I suspect that I merely preferred to refer to it as thereby being unbounded, rather than infinite.Oh, boy, this is fun! And it's all Emanuela's fault--let's
blame her, shall we?
In your aborted explanation, you seem to still be thinking in terms of numbers, as in naming or counting, if you will.
I suppose in a way, I am, too.
When I used the word infinite as applied to the
content of our thoughts, I meant that there are an infinite
number (uh oh, did I just tie myself up in a knot?) of places our thoughts can go. Thoughts are unbounded by the
real world, and thoughts into the world of imagination can
indeed be infinite. Even if you take the thoughts of just
one individual, and assume for argument's sake that he has
thought of everything that,
up to that point, he is capable of thinking of, each new experience that he has will
open up further vistas to him of possible thought paths.
I suppose that one's self could be a boundary at one
end. But even death doesn't mark a boundary--just because
the person didn't think every thought that was possible for
him before he died, doesn't mean that they weren't
there. I do not expect to name all the numbers before I die, but that doesn't mean they aren't there!
An aside--our paper yesterday had a bit about large numbers, with some names I've never heard, or have long forgotten. It said, if you counted to a billion at the rate of one number per second, it would take nearly 32 yrs.
(31 yrs., 259 days, and some hours/seconds.) Wow.
