Endless and infinite

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Marvin_Edwards
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by Marvin_Edwards »

Steve3007 wrote: April 27th, 2020, 2:59 pm
Marvin_Edwards wrote:Okay. Then what contains it?
Why does it have to be contained?
If it was contained it wouldn't be everything.
Okay. That works.
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by Marvin_Edwards »

Terrapin Station wrote: April 27th, 2020, 3:25 pm
Marvin_Edwards wrote: April 27th, 2020, 2:53 pm

Okay. Then what contains it?
Yeah, the question doesn't make sense to me, either. For some reason you're thinking that it necessarily would need to have a "container," but I don't know why you'd be thinking that.

(This is yet another thing, in conjunction with his absence and your sudden appearance on the board, that makes me think that you're a slightly alternate persona for creation, by the way)
Wow! Paranoid much? I'm am precisely me. Truth is my god. For details see my About page on my blog. Some guy going by ErwinPurwinsomething on Reddit posted a link to you, so here I am.
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by evolution »

Steve3007 wrote: April 27th, 2020, 2:15 pm
Terrapin Station wrote:"Everything" may not be infinite.
I agree.
Of course it is possible that 'Everything' may not be infinite. But is it possible to explain how 'Everything' may not be infinite?

I know that it is possible to explain how 'Everything' may be infinite, but if it is possible to explain how 'Everything' may not be infinite, then I would be very interested in seeing that.
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by Steve3007 »

Marvin_Edwards wrote:Okay. That works.
Goodo.
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by Terrapin Station »

Marvin_Edwards wrote: April 27th, 2020, 3:57 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: April 27th, 2020, 3:25 pm

Yeah, the question doesn't make sense to me, either. For some reason you're thinking that it necessarily would need to have a "container," but I don't know why you'd be thinking that.

(This is yet another thing, in conjunction with his absence and your sudden appearance on the board, that makes me think that you're a slightly alternate persona for creation, by the way)
Wow! Paranoid much?
I'm not thinking that you're out to get me. :lol:
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by Marvin_Edwards »

Terrapin Station wrote: April 27th, 2020, 6:23 pm
Marvin_Edwards wrote: April 27th, 2020, 3:57 pm

Wow! Paranoid much?
I'm not thinking that you're out to get me. :lol:
Like I said, my website is in my profile, and I've always used my own name.
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by Terrapin Station »

Marvin_Edwards wrote: April 27th, 2020, 6:42 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: April 27th, 2020, 6:23 pm

I'm not thinking that you're out to get me. :lol:
Like I said, my website is in my profile, and I've always used my own name.
If you were formerly posting as creation, it's not something I'd expect you to admit. That's not how the Internet typically works (just in case you were thinking it was because you only recently started using it or something).
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by psyreporter »

psyreporter wrote: March 20th, 2020, 10:43 am
Terrapin Station wrote: March 19th, 2020, 11:07 am
psyreporter wrote: March 19th, 2020, 10:44 am
Terrapin Station wrote: March 19th, 2020, 9:37 am

I'm an atheist.
If you would argue that you are the Pope, it would make no difference when it concerns the examination of the validity of your reasoning.

Your argument could imply that you hold a belief on the basis of which you make assumptions about, or within,your reasoning.

If a Kalamist would make the exact same argument as you, would it be different?
What you're talking about didn't originate in the Kalam cosmological argument.

It would be like saying that someone supports Naziism because they buy the notion of genetics and so do Nazis.
The paper specifically addresses claim posed by the Kalam cosmological argument that time must have had a beginning and it ends with the following:
Alex Malpass / Wes Morriston / Endless and infinite wrote:There are, of course, other arguments for the finitude of the past that we have not discussed – most notably, perhaps, the one based on the supposed impossibility of ‘traversing the infinite’. We shall have to leave them for another occasion.
Your argument concerns the impossibility of ‘traversing the infinite’ and thereby it is to be assumed that when you share your argument in this topic, that it is to be considered a defense of the claim posed by the Kalam cosmological argument that time must have had a beginning.
You never answered...

With regard your defence of the Kalam cosmological argument, the argument that time necessarily must have had a beginning, you specifically argued the following:
Terrapin Station wrote: February 15th, 2020, 5:11 pm Now, if there's an infinite amount of time prior to the creation of the Earth, how does the time of the creation of the Earth arrive. For it to arrive time has to pass through an infinity of durations, right? (Again, this is going by you saying that time is duration and that time as duration occurs independently of us.) Can time pass through an infinity of durations to get to a particular later time? How?
Terrapin Station wrote: February 18th, 2020, 8:32 am You don't seem to understand my comments to creation. The whole point is that if there's an infinite amount of time prior to Tn then we can't get to Tn because you can't complete an infinity of time prior to Tn. Why not? Because infinity isn't a quantity or amount we can ever reach or complete.
Terrapin Station wrote: February 18th, 2020, 6:57 pm The problem is the "continuing flux of change." There's this state, and then it changes to that state, etc.

To get to any particular state, T, if there's an infinity of previous change states, it's not possible to arrive at T, because an infinity can't be completed to get to T.
It is clear that you considered an infinite amount relative to Tn (i.e. 6:38 p.m.) on the basis of which you concluded that time must have had a beginning.

For context:
Terrapin Station wrote: March 5th, 2020, 4:30 pmSo I'm a physicalist. I'm convinced that the mind is simply brain processes.

I don't at all buy determinism.
psyreporter wrote: November 28th, 2021, 2:18 am
  1. Do you believe in intrinsic existence without mind?
  2. Do you believe that mind has a cause within the scope of physical reality?
Yes and yes. I'm a realist and a physicalist (aka "materialist").
Terrapin Station wrote: May 4th, 2021, 6:16 pm First, why would "what causes reality to exist" be necessary for knowing whether there is reality? (Keeping in mind that by "reality" here we're referring to the objective world.)
My reply: Because without such knowledge, one can pose anything, from 'random chance' to 'illusion' to 'magic' to a simulation by aliens to the infinite monkey theorem. Such a situation does not allow one to make a claim that poses that reality is 'real'.

---

Questions:
  1. When mind originates from the physical, how can consciousness not be an illusion?
  2. According to free will sceptics it is impossible to escape determinism in a purely physical world.

    How you are able to maintain a belief in free will as being a materialist?
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by psyreporter »

Follow up of the paper Endless & infinite, published in Oxford's Mind journal in March 2021:

All the time in the world
My paper on the Kalam and successive addition argument came out in the journal Mind today. You can read it here:
https://academic.oup.com/mind/advance-a ... a2mzcxC0VY


Source: https://useofreason.wordpress.com/2021/ ... the-world/
All the time in the world wrote:Proponents of the Kalām cosmological argument (henceforth the 'Kalām'), in particular William Lane Craig (1979), seek to show that the past must have had a beginning, a moment of creation.
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by Terrapin Station »

psyreporter wrote: December 30th, 2021, 10:35 am With regard your defence of the Kalam cosmological argument, the argument that time necessarily must have had a beginning, you specifically argued the following:
Again, I didn't argue that time necessarily had a beginning. I was making conditional comments ("if" statements) about the nonintuitive nature of both possibilities (time did/didn't have a beginning).

I don't suppose I'll be able to clear that up even if I say it 10,000 times, but there it is again.
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by psyreporter »

If you consider the non-intuitive character of time not having a beginning plausible and argue on behalf of such with the cited statements then that could be considered a defence of the Kalām cosmological argument. (considering that you posted those statements in this topic, a philosophy discussion).
Terrapin Station wrote: February 15th, 2020, 5:11 pm Now, if there's an infinite amount of time prior to the creation of the Earth, how does the time of the creation of the Earth arrive. For it to arrive time has to pass through an infinity of durations, right? (Again, this is going by you saying that time is duration and that time as duration occurs independently of us.) Can time pass through an infinity of durations to get to a particular later time? How?
Terrapin Station wrote: February 18th, 2020, 8:32 am You don't seem to understand my comments to creation. The whole point is that if there's an infinite amount of time prior to Tn then we can't get to Tn because you can't complete an infinity of time prior to Tn. Why not? Because infinity isn't a quantity or amount we can ever reach or complete.
Terrapin Station wrote: February 18th, 2020, 6:57 pm The problem is the "continuing flux of change." There's this state, and then it changes to that state, etc.

To get to any particular state, T, if there's an infinity of previous change states, it's not possible to arrive at T, because an infinity can't be completed to get to T.
Would you challenge your own reasoning to undo the implication of your statements that time must have had a beginning? If not, on what basis can it be said that your statements are not a defence of the Kalām cosmological argument?
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by Bluemist »

psyreporter wrote: December 30th, 2021, 11:07 am Follow up of the paper Endless & infinite, published in Oxford's Mind journal in March 2021:
All the time in the world
https://academic.oup.com/mind/advance-a ... a2mzcxC0VY[/i]
...
All the time in the world wrote:Proponents of the Kalām cosmological argument (henceforth the 'Kalām'), in particular William Lane Craig (1979), seek to show that the past must have had a beginning, a moment of creation.
These arguments fail to resolve the ambiguity of incommensurable continuous qualities and discrete quantities. This is not different from the confusion sown by Zeno's paradoxes.

For positive integers as used in counting numbers the operation of infinite divisibility has a lower bound, as do the numbers, and there is no upper bound. Boundlessness of counting numbers says nothing about the underlying geometric line!
If you don't believe in telekinesis then raise your right hand :wink:
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by SteveKlinko »

psyreporter wrote: February 6th, 2020, 8:55 am I noticed the following article in a news feed:
Philosopher Wes Morriston and I have coauthored a paper on the Kalam cosmological argument, and it has been accepted publication in the journal Philosophical Quarterly. Once it is actually available on their page access will probably be limited, unless you have an institutional subscription. However, for now you can download it (for free) via this link.

Endless and Infinite

Abstract: It is often said that time must have a beginning because otherwise the series of past events would have the paradoxical features of an actual infinite. In the present paper, we show that, even given a dynamic theory of time, the cardinality of an endless series of events, each of which will occur, is the same as that of a beginningless series of events, each of which has occurred. Both are denumerably infinite. So if (as we believe) an endless series of events is possible, then the possibility of a beginningless series of past events should not be rejected merely on the ground that it would be an actual infinite.

Proponents of the Kalam cosmological argument seek to establish that any temporally ordered series of discrete events must have a beginning. One of their principal arguments for this conclusion is that a beginningless series of discrete events would have the paradoxical features of an actual infinite – features that could not be instantiated ‘in the real world’. In particular, they point out that an actually infinite series has a distinctive property, which we shall call the ‘Cantorian Property’. A series has the Cantorian Property when it can be placed in one-to-one correspondence with infinitely many of its proper parts, so that the whole has the ‘same number’ of elements as its parts. For instance, there are just as many natural numbers as there are even numbers, etc. But in the ‘real world’, they say, the whole must always be greater than any of its proper parts. So, in the real world (as opposed to the world of mathematics), an actually infinite series is impossible; nothing real can have the Cantorian Property (See Craig & Sinclair 2011: 110). And this is said to establish the first premise of the following argument:
  • An actual infinite cannot exist.
  • An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.
  • Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist. (Craig & Sinclair 2011: 103)
Now one might have thought that if these considerations were sufficient to show that a beginningless (and therefore infinite) series of past events is impossible, they would apply with equal force to an endless (and therefore infinite) series of future events.1 After all, one could make a seemingly symmetrical argument as follows:
  • An actual infinite cannot exist.
  • An infinite temporal progress2 of events is an actual infinite.
  • Therefore, an infinite temporal progress of events cannot exist.
If this second argument were equally as sound as the original one, this would be bad news for the proponents of the Kalam. For one thing, it is implausible to claim that the future could not be endless. For example, one can easily imagine a series of future events, each of which is causally sufficient for another. Again, one can imagine an endless series of events, each of which is fore-ordained by an all-powerful God. As far as we can see, these are genuine metaphysical possibilities.
https://useofreason.wordpress.com/2020/ ... -infinite/

The questions:

1) is it possible for true infinity to exist?
2) is it plausible to assume that time must have had a beginning?
Imagine a Square drawn on a piece of paper. Now imagine the Square shrinking smaller and smaller. It remains a Square no matter how small it shrinks. If we stop shrinking it and start magnifying it back we can bring the Square back to the original size. But now imagine the Square shrinking to Zero size. All points of the Square collapse to a single point and there is no longer a Square on the paper. The square has been transformed into a single point. The Square does not exist in the Universe anymore. We would not be able to magnify the resulting point back the the original Square. We could also shrink a Triangle in the same way and at Zero size it would be a single point just like the Square. The Square and the Triangle lose their identity when they are Zero size. They become something different. They become something less than what they were. Zero size is an unrecoverable threshold of size that changes everything.

Now imagine a Square that is the smallest Square that is not equal to Zero. This thought sends your mind into an endless recursive loop of the Square getting smaller and smaller and we soon realize that it is impossible to imagine such a smallest Square. We can say that this Square is Infinitely small, in the sense described, and it is still a Square. In general mathematics this would be called a differential Square or an infinitesimal Square, but it is not an Absolute Zero Size Square. It only approaches Zero.

Next imagine the Square that was drawn on the paper growing larger and larger. If the Square was exactly in the center of the paper the sides of the Square would eventually move off of the paper and reach the edges of the universe. It remains a Square no matter how large it grows. If we stop growing it and start shrinking it back we can bring the Square back to the original size. But now imagine the Square growing to Infinite size. The sides would all move out to infinity. No matter how far you went in the universe you would never encounter a side of the Square. The Square has effectively exited the universe. We could also grow a Triangle in the same way and at Infinite size it will no longer be found in the universe. The Square and the Triangle lose their identity when they are Infinite size. They become something different. Paradoxically they become something less than what they were. You might think that the Square and Triangle are still out there at Infinity. But there is no "there" at Infinity. The Square and Triangle are gone. If you think you can go out "there" to an edge of the Square or Triangle at Infinity then that "there" is not Infinity. Infinite size is an unrecoverable threshold of size that changes everything.

Now imagine a Square that is the largest Square that is not equal to Infinity. Similar to the differential Square, this thought sends your mind into an endless recursive loop of the Square getting larger and larger and we again soon realize that it is impossible to imagine such a largest Square. We can say that this Square is Infinitely large and is still a Square that exists in the universe. This Infinitely large Square is analogous to the Infinitely small Square. This Square is Infinitely large, in the sense described, but it is not an Absolute Infinite Size Square. It only approaches Infinity.

People usually understand that there cannot be Zero Sized objects but they still think there can be Infinite Sized Objects. These thought experiments should have shown that the problem of Infinite Sized Objects is analogous to the problem of Zero Sized Objects. Objects can approach Zero Size but can never be Zero Size without losing their identity. Similarly, Objects can approach Infinite Size but can never be Infinite Size without losing their identity.

I think that just as Infinite Squares are not possible it is probably true that any Infinite Physical quantity of anything is not possible. Just because an equation in Science goes to Infinity, it doesn't mean that the Physical quantity in the equation is able go to Infinity. I think this is a limitation of what we can do with Mathematics. Seems like a minor limitation but it has big consequences when equations in Science go to Infinity.
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Re: Endless and infinite

Post by Terrapin Station »

psyreporter wrote: December 30th, 2021, 11:40 am If you consider the non-intuitive character of time not having a beginning plausible and argue on behalf of such with the cited statements then that could be considered a defence of the Kalām cosmological argument. (considering that you posted those statements in this topic, a philosophy discussion).
So being nonintuitive, neither that time had a beginning nor that it didn't seem plausible. If they seemed plausible, then they wouldn't be nonintuitive.
Would you challenge your own reasoning to undo the implication of your statements that time must have had a beginning? If not, on what basis can it be said that your statements are not a defence of the Kalām cosmological argument?
So again, I know I'll have to repeat this 10,000 times, but I wasn't arguing that time must have had a beginning. For whatever reason, it's not possible for me to get this across to you.
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Re: Endless and infinite

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SteveKlinko wrote: December 30th, 2021, 12:01 pm I think that just as Infinite Squares are not possible it is probably true that any Infinite Physical quantity of anything is not possible. Just because an equation in Science goes to Infinity, it doesn't mean that the Physical quantity in the equation is able go to Infinity. I think this is a limitation of what we can do with Mathematics. Seems like a minor limitation but it has big consequences when equations in Science go to Infinity.
The act of resizing an object presupposes the existence of that object. When it concerns time, one is to establish whether the context in which objects are possible to be perceived, has a begin.

When it concerns this question it appears that the error is made to exclude the observer from the consideration.

A "First Cause" cannot logically exist because it implies a begin and a begin cannot precede an observer because a begin requires an observer to be possible. A begin implies the start of a pattern and a pattern is bound (signified) by observation.

The begin that is introduced by the observing mind is logically the begin of the world itself. That would imply that the Universe is infinite.

A recent study suggested that all particles in the Universe are entangled by kind which would imply that objects (i.e. 'the Universe' or 'time' as a totality) are infinite by the applicability of kind.

(2020) Is nonlocality inherent in all identical particles in the universe?
The photon emitted by the monitor screen and the photon from the distant galaxy at the depths of the universe seem to be entangled only by their identical nature. This is a great mystery that science will soon confront.
https://phys.org/news/2020-03-nonlocali ... verse.html
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