Alternative interpretation to that of literal-mindedness?

[Speakpigeon]

Past events -------------Present moment ------------- Future events

When looking at time from a present moment we can see that all the past events have completed. No more past events will occur.

The only events that will occur are future events.

Infinity is not compatible with completion.

Past events were not infinite since they complete at every present moment.

Some here will recognise the poster... It's not the point, though. The point is that I don't understand the idea expressed here that "Infinity is not compatible with completion". One obvious interpretation would be that "infinite" literally means "without end", which would make the infinite incompatible with "completion", making the notion of an infinite past an oxymoron because the past is in essence a completed period of time. Yet, taking seriously this interpretation would just signal you suffer from a very bad case of literal-mindedness. So, I'm looking for any alternative interpretation, if anyone can find one.

You know, just in case I missed something.

Now, I really don't want yet another endless thread on the infinite. So, please, keep close to the topic. No debate on the infinite. Just your alternative interpretation if you have one.

Thanks,
EB

 

[bilby]

Past events -------------Present moment ------------- Future events

When looking at time from a present moment we can see that all the past events have completed. No more past events will occur.

The only events that will occur are future events.

Infinity is not compatible with completion.

Past events were not infinite since they complete at every present moment.

Some here will recognise the poster... It's not the point, though. The point is that I don't understand the idea expressed here that "Infinity is not compatible with completion". One obvious interpretation would be that "infinite" literally means "without end", which would make the infinite incompatible with "completion", making the notion of an infinite past an oxymoron because the past is in essence a completed period of time. Yet, taking seriously this interpretation would just signal you suffer from a very bad case of literal-mindedness. So, I'm looking for any alternative interpretation, if anyone can find one.

You know, just in case I missed something.

Now, I really don't want yet another endless thread on the infinite. So, please, keep close to the topic. No debate on the infinite. Just your alternative interpretation if you have one.

Thanks,
EB

I think you are correct in your interpretation. The idea that an infinity can be closed at one end (or that the open end of such a time line could be in the past) appears not to have been considered. If these ideas were considered, then only severe literal-mindedness would appear to explain why these possibilities would be rejected out of hand.

 

[Copernicus]

Another way to look at temporal states is to classify them as realis (known) vs. irrealis (unknown). The notion of completeness doesn't come into it. We simply do not know what the future will be, so the future tense is used to designate an event that is unknown (irrealis) but expected to be known (realis). Other irrealis events are imagined, but not expected to become real (or become known in the future). The problem with trying to define future and past in terms of completeness is that linguistic systems usually have entirely different strategies for designating completed actions and actions that occur at points of time. You can talk about completed and incomplete actions in the past, present, or future, so it is confusing to try to define past, present, and future in terms of completeness. Linguists make a fundamental distinction between tense (temporal designation) and aspect (completeness designation). (See What do Tense and Aspect Really Mean?)

From a cross-linguistic perspective, future tenses are quite often treated differently from present and past tenses. Sometimes, the so-called future is blended in with conditionals. Hence, you often hear a foreign accent in English conditionals as a future tense: "If there is smoke, the alarm will sound" becomes "If there will be smoke, the alarm with sound". Some languages (e.g. Estonian) have no way of designating future tense with an overt suffix or auxiliary verb. English itself is sometimes said to lack a future tense, but that is a misleading claim. It is based on the fact that English verbs can use suffixes to designate past or present, but there are no suffixes for future tense. Instead, English uses the auxiliary verb "will"/"shall" to designate future tense. One could say that there is no such thing as a "future tense" but only a special form of irrealis that feels like a tense because it is thought of as becoming known or realis.

I won't go too deeply into aspect-marking on verbs, because this has already become too much of a technical discussion about grammar. It suffices to say that mastery of a foreign language can be made much more difficult for English speakers when they seek to learn a language that handles aspect in a very different way from English. For example, Russian quite often changes the shape of the main verb itself when one expresses a completed action in the future or past. There is a future auxiliary verb for incomplete future events ("budet videt' devushku" for "will be seeing a girl") and a prefix added to a present tense verb for completed ones ("uvidet devushku" for "will see/spot a girl"). So the Russian verbal system uses a future auxiliary verb for future/irrealis incomplete actions but a present tense verb form for future/irrealis completed actions.

I hope that that isn't too technical to follow. What I've been trying to do is explain why past, present, and future tenses should not be defined in terms of the concept of "completed". Tense should not be confused with aspect.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Past events -------------Present moment ------------- Future events

When looking at time from a present moment we can see that all the past events have completed. No more past events will occur.

The only events that will occur are future events.

Infinity is not compatible with completion.

Past events were not infinite since they complete at every present moment.

Some here will recognise the poster... It's not the point, though. The point is that I don't understand the idea expressed here that "Infinity is not compatible with completion". One obvious interpretation would be that "infinite" literally means "without end", which would make the infinite incompatible with "completion", making the notion of an infinite past an oxymoron because the past is in essence a completed period of time. Yet, taking seriously this interpretation would just signal you suffer from a very bad case of literal-mindedness. So, I'm looking for any alternative interpretation, if anyone can find one.

You know, just in case I missed something.

Now, I really don't want yet another endless thread on the infinite. So, please, keep close to the topic. No debate on the infinite. Just your alternative interpretation if you have one.

Thanks,
EB

This is theological baloney that goes back to Aristotle and his metaphysics. Actual infinities. You cannot get to infinity on a timeline by addition etc., because you can always add another number and still not get to infinity. Obvious if you think about it. Now imagine Zeno's paradox, we keep dividing an interval of time into smaller parts, to infinity. We never get to an end. Aristotle then notes that implies time does not work that way, we know an arrow does travel from a bow to it's target. So time must not be infinitely dividable, as per Zeno's assumption.

What is going on here is some theologians have latched on to this actual infinity nonsense to create a sort of Zeno's paradox in order to claim there must be a beginning to all that exists, because actual infinities cannot exist. William Craig Lane for example. Of course God is exempt because, special pleading. This sort of nonsense does not count for transcendent beings.

Closely related to all of this is the concept of a block Universe, where past, present and future all exist. Is God outside of time? Aristotle did not believe the future existed. (Google Aristotle, sea battle). Plus arguments about God's potential and ordained omnipotence, which was hotly debated for centuries. Leading to some bizarre metaphysical theology. Google Okham's Way Out for example.

All of this has ancient and very tangled roots meant to paper over several theological problems, God's omnipotence, evil and God's benevolence, for example. God's relation to time. God's omniscience and our free will.

And some of this gets re-purposed lo these many years later to battle modern cosmology, which seems to make God the creator an obsolete proposition. So theologians dredge up variations of ancient arguments to try to prove a naturalist Universe that has always existed is impossible. Many ripped out of their ancient contexts. One of the biggest problems in understanding all of this theology is that many of the original arguments are buried in ancient manuscripts not readily available on line, and often, not in English.

"It must be correct because Aristotle!" Uhmmmmm, maybe not.

 

[bilby]

Past events -------------Present moment ------------- Future events

When looking at time from a present moment we can see that all the past events have completed. No more past events will occur.

The only events that will occur are future events.

Infinity is not compatible with completion.

Past events were not infinite since they complete at every present moment.

Some here will recognise the poster... It's not the point, though. The point is that I don't understand the idea expressed here that "Infinity is not compatible with completion". One obvious interpretation would be that "infinite" literally means "without end", which would make the infinite incompatible with "completion", making the notion of an infinite past an oxymoron because the past is in essence a completed period of time. Yet, taking seriously this interpretation would just signal you suffer from a very bad case of literal-mindedness. So, I'm looking for any alternative interpretation, if anyone can find one.

You know, just in case I missed something.

Now, I really don't want yet another endless thread on the infinite. So, please, keep close to the topic. No debate on the infinite. Just your alternative interpretation if you have one.

Thanks,
EB

This is theological baloney that goes back to Aristotle and his metaphysics. Actual infinities. You cannot get to infinity on a timeline by addition etc., because you can always add another number and still not get to infinity. Obvious if you think about it. Now imagine Zeno's paradox, we keep dividing an interval of time into smaller parts, to infinity. We never get to an end. Aristotle then notes that implies time does not work that way, we know an arrow does travel from a bow to it's target. So time must not be infinitely dividable, as per Zeno's assumption.

What is going on here is some theologians have latched on to this actual infinity nonsense to create a sort of Zeno's paradox in order to claim there must be a beginning to all that exists, because actual infinities cannot exist. William Craig Lane for example. Of course God is exempt because, special pleading. This sort of nonsense does not count for transcendent beings.

Closely related to all of this is the concept of a block Universe, where past, present and future all exist. Is God outside of time? Aristotle did not believe the future existed. (Google Aristotle, sea battle). Plus arguments about God's potential and ordained omnipotence, which was hotly debated for centuries. Leading to some bizarre metaphysical theology. Google Okham's Way Out for example.

All of this has ancient and very tangled roots meant to paper over several theological problems, God's omnipotence, evil and God's benevolence, for example. God's relation to time. God's omniscience and our free will.

And some of this gets re-purposed lo these many years later to battle modern cosmology, which seems to make God the creator an obsolete proposition. So theologians dredge up variations of ancient arguments to try to prove a naturalist Universe that has always existed is impossible. Many ripped out of their ancient contexts. One of the biggest problems in understanding all of this theology is that many of the original arguments are buried in ancient manuscripts not readily available on line, and often, not in English.

"It must be correct because Aristotle!" Uhmmmmm, maybe not.

Yup. The 'missing link' here is that Aristotle didn't realize that it was possible for the sum of an infinite number of terms to be finite. He had the excuse that nobody else had ever realized that, or that if they had, they hadn't spread the idea very widely amongst the thinkers of the day.

Nobody has an excuse for making that error in the last three centuries, since Newton and Leibniz demonstrated how useful and practical it is to derive finite results from the sums of infinite series.

All finite numbers contain an infinitude of actual infinities.