Infinte Regress Timeline...

[bilby]

Yes, there are some infinite sets with both upper and lower limits. These are not, however, relevant to the present discussion, where we are debating the existence or otherwise, of infinite regress. It doesn't matter, for our discussion, whether any given bounded period of time can be divided into an infinite number of smaller parts; the question is, is time unbounded in the past. I am ignoring the irrelevant, for the sake of simplicity; I advise you to do the same.

Time that has a beginning and an end is not infinite regress, regardless of our ability (or otherwise) to divide it infinitely, for the same reason that the arrow hits the tortoise, regardless of our ability to divide the distance it travels into an infinite number of fractional parts.

This is the biggest load of garbage that I have ever read on this website.

It's not that big, surely. I reckon you could find far bigger loads of garbage in this thread alone.

 

[ryan]

You have to make this painful don't you.

If an infinite number of units of time can pass after today, then the interval of time from 0 to infinity has the maximum element of infinity.

Why are you talking about "pass"? None of us are claiming that an infinite interval of time "passes". I dont have clue what that even means.

Normally "the passage of time" refers to the constant changes due to our speed along the time dimension.
It is a poetic description of ageing.
Not a requirement of infinite time intervals.

Then please define time.

 

[ryan]

This is the biggest load of garbage that I have ever read on this website.

It's not that big, surely. I reckon you could find far bigger loads of garbage in this thread alone.

Of course I didn't mean that.

 

[Juma]

Why are you talking about "pass"? None of us are claiming that an infinite interval of time "passes". I dont have clue what that even means.

Normally "the passage of time" refers to the constant changes due to our speed along the time dimension.
It is a poetic description of ageing.
Not a requirement of infinite time intervals.

Then please define time.

Time is the number of events.
(Normally we uses number of oscillations of the radiation from a certain transition of the state of a cesium atom but in other cases we uses days etc)

 

[bilby]

It's not that big, surely. I reckon you could find far bigger loads of garbage in this thread alone.

Of course I didn't mean that.

Then why say it?

If you say what you mean, it will be a lot easier to understand you.

 

[ryan]

Then please define time.

Time is the number of events.
(Normally we uses number of oscillations of the radiation from a certain transition of the state of a cesium atom but in other cases we uses days etc)

Well, those seem to only be measurements/units of time. Time exists where nothing moves too just like space exists where there are no objects.

I would say that time is a dimension like x, y and z dimensions of space but not exactly the same. Objects in the dimension of time seem to only exist where they weren't; they travel in one direction. An analogy is if there were only 2 spatial dimensions and time being the third, we would only be able to experience and travel up; we wouldn't be able to travel backwards or look back like we could with the other two dimensions.

- - - Updated - - -

Of course I didn't mean that.

Then why say it?

If you say what you mean, it will be a lot easier to understand you.

You convinced me that I could find worse.

 

[Juma]

Time is the number of events.
(Normally we uses number of oscillations of the radiation from a certain transition of the state of a cesium atom but in other cases we uses days etc)

Well, those seem to only be measurements/units of time. Time exists where nothing moves too just like space exists where there are no objects.

I would say that time is a dimension like x, y and z dimensions of space but not exactly the same.
Objects in the dimension of time seem to only exist where they weren't; they travel in one direction.

You asked for a definition. This a description only, not a valid definition.

 

[bleubird]

Is this really Natural Science?
Seems more like philosophy.
You know,intellectual masturbation.

 

[ryan]

Well, those seem to only be measurements/units of time. Time exists where nothing moves too just like space exists where there are no objects.

I would say that time is a dimension like x, y and z dimensions of space but not exactly the same.
Objects in the dimension of time seem to only exist where they weren't; they travel in one direction.

You asked for a definition. This a description only, not a valid definition.

Either way I still don't understand how you can claim that units of time don't pass for some frame of reference. Where does time go?

 

[Juma]

Either way I still don't understand how you can claim that units of time don't pass for some frame of reference. Where does time go?

What? I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

 

[bilby]

You asked for a definition. This a description only, not a valid definition.

Either way I still don't understand how you can claim that units of time don't pass for some frame of reference. Where does time go?

It is stored in warehouses until it is required to instantiate commodities futures.

 

[untermensche]

Yes. My argument holds for the future. If the future is infinite it is an amount of time that will never finish. If the future is infinite we will never reach an end of time in the future. It will go on and on.

And if the past is infinite it too goes on and on.

But if the amount of time in the past has no end,

If time in the past is infinite, then time had no beginning. But time has a present moment, whether finite or infinite. Not much use as time if it doesn't. And we are at the present moment. Aren't we?

The question is; Is it possible to be at a present moment if the previous moments that must come before it are without end?

We know we are continually in the present. But saying we are in the present makes infinite time in the past impossible.

It is impossible to be at a present moment if there were an amount of previous moments to go through first that never ended.

how did we reach the end of it at a present moment?

We don't reach the present moment. We are always at the present moment.

We were not always at the particular present moment we are at now. It is a different present moment from all that came before it.

Infinite time means an infinite amount of present moments. An amount of moments without end.

How can an amount of prior moments without end end at the present moment?

A present moment means all the present moments before it have finished.

OK. But that's not inconsistent with no beginning to time. Tiime has or is at a present moment whether time in the past had a beginning or not. And we, unsurprisingly, are at the present moment.

It's really that simple.

We are trapped in the present. It is all that we can experience. We are always at the present moment.

But to be at a present moment means all the previous moments are finished and gone. Because no two present moments are the same thing.

An infinite amount of previous moments can't be finished and gone. They go on forever.

The claim of infinite moments in the past is irrational.

 

[untermensche]

Any conclusions after 220 pages? (not being sarcastic).

I posted what I believe is a sound argument about 100 pages ago.

Feel free to comment.

If one claims the past is infinite. That is the same as saying the amount of time that has already passed is infinite since the past is time that has already passed.

If this can't be understood then people have trouble understanding truisms. It is simply a truism that the past is time that has already passed.

If one claims the amount of time that has already passed is infinite they are saying it is an amount that has no limit or end.

This is just another truism, a definitional truism. An infinite amount of time is an amount of time that has no end. Infinite time in the future is time without end in the future. It is an amount of time that will never finish passing.

So if one claims the amount of time in the past is infinite that means they are claiming the amount of time that has passed before any present moment is an amount of time than never finishes passing.

Their claim is absurd. An amount of time that never finishes passing can't have already passed before any present moment.

It is like claiming the amount of time in an infinite future has finished passing.

The most we could ever know about infinite time in the past is whether or not the idea is logical.

It isn't.

 

[skepticalbip]

I posted what I believe is a sound argument about 100 pages ago.

Feel free to comment.

If one claims the past is infinite. That is the same as saying the amount of time that has already passed is infinite since the past is time that has already passed.

If this can't be understood then people have trouble understanding truisms. It is simply a truism that the past is time that has already passed.

If one claims the amount of time that has already passed is infinite they are saying it is an amount that has no limit or end.

This is just another truism, a definitional truism. An infinite amount of time is an amount of time that has no end. Infinite time in the future is time without end in the future. It is an amount of time that will never finish passing.

So if one claims the amount of time in the past is infinite that means they are claiming the amount of time that has passed before any present moment is an amount of time than never finishes passing.

Their claim is absurd. An amount of time that never finishes passing can't have already passed before any present moment.

It is like claiming the amount of time in an infinite future has finished passing.

The most we could ever know about infinite time in the past is whether or not the idea is logical.

It isn't.

WTF?

Have you had a brain crash and had to reboot to two hundred pages ago?

 

[untermensche]

I posted what I believe is a sound argument about 100 pages ago.

Feel free to comment.



The most we could ever know about infinite time in the past is whether or not the idea is logical.

It isn't.

WTF?

Have you had a brain crash and had to reboot to two hundred pages ago?

If you had any substantial argument to this argument, I have not had to change for about 100 pages, you would simply post the definitive rebuttal.

This argument has not been rebutted. It has been attacked and not one argument made against it has stood up.

If there were any definitive argument everybody would simply post it at once as I am able to post this argument whenever I want.

 

[Speakpigeon]

It may be absurd depending on the point of view but it's not illogical.

It most certainly is illogical. It is logical to say that something that occurs AFTER something else is the beginning of that thing which occurred first.

It is illogical to say that the step I take after the first step is the start. The first step is the start.

No, it really depends on the point of view you decide to have and that's arbitrary. What comes first depends on the process considered. If it's time in itself, then an infinite past has no beginning and it has an end (now). If the process is counting periods of time of the past, then the starting point or beginning of your counting is were you want to have it if at all possible, for example yesterday for backward counting. In this case, the period counted will start at yesterday and will have no end.

First you have a present moment. Next that present moment becomes a past moment. The present comes BEFORE the past. It is illogical to say it is the end of the past.

The present comes before the past?! This is really absurdly ridiculous. This is the depth of ridicule.

We are talking, I said this several times already, about our ordinary, common concept of absolute time. In this respect, the term "the present" refers to a point in time that comes after, not before, any point in time which is part of what is referred to as "the past". This is not a matter of logic. It is a matter of the English language.

You can look at it this way if you like but there is no compulsion in that and it's not the ordinary notion of absolute time. If I imagine that I am counting the past backward, i.e. starting from now = 0, I will indeed begin with yesterday = 1 (or -1) and then the day before = 2 (or -2). So my counting will start now. So what? If you have a road that stops here you can say that it begins here. Big deal!

Your counting cannot start at some past moment. No past moment came before the present moment it was first.

All counting has to start at the start. And the start of both the past and the future is the present.

If I start counting the past backward from yesterday (yesterday = 1) then the day before would be 2 and the day before 3. So, I just counted the last thre days of the past starting from yesterday which is definitely in the past.

Every moment is first a real present moment then it is a conceptual past moment. A figment of the imagination.

I agree that what we mean by the term "time" likely does not exist as we think of it but this is not the point. We are discussing the concept, not any actual thing that would be time.

But your use of "growing" here is defective, as often with whatever you say in this thread. In our conventional view of time, only finite periods of time are said to grow. For example, I can be said to be growing old because I was born at a particular time so that the time I already lived is growing with time itself. Similarly, the time left to me to live is growing smaller and smaller (or diminishing) every day. But an infinite future doesn't grow smaller and smaller and an infinite past doesn't grow bigger and bigger.

Grow means here to increase in number. I agree that this is an abstraction of the word "to grow", but it means something real.

Unlike you I know English pretty well and I can reassure you that your use of "grow" here is standard English here (unbelievably!).

The positive integers increase in number without end. Loosely speaking this means the series "grows" without end. If you see the word "grow" it merely means to increase in number, or in the case of time to increase in amount or duration. I use the word to mean the same thing in this argument whenever I use it.

"Increase in number" can only mean something if there is an actual number that can increase. Finite amounts may increase but infinite amounts can't meaningfully be said to increase because infinity is not a number. So, the amount of time in an infinite past does not increase as time ellapses. The past today is no more infinite than it already was yesterday or a billion years ago.

To have the same exact amount of time you would need a definitive count, something you could not have in the case of an infinite past or an infinite future.

If both infinities are the same thing they represent the same duration of time. If infinite time in the future is a duration of time without end then an infinite past must be the same.

No, I agreed that the past and the future were the same type of infinity, not that they were of the same duration. I already told you the term "end" was just a manner of speaking. Today, the last day of the past is yesterday but if I consider counting backward then yesterday is the beginning of the period counted.

No. Again, amounts don't start or finish.

Amounts of time most certainly do. The start must be an arbitrary point of our choosing and the ending point the same, but within those arbitrary points is an amount of time.

A second is an amount of time. A day is an amount of time. Amounts of time are something arbitrary but real. And they have a start and a finish.

Yes, a second is an amount of time, because it is for example 1 second if I count in seconds. The thing is, we cannot count time except by counting periods of time. We count our lives in years, our job shifts in hours, our weeks in days, our years in days, our performances in hours, minutes, seconds, and then 10th, 100th, 1000th of a second. I took it that you knew this well, so by counting the past, I thought you understood it meant counting for example how many days or how many millenia there was in a particular period of the past. An amount in days is how many days there are in a period of time. What passes, begins and ends are the periods of time, not the amount. Amounts are abstract values. They cannot pass, begin or end.

I don't see one valid objection to anything I've said in this.

Well, first I'm spending my time trying to teach you some English, without any visible improvement in your performance, and second, what arguments and explanations I did give you seem to be beyond the little English you can grasp. It's a cause perdue but I already said that, didn't I?

I'm serious, go back home and try to learn some English. Try logic only then.
EB

 

[skepticalbip]

WTF?

Have you had a brain crash and had to reboot to two hundred pages ago?

If you had any substantial argument to this argument, I have not had to change for about 100 pages, you would simply post the definitive rebuttal.

This argument has not been rebutted. It has been attacked and not one argument made against it has stood up.

If there were any definitive argument everybody would simply post it at once as I am able to post this argument whenever I want.

Ah, so you did have a brain reboot. You really should find a backup to store shit. It makes life much easier.

An infinite amount of shit happens in an infinite amount of time. I haven't see you make an argument that refutes that.

 

[skepticalbip]

I'm serious, go back home and try to learn some English. Try logic only then.
EB

Great advice. The problem is that Unter believes that placing the phrase, "logic says" in front of an inane statement makes it logical and true or that a string of baseless assertions is a logical argument.

 

[untermensche]

It most certainly is illogical. It is logical to say that something that occurs AFTER something else is the beginning of that thing which occurred first.

It is illogical to say that the step I take after the first step is the start. The first step is the start.

No, it really depends on the point of view you decide to have and that's arbitrary. What comes first depends on the process considered. If it's time in itself, then an infinite past has no beginning and it has an end (now). If the process is counting periods of time of the past, then the starting point or beginning of your counting is were you want to have it if at all possible, for example yesterday for backward counting. In this case, the period counted will start at yesterday and will have no end.

There is nothing arbitrary about saying a moment is a present moment THEN when it is gone forever it is thought of as a past moment. You can't have any past moment that wasn't a present moment FIRST.

To come FIRST means to start. The first step you take on a walk is the start of the walk not the end of it.

We are talking, I said this several times already, about our ordinary, common concept of absolute time. In this respect, the term "the present" refers to a point in time that comes after, not before, any point in time which is part of what is referred to as "the past". This is not a matter of logic. It is a matter of the English language.

I am talking about reality, about observation, not about some imaginary convention.

A moment in time is FIRST a present moment then it is thought of as a past moment. Past moments only exist as thoughts.

If you come first you are the start. I don't care what imaginary conventions look like.

If I start counting the past backward from yesterday (yesterday = 1) then the day before would be 2 and the day before 3. So, I just counted the last thre days of the past starting from yesterday which is definitely in the past.

Did the yesterday in the past come before or after the time it was yesterday in the present? Yes, yesterday was before this present moment but it was AFTER the present moments of yesterday.

You can pretend yesterday is the start but yesterday came AFTER the reality that caused and causes us to remember yesterday.

Grow means here to increase in number. I agree that this is an abstraction of the word "to grow", but it means something real.

Unlike you I know English pretty well and I can reassure you that your use of "grow" here is standard English here (unbelievably!).

grow verb \ˈgrō\

: to become larger : to increase in size, amount, etc.

: to become better or improved in some way : to become more developed, mature, etc.

: to become larger and change from being a child to being an adult as time passes : to pass from childhood to adulthood.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grow

When people are reduced to crowing about how well they understand English it is usually because they have no real arguments.

The positive integers increase in number without end. Loosely speaking this means the series "grows" without end. If you see the word "grow" it merely means to increase in number, or in the case of time to increase in amount or duration. I use the word to mean the same thing in this argument whenever I use it.

"Increase in number" can only mean something if there is an actual number that can increase. Finite amounts may increase but infinite amounts can't meaningfully be said to increase because infinity is not a number. So, the amount of time in an infinite past does not increase as time ellapses. The past today is no more infinite than it already was yesterday or a billion years ago.

There is no such thing as an amount that is the amount of infinite time. To say "amount" of time means a finite amount of time. To say an infinite amount of time is to change the meaning of "amount". In terms of infinity and an infinity like infinite time, an infinity like the positive integers, you can't say any amount exists. Infinite time is an infinity that increases without end. It never has what we would call an "amount". If we ask what is the amount we can only say infinite, which isn't an amount, it is the concept that the amount increases without end.

To say the past is infinite is to say it is an amount that increases without end. So it is also to say that an amount of time without end has already occurred before the present moment. It is absurd.

If both infinities are the same thing they represent the same duration of time. If infinite time in the future is a duration of time without end then an infinite past must be the same.

No, I agreed that the past and the future were the same type of infinity, not that they were of the same duration. I already told you the term "end" was just a manner of speaking. Today, the last day of the past is yesterday but if I consider counting backward then yesterday is the beginning of the period counted.

As I said you can't begin counting from the past, you have to begin at the start. You have to begin at the present that occurred before it was the past. Starting a count at the past is to start at a figment of the imagination. You have to start the count of something real at something real.

And you can't claim the same kind of infinity of the same thing has a different duration. You can't logically claim it at least.

Amounts of time most certainly do. The start must be an arbitrary point of our choosing and the ending point the same, but within those arbitrary points is an amount of time.

A second is an amount of time. A day is an amount of time. Amounts of time are something arbitrary but real. And they have a start and a finish.

Yes, a second is an amount of time, because it is for example 1 second if I count in seconds. The thing is, we cannot count time except by counting periods of time. We count our lives in years, our job shifts in hours, our weeks in days, our years in days, our performances in hours, minutes, seconds, and then 10th, 100th, 1000th of a second. I took it that you knew this well, so by counting the past, I thought you understood it meant counting for example how many days or how many millenia there was in a particular period of the past. An amount in days is how many days there are in a period of time. What passes, begins and ends are the periods of time, not the amount. Amounts are abstract values. They cannot pass, begin or end.

An amount of time CAN. You are basically saying there is no difference in just saying amount and saying an amount of time. There is a difference.

It is perfectly fine to talk about an amount of time, we do it all the time and it is a concept that makes perfect sense. To most people.

Well, first I'm spending my time trying to teach you some English, without any visible improvement in your performance, and second, what arguments and explanations I did give you seem to be beyond the little English you can grasp. It's a cause perdue but I already said that, didn't I?

I'm serious, go back home and try to learn some English. Try logic only then.
EB

Not one valid objection but a real forceful claim that you have some superior grasp on English.

No valid arguments and an empty claim. That's all you have here.

 

[another1]

Oh now I get your point. I disagree, but I see where you were going with that. We may both be right. Everyone could be. Good times.