A potentialist conception of ultrafinitism
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 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 , in which the arithmetic operations on objects taken from the original base model are totally defined in the extended world . 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