The idea of an infinite past

[Poppa Popobawa]

. . .
To investigate the idea of a possible infinity, I understand that you do not accept numbers as qualified for
things in the real world, untermensche, and I'm happy with that, they don't qualify as real things or
real events that can show up in the real world or universe. I'd like your indulgence in considering a scenario,
which I have set up.
. . .

I don't think a person imagines the number three. They just know what the word means. Like knowing what the word rock means.
But knowing what a word means is a very complicated subject. A rock is many many things.
Anyway, "three" is an easy word to know and easy to apply to all things.
Numbers actually are not even involved, just an understanding of a word.
People used and understood quantities before they had formal symbols or even more removed formal arbitrary schemes to define those symbols.

{A rock is many many things}

Agreed. I'm using a rock as a stand-in for any small manipulable 3-dimensional "solid" object. In my scenario, the man was in the process of seeing the specific set of rocks before him, and imaging such things as their shape, size and weight, in order to set up the pile he had in mind.

What I gather from your reply is the following, untermensche.

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On day 1 . . .

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1) The man walking from the boundary, to stand on the lid of the paint can.
That qualifies as a real thing in the real world. It involves physiological events inside the man's body, to achieve his planned location and orientation in space and time.

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2) The man seeing the tree to the north.
That qualifies as a real thing in the real world. It involves physiological events inside the man's body.

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3) The man facing the north.
That qualifies as a real thing in the real world. It involves physiological events inside the man's body, including the muscular co-ordination in the action of facing the tree.

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4) The man imagining the number 3.
This imagining is of the meaning of a word. The imagining is a real thing in the real world, involving the physiology of the man's brain. The entity to which the label applies is not a real thing in the real world.

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5) The man imagining what 3 rocks will look like.
This imagining is of a concept, namely "rockness". The imagining is a real thing in the real world. The entity to which the label applies is also a real thing in the real world. The man is also imagining and visualising "threeness" ~ he is visualising a rock, a second rock and a third rock, isolated in a mentally discernable grouping. Different people may hold different things in mind when they imagine "rockness". {Note that the rocks our man would be imagining, are of the type found in the patch of land)

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6) The man gathering up 3 rocks.
That qualifies as a real thing in the real world. It qualifies as an event in history, (or will do in the future) It involves physical actions, (motion, lifting up, moving around etc.), as well as all of the physiological ones inside the man's body

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7) The man making 1 pile from the rocks.
That qualifies as a real thing in the real world. It involves collective physical real objects, a finite number, and measurable dimensions, if we wanted to measure them, (to a certain degree of accuracy) It involves physical actions, {motion, moving around, lowering into a new location in physical space etc.), as well as all of the physiological ones inside the man's body

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8) The fact that the pile of rocks is 3 high. It involves physical real objects, and a finite number.

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That qualifies as a real thing in the real world.

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On day 2, (actually the third day) . .

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9) The man turning to his right.
That qualifies as a real thing in the real world. It qualifies as an event in history, (or will do given more time elapsed)

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10) The man facing the east. That qualifies as a real thing in the real world. It is a description of the man's orientation.

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11) The man locating rocks, and making a pile of 6.
That qualifies as a real thing in the real world. It qualifies as an event in history, or will do) It involves physical real objects, and a finite number.

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12) The man using thought processes to achieve everything in the whole scenario.
The thought processes are a real thing in the real world. Thought processes are events that happen, and have happened into the past. They are part of the physical and chemical functioning in the man's brain. Exactly what goes on in the man's mind is almost impossible for external agents to know. Neurologists are learning more about what goes on in brains of people, when the people are thinking.

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I hope I've got all of that right, untermensche. If anything is erroneous, please point it out and explain it to me. There's no need to go through the whole lot, just things which you find incorrect or needing of expansion.

Thanks, Pops

 

[Poppa Popobawa]

So lets do the thought experiment. Let's assume the past was infinite.

So we start at some moment in time and move backwards. We are now covering all the time that had to pass for that moment to occur.

We move and move and never end. If the past was infinite we move backwards forever and can never stop moving.

How do we conclude that an amount of time that never ends passed before that moment in time?

An amount of time that never ends never passes. We run immediately into a huge contradiction.

If the past was infinite it is impossible for that moment in time to occur. An amount of time that never ends must pass first.

Maybe in other areas but trying to shove the imaginary concept of infinity on to the universe is folly.

I also have no problem, if space is infinite...

There is no intellectual connection that allows us to imagine this purely mathematical invention can be applied to reality.

To do it is folly.

So take an infinity from another infinity, and you still have an infinity.

Which should lead a rational person to see we are not dealing with real concepts.

{How do we conclude that an amount of time that never ends passed before that moment in time?}

By virtue of the fact that every event, every effect had to have something preceding it, for it to occur. That would mean that there was no beginning.
Is that hard to understand and accept? Sure ! No more difficult than to imagine a supernatural uncaused first cause/event combination. It seems to me that to say consideration of that the first cause is a side issue, is tantamount to saying: "Let's not discuss anything which might show me wrong".

{An amount of time that never ends never passes}

It would just be a brute fact, which might defy intuition, but many scientific facts seem to defy intuition. Defying intuition is not necessarily a barrier to something being real and true.

By the way, I'd say: "Time having no beginning", in preference to: {an amount of time that never ends}. And I thought we'd agreed that infinity is not an amount ? ? ?

{There is no intellectual connection that allows us to imagine this purely mathematical invention can be applied to reality}

That is wrong. Theoretical physicists do that very thing. When Einstein came up with his theories of relativity it was entirely mathematical, and theoretical, but was also highly logical, based on his understanding of physics. It was later on that his mathematical models of reality were demonstrated to be true, accurate and real, and to supplant some of previously held ideas. So: There can be intellectual connection that allows us to imagine purely mathematical invention applies to reality. That means that to say that: there is no intellectual connection that allows us to imagine a purely mathematical invention can be applied to reality would be an error. Theoretical physics has been investigated and shown to hold true in more cases than one. Of course, investigation, hypothesis, testing and so on are necessary to check all of that out.

Some things are just out of reach for investigation, scientific or otherwise. That too, is a brute fact. You can't investigate what your ancestor of 100,000 years ago was like, but you had one. How life formed on earth is something we can't observe check or reproduce. All we can do is make models of how things might have been,and see if they hold up to reason logic, and the evidence we have. You disagree that infinite time-past can make any sense. Other people don't agree, and I'm pretty sure there are those qualified to make pronouncements on the matter, who are in a much better position scientifically, mathematically, evidentially and logically, than you or I, untermensche. That doesn't necessarily make them right, but I think it gives them credibility for stating what might be, and why, and how it fits into all knowledge in a coherent manner.

Cheers, Pops

 

[steve_bank]

untermensche

Willy nilly, no way. Maybe herky jerky but not willy nilly.

Infine is an abstraction created by our brains.

If you can not or will not see the simple analogy of the number line to space, well that's philosophy for you.

A meter is in the abstract an infinite number of points bounded by two finite end points.

In geometry a point is defined as an infinitesimal massless object, and a line comprised of an infinite number of points. Geometry has many practical uses applied to reality. Infinity refers to uncountable variables. Space is measured in meters. In infinite space measured in meters, space is not countable or quantifiable. It is simple.

We observe change and quantify it in terms of meters and seconds. To say time can run backwards is to say the universe can reverse causal motions. Regardless of whether or not you agree, do you understand what I am saying?
All human science and math are human abstractions used to describe reality, they are not reality. The difference between science and metaphysics is science is based on unambiguous definitions like the meter and second. Science is metaphysics with objective physical reference points. Infinity refers to mathematical variables.

Any purely metaphysical definition of infinity is inadequate. If you say time runs backwards of forward you first have to define what you mean by time. It is being used without defining what it is. To me to say time runs forward has no meaning. In objective time, events are measured in seconds from a reference point, like a foot race. Time can be negative or positive depending on relative events, but time goes neither forward nor backwards.

 

[untermensche]

I'm using a rock as a stand-in for any small manipulable 3-dimensional "solid" object. In my scenario, the man was in the process of seeing the specific set of rocks before him, and imaging such things as their shape, size and weight, in order to set up the pile he had in mind.

What is going on is an abstraction.

The person is ignoring all the ways the objects differ and only focusing on some arbitrary similarity.

In the real world this abstraction is necessary to have a quantity.

In the imaginary world of numbers where every three is the same thing the abstraction is built in. It is a defining aspect of the number.

The man seeing the tree to the north.

The man's consciousness is experiencing a representation of a tree.

North if it is a direction a person can follow must be a positive amount of degrees. A person cannot follow a line of zero degrees width.

The man imagining what 3 rocks will look like

The man deciding which arbitrary qualities it will call rock and which it won't.

Nothing about the rock forces it to be classified with another. It is as or more different from another rock as it is similar.

 

[untermensche]

{How do we conclude that an amount of time that never ends passed before that moment in time?}

By virtue of the fact that every event, every effect had to have something preceding it, for it to occur.

You cannot speak about every event unless you have knowledge of every event.

That is not a fact. It is a hypothesis.

It is something to test not a fact that tells us about the past.

{An amount of time that never ends never passes}

It would just be a brute fact, which might defy intuition, but many scientific facts seem to defy intuition. Defying intuition is not necessarily a barrier to something being real and true.

It is simply a very clear contradiction. Something a rational mind has no problem with.

How can an amount of time that never ends, our imaginary trip into an infinite past tells us this, end at every present moment?

- - - Updated - - -

A meter is in the abstract an infinite number of points bounded by two finite end points.

No real meter is made of points.

Points are not real.

Lines are not real.

Infinity is not real.

 

[Poppa Popobawa]

You cannot speak about every event unless you have knowledge of every event.

That is not a fact. It is a hypothesis.

It is something to test not a fact that tells us about the past.

{An amount of time that never ends never passes}



It is simply a very clear contradiction. Something a rational mind has no problem with.

How can an amount of time that never ends, our imaginary trip into an infinite past tells us this, end at every present moment?

{That is not a fact. It is a hypothesis}.

That's what I'm doing - hypothesising. And I'm not bringing in imagined, undefined, undefinable, supernatural, magical first causes or events. One might hypothesise those if one wishes, but I don't.

{An amount of time that never ends never passes}

I find that confusing. We are talking about time that has no beginning, not time that has no end. By beginning, I mean towards the past, in time as we experience it here on earth. Who knows if time into the future can also be infinite. If it could, then there'd be no beginning and no end. That doesn't mean that I can't be here as it unfolds in the present. I've agreed that time so far, has a terminal point at the present, (locally).

{. . . time that never ends never passes} ~ I find that the statement here is just an assertion. Insult my intellect if you wish, but there it is, (my position).

Time with no beginning is difficult to comprehend, but we can imagine any specific time in the past, and see that it can proceed until the current present, (locally ie. local present). There is only a problem if you demand that time must have a beginning, but that just begs the question at hand.

S'later, Pops.

 

[Poppa Popobawa]

You cannot speak about every event unless you have knowledge of every event.

Sorry, I forgot to comment on this point. In physics, we describe the way things are, and in doing so, we look to events, effects and physical, (including chemical), phenomena being caused by something. We expect events and effects and observable phenomena to have causes. It seems to be a rule, and it tends to hold true. I see no reason to look at and examine all events in the past, to be comfortable that all events past will be like all events present, and all events known within recorded history. It is a reasonable assumption we make all of the time - the nature of reality did not magically change some time in the past. We use the assumption in weather forecasting. But I see no reason to abandon the principle, no matter how far into the past one might imagine.

One might ask if philosophically, if it could be the case that the rule may not always have applied. I don't know, and neither does anyone else. However, it seems to be a reasonable assumption that there is no reason why the nature of the past would have been different to what we now observe, and something which one might assert needs alteration, unless one has a dogmatic position on time-past.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Hey, you're not even trying!

There is nothing to argue against but sheer nonsense.

Magical claims that infinite series somehow complete when we call them a set.

It is a complete waste of my time.

That's a positive claim.

It is a truism. It is not in need of defense.

Any positive integer you can produce I can add any other positive integer to it and create a larger positive integer.

What exactly would stop me?

Which integer do you think it couldn't be done with?

So, your position boils down to the following, which I put it in good English, just for relief.

You seem to understand at least the conventional concept of infinity, i.e. a series without a last term. You claim an actual infinity couldn't exist at all. You admit you can't argue that the concept of infinity is somehow illogical. Your only argument to support your claim is that no human being could realistically be said to be capable of observing the end of such an infinite series.

There seems to be two necessary premises to your argument. Your first premise seems to be that we can't say that something is possible until we have some positive observation somehow suggesting as much. Personally, I reject this notion of possibility as too restrictive and not the one most people use. Instead, my claim that infinities are possible is based on the idea that something is possible if it doesn't contradict anything we already know, or think we know, of reality. According to that notion of possibility, infinities are clearly possible. And you certainly haven't been able to prove otherwise. In fact, you haven't even tried. So, basically, you just opted to ignore the fact that I was using a different notion of possibility. So, this isn't a real discussion. It's just you making unsupported claim after unsupported claim and ignoring what other people say.

Your second premise is that an infinite past is a series. As such, we would be able to start counting moments in the past, going backward and starting from the present moment, but we wouldn't be able to finish counting an actual infinity of moments. I also reject this premise. I don't see why we would have to take the past as a series. There's no good reason for that and you certainly haven't been able to prove we should do that. My notion of an infinite past is that of a set. Sets don't have necessary beginnings or ends. So, your argument about "starting to count" becomes irrelevant. So you want to stick to your unsupported notion of the past as a series even though my claim of the possibility of an infinite past is based on the notion of the past as a set of ordered moments. No series there, sorry. So, again, you opt to ignore what is my actual claim, to set-up instead a convenient strawman argument. No real debate here. Just you consistently ignoring the terms of the debate.

So your argument that we can't count infinities is wrong both because it's obviously not true that we would have to count them in order that they could exist, and second, because we don't know of anything about the real world that would contradict the possibility of infinities, including the fact that we don't know that it's true that we cannot count any infinity. So, you assume a lot, and you've been unable to support any of your assumptions.

You are also repeating yourself. You're unable to move beyond the argument I articulated for you here. You've basically admitted you can't do any better. So, there's no point to continuing any conversation with you. Case closed.
EB

 

[untermensche]

{That is not a fact. It is a hypothesis}.

That's what I'm doing - hypothesising. And I'm not bringing in imagined, undefined, undefinable, supernatural, magical first causes or events. One might hypothesise those if one wishes, but I don't.

Infinity is an imaginary concept. You certainly are bringing that in. Trying to force it in some back door.

And there is nothing that allows it. Nothing that prepares it's way. It is just shoved in.

First humans invent this concept called infinity and then some think they can apply it to reality for some reason.

The choice is not between infinity and magic. How time began is an unknown, not magic. Unknowns are allowed.

Ultimately there is no choice. Infinity is not possible.


{An amount of time that never ends never passes}

I find that confusing. We are talking about time that has no beginning, not time that has no end. By beginning, I mean towards the past, in time as we experience it here on earth. Who knows if time into the future can also be infinite. If it could, then there'd be no beginning and no end. That doesn't mean that I can't be here as it unfolds in the present. I've agreed that time so far, has a terminal point at the present, (locally).

How quickly you forget our little thought experiment.

When we actually look at this idea of "no beginning", when we do something like imagining moving backwards in time from some point in time, we see time without beginning is time without end.

No difference in terms of the amount of time between time that never begins and time that never ends.

So if time that never ends cannot have a finish to it neither can time without beginning, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.

{. . . time that never ends never passes}

~ I find that the statement here is just an assertion. Insult my intellect if you wish, but there it is, (my position).

It is a simple truism. Unavoidable.

If you have time that never ends it cannot all pass. It means time that goes on and on and never completely passes. Time that never completes. As all infinities never complete.

Time with no beginning is difficult to comprehend

For some.

It is just an amount of time that can never pass.

It is an imaginary amount of time that could never have passed.

It mans that no matter how much time has passed before some moment in time infinite time must still pass to get to that point. No moment in time is possible with such an absurd idea.

 

[untermensche]

You seem to understand at least the conventional concept of infinity, i.e. a series without a last term.

An infinite series is a series that never is complete. No magic can make it become a series that completes. Calling it a set is not a magic spell that somehow makes it a series that completes.

You admit you can't argue that the concept of infinity is somehow illogical.

I admit to no such thing.

I clearly say that the mere attempt to apply infinity to reality is illogical. There is no logic that prepares the way.

And when you do it you immediately run into absurdities.

The whole exercise is pure folly.

I don't see why we would have to take the past as a series.

What we call "time" is really change. We say time passed but what happened was events, changes took place. An amount of time is really an amount of change. Time is like "width", a dimension that cannot be seen.

The past is a series of changes, a series of events that have already taken place.

We cannot take it any other way then how it is.

It is up to those who claim a real completed infinity is possible to demonstrate it.

Something that will never happen.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I'm talking of the concept of an infinite past as a set as a possible reality in that it's not contradicted by anything we think we know about the physical world.

You have offered no convincing argument against that. Case closed
EB

 

[untermensche]

Things can be excluded because they make no rational sense.

An infinite past is an absurd situation where no event is possible since an infinite amount of events must occur before all events.

So there is no end to the amount of events that must occur before an event can occur. In other words no event can occur.

Total absurdity.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I understand what you mean. I really do. But you're making one assumption you don't have to make: that time is exactly as our conventional view of time is.

Maybe in this case it's hard to understand and even possibly impossible. But we don't actually know that time is like that.

So, again, an infinite past is possible because there's nothing we actually know that would be in contradiction with the concept of it.

Even if we assume a beginning, we can still conceive of an infinite past.

It's clear we've been through all you had to say. You're not very good at explaining yourself but we took the time to do it. Now it's over. Case closed. Get over it.
EB

 

[untermensche]

time is exactly as our conventional view of time is.

We have no more or less view of time than we do of width.

Time is a dimension, a freedom, not an object to examine.

What time allows is change and when we say time occurred that is shorthand for saying change occurred. The position of the second hand moved.

And change in this universe is linear and directional.

The paper burns and cannot unburn.

Anybody who claims the paper can unburn needs to prove it not merely claim it.

 

[Underseer]

Is it just me, or is Untermensche making the same argument against infinity as William Lane Craig? He hasn't done a very good job of arguing that case either.

 

[untermensche]

Is it just me, or is Untermensche making the same argument against infinity as William Lane Craig? He hasn't done a very good job of arguing that case either.

That is one way to avoid having to actually deal with the argument. There is no bearded man that collects human souls at the end of my argument.

Is a real completed infinity possible?

If you think so prove the positive claim.

 

[Phil Scott]

People used and understood quantities before they had formal symbols or even more removed formal arbitrary schemes to define those symbols.

People drank water before they knew of hydrogen and oxygen. That doesn't mean we can ignore chemistry in trying to understand what water is.

One thing that humans have only been doing fairly recently in human history is doing proofs with numbers, and for that, you need to be able to do more than just count. You need something equivalent to the Peano axioms, or, if you're a classical Greek without axioms for numbers, some scheme that lets you prove stuff about numbers by identifying them with geometrical figures, for which you do have axioms.

The idea that numbers are characterised by the Peano axioms is very modern, but then so is the idea that water is H2O. Neither idea is undermined by the ignorance of people counting sheep or washing clothes thousands of years ago.

Another way I would characterise numbers, which I take to be quite insightful, is that they are the simplest recursive structure you can come up with, and I'm not the first person to suggest that recursion is a principle of human thought. But then, perhaps all such people should be ignored for being too modern. No better excuse not to learn stuff, eh, untermensche? The true enlightened philosopher just needs to type a few sentences into textboxes on internet fora and declare "absurd" from time-to-time.

 

[Speakpigeon]

The paper burns and cannot unburn.

Yeah, I guess you're some special kind of paper yourself, you can't unwrong yourself.
EB

 

[DBT]

If infinity exists it is, by self definition, complete. There is no reason why infinity cannot exist. That it appears unlikely is not a reason. Saying infinity cannot be 'completed' is not a reason, it is only your claim. A claim you cannot support.

The question is whether a completed real infinity is possible. Those that claim it is possible have work to do.

Simply claiming a real completed infinity could possibly exist is not a rational claim. It is a totally worthless irrational claim.

Show me how a real completed infinity could possibly exist.

I gave an example. If our universe is but a part of an infinite/eternal multiverse in which universes come and go forever, perhaps by means of an infinite quantum field (fluctuations), then this multiverse in which our 'universe' resides is indeed a completed infinity and always was.....being eternal and infinite by definition.

 

[untermensche]

People used and understood quantities before they had formal symbols or even more removed formal arbitrary schemes to define those symbols.

People drank water before they knew of hydrogen and oxygen. That doesn't mean we can ignore chemistry in trying to understand what water is.

Oxygen and hydrogen were discovered.

And they are not defined by humans.

They are defined by their properties that humans partially understand.

Your schemes are totally arbitrary.

Whole new schemes could be invented tomorrow and nothing about numbers would change.