[FOM] "Mathematician in the street" on AC

[hendrik@topoi.pooq.com]

On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 09:02:08AM +0300, Arnon Avron wrote:
> 
> Here it might be good to recall that AC was implicitly used in this way by
> mathematicians long before it was formulated and its
> role was realized - and some of these mathematicians
> have even strongly rejected AC (being unaware at
> the beginning that they had been using the principle
> to which they objected...)

So the historical question here is whether those mathematicians 
implicitly believed in the axiom of choice in its modern form, or 
whether they believed in constructive existence.  This might be hard to 
answer; wasn't this before either AC or constructivism had become 
explicit? 

-- hendrik