity doesn't exist as an idea, it's that you cannot point to an infinity anywhere in the real universe. Anything you point to is necessarily finite, or you couldn't point it out or demonstrate it.

Mathematics is all (all) based on working with symbolization of real or abstract data. You're dealing with ideas, fundamentally, and ways of representing those ideas to resolve, communicate about, or pose problems—again, either real or abstract.

Please don't be so attached to a single system for ideas and their symbolization that you fail to recognize that other ideas may exist outside of that scope.

You criticize ultrafinitists for failing to include the concept of an infinity in their abstractions and symbolizations. Very well, why is it that your own mathematics fail to include the concept of "certainty"? Or "knowledge"? Or "co-existence" (the same number having two different values at the same time)? Or how about "time" itself, since that is not included in mathematics?

If you can work with your mathematics and get results that work, or even just that you find interesting, fine. If I can work with my mathematics and get different results than you, but they work for me (produce a desired result when applied to the real world), great.

But this is all more general, covering the broad sweep of differences of mathematical ideas.

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To answer your precise question, and provide the "arguably good" mathematical reason to omit consideration (not "deny the existence") of the infinite in a mathematical framework, it is:

If you omit everything that cannot be directly observed, and abstract only that which can be observed, your results will apply uniformly to the observable universe.

This conclusion itself can only be demonstrated by observation of the observable universe—it cannot be theoretically evolved. It itself is separate from the approach of theoretically evolving a set of ideas, so it cannot be measured by the yardstick of theoretical postulation of ideas.

Chew on that for a bit. :)

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Even if I'm speaking as an ultrafinitist, I would still say there is one factual infinity:

The possible different ideas that can be conceived of and posed by the human mind is infinite.

But that doesn't make the idea of an infinity inherently superior to the idea of no infinity. ;)

Answer 2

It's not known that modern set theory is consistent; in fact, by the Incompleteness Theorem, we can't ever have a system of axioms that we can prove is consistent. Which means that the only condition we can rely on for determining whether a set of axioms is "right" is whether or not it produces absurd results.

Under $ZFC$, we have different sizes of infinity - there are sets which are larger than the set of natural numbers in a precise sense. We also have a lot of weirdness involving the Axiom of Choice - for example, with the Axiom of Choice, a theorem of Banach and Tarski states that a hollow sphere can be disassembled into five pieces and then reassembled (without stretching, tearing, or otherwise deforming the pieces) into two spheres that are both identical to the first one in both size and shape. But the Axiom of Choice simply states that given a set of sets, we can "choose" one element from each set - which seems intuitively true.

A finitist's perspective on $ZFC$ is often that results like the hierarchy of infinite cardinals and the Banach-Tarski paradox are absurd - that they should count as contradictions, because they patently disagree with the intuitive picture of mathematics. The sensible conclusion is that one of the axioms of $ZFC$ is wrong. Most of them are intuitively obvious, because we can demonstrate them with finite sets - the only one we can't is Infinity, which states that there exists an infinite set. So a finitist's conclusion is to reject the Axiom of Infinity. Without that axiom, $ZFC$ becomes purely finitistic.

Now, many finitists are happy to stop here. But some are bothered by the fact that we still have an infinite collection of natural numbers; the infinite still "exists", in a sense, and gives the opportunity for the above weirdnesses to arise in the same way. So some people (including some mathematicians) subscribe to ultrafinitism and insist that there are only finitely many numbers at all. One ultrafinitist mathematician I know defines the largest integer to be the largest integer that will ever be referenced by humans.

Among mathematicians, ultrafinitists are much rarer than simple finitists. Finitists generally agree with you that "unboundedness" is a natural idea - it's essential, for example, in the definition of a limit. But they would go on to insist that this is just a formalism - that a limit, for example, is just a statement of eventual behavior, involving only finite numbers. So $\infty$ isn't an object, it's just a shorthand. This is (at least to my mind) more mathematically defensible than ultrafinitism.

EDIT: Since a lot of people seem to be having a hard time with my first sentence, I thought I'd clarify. The Incompleteness Theorem states that we cannot have a set of axioms powerful enough to express arithmetic and still be able to prove its consistency within the system. The reason I didn't include this phrase above is because it unnecessarily weakens the point. Any axiom system intended to codify all of mathematics defines the idea of "proof"; if, say, $T$ is intended to underlie all of mathematics, then by "proof" we must mean "proof in $T$". With such a $T$, we can say that $T$ cannot be proven consistent at all; because by Incompleteness, any proof of the consistency of $T$ would not be a proof from inside $T$, but $T$ is supposed to be powerful enough that all proofs are proofs from inside $T$. Thus: we can't ever have a system of axioms for mathematics that we can prove is consistent - full stop.

Answer 3

Leopold Kronecker was one of the leading mathematicians at the end of the 19th century. Kronecker disagreed sharply with contemporary trends toward abstraction in mathematics, as pursued by Cantor, Dedekind, Weierstrass, and others. Specifically, Kronecker rejected the notion of completed infinity. Many of today's mathematicians are so used to set theory being "the foundation" that they have difficulty relating to Kronecker's point to begin with. Kronecker's ideas were close to but not identical to the modern constructivist ideas; thus Bishop for one arguably did accept actual/completed infinity, since early on in his book he speaks matter-of-factly about functions $f$ from $\mathbb N$ to $\mathbb N$. The difficulty we have of relating to Kronecker's viewpoint has to do with our training. Recently Yvon Gauthier tried to explore Kronecker's position; see in particular his

Gauthier, Yvon. Towards an arithmetical logic. The arithmetical foundations of logic. Studies in Universal Logic. Birkhäuser/Springer, Cham, 2015

and

Gauthier, Yvon. Kronecker in contemporary mathematics, general arithmetic as a foundational programme. Rep. Math. Logic No. 48 (2013), 37–65.

Gauthier argues in particular that many applications Kronecker worked on can be handled without superfluous infinitary assumptions that merely clutter the picture.

Answer 4

The question is backwards. Not even non-finitists would argue that finite math is meaningless. The correct question is whether the non-finite is meaningful. Finitism and atheism are the positions that the posited entity, respectively infinity and god, makes no sense or does not exist. A finitist can no more prove infinity does not exist than an atheist can prove the non-existence of god or a physicist can prove the non-existence of unobservable universes. The burden of proof is on proving the posited entity or concept is meaningful or exists.

The literal, original and true meaning of infinite is "has no end". What sense is there in talking about the end state of something that does not end? "end" here has nothing to do with time or resource - those would be further limits. The proof of the infinity of natural numbers by contradiction of the hypothesis that there is some last number is nothing more than the statement that the there is no end to the repeated application of the successor function. The paradoxes of Russell, Zeno, Turing, Quine and Goedel and the Liar paradox all rest on the same inherent impossibility of completing a process that never finishes. There are no analogs of these paradoxes in finite systems.

Induction on N as a proof technique is really a finite technique: for any n you can, in some finite number of steps, prove the predicate. It does not require infinity. It makes a defensible claim about any n (pace ultra-finitists). It is a mistake to read this as a claim about all of N, as it does not provide any way to cover all n in N. To cover all n in N one would need to enumerate these and that will never be completed as it is a process that has no end.

I suspect the loss of one of completeness and consistency as one moves from (N, +) to (N, +, *) is essentially because multiplication provides a loop construct, which opens the door to infinite loops. The step from propositional calculus or first-order predicate calculus with arity 1 to first-order predicate calculus with arity > 1 has the same flavour.