Proposition - our concepts are the result of brain activity
Proposition - brain activity requires metabolic fuel
Proposition - any idea of infinity requires infinite brain fuel
Proposition - there is no infinite supply of brain fuel
Conclusion - we cannot truly conceive of anything infinite
Proposition - any idea of infinity requires infinite brain fuel
Obviously wrong, since mathematicians have both conceived of infinity and defined it
Proposition - there is no infinite supply of brain fuel
There’s no evidence of anything being infinite, since it’s a concept.
Conclusion - we cannot truly conceive of anything infinite
There’s no evidence of anything being infinite, since it’s a concept.
Just because you don’t understand it, that doesn’t make it nonsense.
The line of logic implies that we cannot conceive of any form of abstraction, and can only describe by enumeration. That is an astoundingly narrow view of cognition.
Thus this proposition would appear unsupportable.
And this uses the all time great weasel word “truly”. There may only be one true Scotsman, but conception of ideas is a little more common. If you define “truly” as meaning enumerable in thought, the argument becomes circular, and thus invalid anyway.
Just think of the biggest number you can imagine - and add 1
False equivocation. Thinking of a proposition is not the same as performing said activity.
ie Thinking of swimming around the world requires very few actual calories.
If you wanted to perform an actual infinite task, then yes, you would need an infinite source of “fuel”.
It clearly equals 1.
This is as much nonsense as saying we can’t think about zero, because it’s nothing.
Here’s why it’s false:
Does it take 100 times as much effort to think about the number 100 as it does to think about the number 1?
Clearly you have a concept of infinity to be able to write that sentence, so therefore your entire line of reasoning is self-contradictory.
In the same way that we can’t “truly” conceive of a chair because we cannot imagine each of the billions of atoms that it is composed of.
Any idea of a unicorn requires an actual, physical unicorn. Therefore, we cannot conceive of a unicorn.
There are different classes of infinity.
You can use certain tools to rank them, but it works differently than trying to rank finite #'s.
George Cantor and limit laws would be good search terms to start with to flesh out the terms/concepts and find proofs/tools commonly used.
Doubly so for an infinity of unicorns. Oh wait … that would be infinitely so. 
It seems to me that this is the same logical flaw as in Anselm’s original ontological argument for God. Just because we can conceive of a perfect being does not mean that our conception is itself perfect. And just because we can conceive of an infinite quantity does not mean that our conception is itself infinite.
Words are ridiculously slippery little things. That’s why scientists prefer math.
Math isn’t slippery? I seem to remember an active thread talking about how 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 +… = -1.
How is that not slippery?
They were utilizing integers which are whole numbers. None of them were rounded … (Running away)
Is an infinite set of unicorns countable?
Suggested reading: *Mathematics and the Imagination/I] by Edward Kasner and James Newman. Quite accessible large section on the mathematics of infinity.
If you read the thread closely, you saw that it was a product of extremely precise definitions and processes. Nobody simply declared that it was so.
“Look, I came here for an argument; I’m not going to just stand…”
“Oh I’m sorry, but this is abuse.”
“Oh, I see, well, that explains it.”
“Ah yes, you want room 12A, just along the corridor.”