``Ah! You concede then that you have a decision
procedure for
I. But uncountably infinite sets like R,
the reals, are not
decidable!"
This objection is anemic (though I have had it earnestly
expressed to me). And the reason it
is, of course, is that I need only maintain that
I is
effectively decidable, not that there is some program (or Turing
Machine, etc.) that can decide this set. (CT is the customary
justification given for identifying effective decidability with formal
decidability, but of course one can hardly invoke CT in the present
context without falling prey to a petitio.)
Though Objection 2 is misguided, it does suggest an interesting parallel for Arg3:
| Arg3' | |||
| (9') | If R |
||
| (10') | There's no procedure P which adapts programs for deciding members of R so as to yield programs for enumerating members of R. | ||
|
. |
(11') | R
|
10, 11 |
| (12') | R |
||
|
. |
(13') | R |
disj syll |
| (14') | R is effectively decidable. | ||
|
. |
(15') | CT is false. | reductio |
As we know by now, premise (9') is
an instantiation of a simple theorem
of elementary computability theory; (11') and
(13') are simply intermediate conclusions; (15) does indeed follow from
(13')
and (14'), since these two propositions counter-example CT's ``only if" part;
and the other two inferences are unassailable. Everything boils down to (10')
and
(14'). But we know that in the case of the
reals, (11')
is true (and, of course, so is (10')), but
we don't need it), and the technique of getting R from
N (the natural numbers) via (e.g.)
(e.g.) Dedekind cuts constitutes a proof of (12'). Of course, it's doubtful
that R or a
subset thereof is effectively decidable. Such is not the case, as I've
explained, with
I.