English

A potentialist conception of ultrafinitism

Logic 2025-12-09 v1

Abstract

I shall explore various senses in which ultrafinitism can be fruitfully understood as engaging with a potentialist perspective in mathematics. First, I explain that every model MM of the theory of finite arithmetic -- arithmetic with a largest number, in which addition and multiplication are merely partial functions -- is bi-interpretable with a strictly taller model M+M^+, in which the arithmetic operations on objects taken from the original base model MM are totally defined in the extended world M+M^+. More generally, I explain how ultrafinitist ideas emerge in the modal potentialist system consisting of all models of arithmetic under end-extension.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.06564,
  title  = {A potentialist conception of ultrafinitism},
  author = {Joel David Hamkins},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.06564},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

This article was adapted from the talk of the same title that I gave at the conference on Ultrafinitism: Physics, Mathematics, Philosophy at Columbia University in April 2025

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:13:12.989Z