The key to decidability or undecidability is whether diagonalization is possible, not whether or not there are disguised references to infinity somewhere.
The key to decidability or undecidability is whether diagonalization is possible, not whether or not there are disguised references to infinity somewhere.
On the other hand Peano arithmetic is not only about infinite objects, and very many more than just the naturals because it is rich enough to allow you to encode other ostensibly more sophisticated infinite objects in it, it is itself an infinite object. It can't be reduced to a finitary decision procedure the way weaker arithmetics can.
Diagonalization is accounted for by my second example of conceptualizing infinity: you can't do a diagonalization argument unless you contract a variable. In particular, you can admit full unrestricted set comprehension if you can't contract to derive absurdity. Referencing section 2.3 here [1]. It was this analysis of Russell's paradox that led to the discovery of light linear logics, or so the story goes.