Infinte Regress Timeline...

[untermensche]

We don't NEED an explanation.

But basically this argument is nothing more than you saying time is infinite in the past because you say so.

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If there is time there is change. To say there was infinite time is the same as saying there was infinite change. It is much more than saying some dimension exists.

Time and change are related, but not synonymous.

Not that it matters; infinite change is not contradictory or impossible. Even if you are correct, and infinite time is the same as infinite change, you have not demonstrated the impossibility of either.

Nonetheless, change is measured over time. At any fixed point on the time dimension, there is no change.

Time is no more change, than space is movement.

If there is time there is change. You can't say time exists without also saying change exists as well.

One does not exist without the other.

If there is movement there is space. One does not exist without the other. That doesn't mean they are the same thing.

The difference you are ignoring is important.

Time and change are related, but not synonymous.

The argument does not say they are synonymous. Your argument is a strawman argument.

The argument is that if one exists the other must exist as well.

So if I say infinite time existed I also am saying infinite change took place.

And saying change is better than saying time because change incorporates space. Change takes place in space as well as in time.

And change is not simply a dimension.

 

[bilby]

Time doesn't pass, any more than distance passes. Those miles were there before the road trip; they are there after the road trip.

To you, on the trip, they seemed to pass. But that is an illusion caused by your personal circumstances, or a metaphor, not an immutable law of nature.

You are still conflating the dimension with the things being measured.

 

[Juma]

The contradiction is in saying infinite time has already finished passing. Infinite time goes on and on. It never finishes passing. So if I say infinite time already finished passing in the past I have made a contradiction.

The negative part of the number line is infinite and ends in 0.
There is no contradiction in that.

 

[untermensche]

Time doesn't pass, any more than distance passes. Those miles were there before the road trip; they are there after the road trip.

To you, on the trip, they seemed to pass. But that is an illusion caused by your personal circumstances, or a metaphor, not an immutable law of nature.

You are still conflating the dimension with the things being measured.

Time does pass, it's a metaphor, but that isn't crucial.

You can ignore time because I have said that this is really about infinite change.

Infinite change is what occurs if there is infinite time. So if one exists so does the other.

So forget about the passing of time.

This is about the occurrence of infinite change.

If infinite change must occur before yesterday occurs then yesterday never occurs because infinite change never finishes occurring.

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The contradiction is in saying infinite time has already finished passing. Infinite time goes on and on. It never finishes passing. So if I say infinite time already finished passing in the past I have made a contradiction.

The negative part of the number line is infinite and ends in 0.
There is no contradiction in that.

It starts at negative one. It doesn't end there.

This is the crux of your problem.

 

[PyramidHead]

Wow, he really is impervious. I did my best. See you in Politics, unter.

 

[untermensche]

Wow, he really is impervious. I did my best. See you in Politics, unter.

Either you have an argument or you don't, but this is some kind of cheap shot.

I don't see skepticism of infinities as any different from skepticism in any other product of the human imagination.

 

[Juma]

Time does pass, it's a metaphor, but that isn't crucial.

You can ignore time because I have said that this is really about infinite change.

Infinite change is what occurs if there is infinite time. So if one exists so does the other.

So forget about the passing of time.

This is about the occurrence of infinite change.

If infinite change must occur before yesterday occurs then yesterday never occurs because infinite change never finishes occurring.

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The contradiction is in saying infinite time has already finished passing. Infinite time goes on and on. It never finishes passing. So if I say infinite time already finished passing in the past I have made a contradiction.

The negative part of the number line is infinite and ends in 0.
There is no contradiction in that.

It starts at negative one. It doesn't end there.

This is the crux of your problem.

The upper bound is 0. Exactly as time until today.

That is no problem.

 

[untermensche]

The upper bound is 0. Exactly as time until today.

That is no problem.

Conceptually all that has happened is a line with infinite tails at both ends is imagined and then a point is arbitrarily placed and labeled zero.

I agree it is possible to arbitrarily pick a point on an imaginary line and label it as zero.

But a moment in time is not an arbitrarily placed point. It is something that actually occurs and has an objective not subjective existence.

So for that unique objective moment in time to exist there cannot be infinite unique objective moments that occurred first because an infinite amount of moments will never occur first. It goes on and on without end.

Your error is in thinking the placing of an arbitrary point on a line is equivalent to a unique moment in time.

 

[Mageth]

Time does pass, it's a metaphor, but that isn't crucial.

You can ignore time because I have said that this is really about infinite change.

Infinite change is what occurs if there is infinite time. So if one exists so does the other.

So forget about the passing of time.

This is about the occurrence of infinite change.

If infinite change must occur before yesterday occurs then yesterday never occurs because infinite change never finishes occurring.

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The contradiction is in saying infinite time has already finished passing. Infinite time goes on and on. It never finishes passing. So if I say infinite time already finished passing in the past I have made a contradiction.

The negative part of the number line is infinite and ends in 0.
There is no contradiction in that.

It starts at negative one. It doesn't end there.

This is the crux of your problem.

You're trying to go backwards to a beginning. Time does not go backwards, and with infinite time there is no beginning. That is your problem, has been all along.

 

[Juma]

Your error is in thinking the placing of an arbitrary point on a line is equivalent to a unique moment in time.

But please. It is. Each positon in time in my reference frame can be given a time value. (Know as seconds, ever heard of them?)
Time positions in the future has positive values and time positions before the reference time is negative.

Where is the contradiction in having unbounded negative time?

 

[Mageth]

So then time didn't start. What's the problem?

Then an infinite amount of time has passed - infinity can't pass.

Other that "it's absurd!" and "it's impossible!" and the like, what do you have to back up this bald, absolute assertion?

You assert "infinity can't pass!" But we are talking about the notion of time, right? We are here, today, at this moment, right? What is time doing? Has it all passed? No, it's passing. As Steve Miller sang, "Time keeps on slippin', into the future." That's what time does. Time is active; we perceive it passing. You and Unter are trying to make it this static, bounded thing "in the past" and saying there couldn't have been an infinite amount of it. But that's just the wrong way to think about it. Time is passing. If time is infinite, unbounded in the past, then time would still be passing. And we, of course, are at this "end" of time, now, observing and measuring the passing of time.

And that's what time does whether the past is finite or infinite. Time passes. Or better yet, time is passing. Finite time passes, and infinite time passes. We, in time would of course be "here, today, at this moment." We, who hold this notion of time, would of course hold that notion, the sense of time passing, at the present, the now, this moment, whatever you want to call it. Again, and I can't stress this too much: this is true whether the past is finite or infinite. This is true whether what we perceive as time had a beginning in the past or not.

 

[untermensche]

Your error is in thinking the placing of an arbitrary point on a line is equivalent to a unique moment in time.

But please. It is. Each positon in time in my reference frame can be given a time value. (Know as seconds, ever heard of them?)
Time positions in the future has positive values and time positions before the reference time is negative.

Where is the contradiction in having unbounded negative time?

On a line every point is the exact same thing. So it is possible to pick arbitrarily one point and say it represents all points.

But you can't do that with time. Every point is unique. You can't just place some arbitrary moment in time anywhere you like as you can place a point anywhere on a line. A moment in time has only one place.

Your analogy breaks down when we try to apply it to the real world. The real world is not like a line where every point is the same thing.

In the real world for there to have been infinite time before some moment in time means there were an infinite amount of unique moments that occurred first.

But an infinite amount of unique moments can't occur first. The definition of an infinite amount of real moments is an amount that has no end. An amount of moments without end goes on and on forever. It can't have already occurred.

 

[Juma]

But please. It is. Each positon in time in my reference frame can be given a time value. (Know as seconds, ever heard of them?)
Time positions in the future has positive values and time positions before the reference time is negative.

Where is the contradiction in having unbounded negative time?

On a line every point is the exact same thing. So it is possible to pick arbitrarily one point and say it represents all points.

But you can't do that with time. Every point is unique. You can't just place some arbitrary moment in time anywhere you like as you can place a point anywhere on a line. A moment in time has only one place.

Your analogy breaks down when we try to apply it to the real world. The real world is not like a line where every point is the same thing.

In the real world for there to have been infinite time before some moment in time means there were an infinite amount of unique moments that occurred first.

But an infinite amount of unique moments can't occur first. The definition of an infinite amount of real moments is an amount that has no end. An amount of moments without end goes on and on forever. It can't have already occurred.

So you dont agree that we can measure time?

 

[untermensche]

You're trying to go backwards to a beginning. Time does not go backwards, and with infinite time there is no beginning. That is your problem, has been all along.

Looking backwards is just the acknowledgement that there was time that was going forward in the past.

What you are doing is refusing to look backward as if the past is not real.

Look towards the past and imagine somebody walking towards you that has infinite miles to walk.

When does he arrive?

 

[untermensche]

On a line every point is the exact same thing. So it is possible to pick arbitrarily one point and say it represents all points.

But you can't do that with time. Every point is unique. You can't just place some arbitrary moment in time anywhere you like as you can place a point anywhere on a line. A moment in time has only one place.

Your analogy breaks down when we try to apply it to the real world. The real world is not like a line where every point is the same thing.

In the real world for there to have been infinite time before some moment in time means there were an infinite amount of unique moments that occurred first.

But an infinite amount of unique moments can't occur first. The definition of an infinite amount of real moments is an amount that has no end. An amount of moments without end goes on and on forever. It can't have already occurred.

So you dont agree that we can measure time?

We can take arbitrary measurements. We can measure the amount of time between two arbitrary points.

But each of the arbitrary points represents a unique moment in time.

 

[Juma]

So you dont agree that we can measure time?

We can take arbitrary measurements. We can measure the amount of time between two arbitrary points.

But each of the arbitrary points represents a unique moment in time.

Thus we take one such unique moment in time and call it 0. Any of the other unique moments can be referenced by their distance from that point (in seconds).

 

[untermensche]

We can take arbitrary measurements. We can measure the amount of time between two arbitrary points.

But each of the arbitrary points represents a unique moment in time.

Thus we take one such unique moment in time and call it 0. Any of the other unique moments can be referenced by their distance from that point (in seconds).

We can arbitrarily call it zero but it is not like any other moment in time.

And to say there was an infinite amount of time before zero we have to say that an infinite number of moments in time occurred before zero.

We are still stuck with trying to explain how an infinite number of moments can occur before any zero moment?

How is it done? How do all these infinite moments finish happening?

Pointing to a line that in theory moves infinitely from an arbitrary point doesn't explain how an infinite number of moments can finish happening. It is a complete non sequitur in fact. It doesn't even look at the problem.

 

[Juma]

We are still stuck with trying to explain how an infinite number of moments can occur before any zero moment?

Because it have been doing it for ever.
It takes is for 5s worth of time to happen. So that 5s enough if time started 5s ago.
It takes a year for a year for a years worth of time to happen so if it started a year ago it has just finished.
But if time has been going on for ever then it also has had time to pass infinitely much time.

No problem.

 

[untermensche]

We are still stuck with trying to explain how an infinite number of moments can occur before any zero moment?

Because it have been doing it for ever.
It takes is for 5s worth of time to happen. So that 5s enough if time started 5s ago.
It takes a year for a year for a years worth of time to happen so if it started a year ago it has just finished.
But if time has been going on for ever then it also has had time to pass infinitely much time.

No problem.

You haven't explained how an infinite amount of moments can finish.

What you have said is: An infinite amount of moments can finish because an infinite amount of moments has always existed.

It is a non sequitur.

It doesn't explain anything. And certainly doesn't explain how an infinite amount of moments can finish.

I say there is an infinite amount of moments between two events. The first event occurs.

When does the second event occur? When does the infinite amount of moments finish? How does it finish?

 

[Juma]

What you have said is: An infinite amount of moments can finish because an infinite amount of moments has always existed.

No. Its more of a tautology: if time has been going on for ever, then it has.
It is you that keep on saying that isnt true...

It doesn't explain anything.

that is because there is nothing to explain.

You are hunting a ghost.