PyramidHead
Contributor
untermensche:
You are stuck in a loop caused by a misuse of language. The culprit, I think, is the verb "has passed."
To say that a century has passed is to say that 100 years have gone by since a point in time 100 years ago. Every time you say x amount of time has passed, you are implicitly identifying a span of time with a beginning x amount of time ago. There is simply no other way to parse its meaning. It makes no sense to say that 10 years have passed, without implying that the point of reference to that statement is 10 years ago. When you talk about the passage of time, it is always bounded by a beginning and an end. In other words, whether you say it or not, every utterance of "has passed" really means "has passed [since... ago]."
Therefore, it's not an error of logic to say that an infinite amount of time has passed, it's an error of language. It's literally a meaningless statement; the reference point is undefined, so there is no way to interpret it. There is no coherent concept to which the proposition refers. Just as a square cannot be said to have circumference, an infinite amount of time cannot be said to pass or not.
So, the argument that time cannot extend infinitely into the past because if it did, an infinite amount of time has passed before today, contains a string of nonsense masquerading as a meaningful phrase. It would be the same as saying time cannot extend infinitely into the past because if it did, scarecrow funk explosion without falafel administrator.
By trying to shoehorn the concept of infinity into the terminology of "has passed," you are implicitly assuming that time has a beginning, because without a beginning, "has passed" is not an applicable verb. This is both a category error and a circular argument, because one of your premises depends upon your conclusion being true: the idea of an infinite amount of time passing before now is contradictory BECAUSE anything that passes before now has to have a beginning (which is what you are setting out to prove in the first place!). Good arguments do not contain the conclusion in any of their premises.
We don't have the vocabulary to accurately describe the relationship between the present moment and an infinite past, and based on that linguistic inadequacy you are drawing conclusions that are not necessarily true. If the past were truly infinite, it would simply be a brute fact that no countable amount of time, bounded by a beginning, encompasses the entire history of the universe until now. If true, it would NOT mean an infinite amount of time has passed before today, as that clause is a misuse of language and has no meaning. It would mean that "x amount of time has passed before today" is true for any conceivable positive integer value of x, no matter how high. There is nothing logically contradictory about that statement, so your claim is rebutted.
You are stuck in a loop caused by a misuse of language. The culprit, I think, is the verb "has passed."
To say that a century has passed is to say that 100 years have gone by since a point in time 100 years ago. Every time you say x amount of time has passed, you are implicitly identifying a span of time with a beginning x amount of time ago. There is simply no other way to parse its meaning. It makes no sense to say that 10 years have passed, without implying that the point of reference to that statement is 10 years ago. When you talk about the passage of time, it is always bounded by a beginning and an end. In other words, whether you say it or not, every utterance of "has passed" really means "has passed [since... ago]."
Therefore, it's not an error of logic to say that an infinite amount of time has passed, it's an error of language. It's literally a meaningless statement; the reference point is undefined, so there is no way to interpret it. There is no coherent concept to which the proposition refers. Just as a square cannot be said to have circumference, an infinite amount of time cannot be said to pass or not.
So, the argument that time cannot extend infinitely into the past because if it did, an infinite amount of time has passed before today, contains a string of nonsense masquerading as a meaningful phrase. It would be the same as saying time cannot extend infinitely into the past because if it did, scarecrow funk explosion without falafel administrator.
By trying to shoehorn the concept of infinity into the terminology of "has passed," you are implicitly assuming that time has a beginning, because without a beginning, "has passed" is not an applicable verb. This is both a category error and a circular argument, because one of your premises depends upon your conclusion being true: the idea of an infinite amount of time passing before now is contradictory BECAUSE anything that passes before now has to have a beginning (which is what you are setting out to prove in the first place!). Good arguments do not contain the conclusion in any of their premises.
We don't have the vocabulary to accurately describe the relationship between the present moment and an infinite past, and based on that linguistic inadequacy you are drawing conclusions that are not necessarily true. If the past were truly infinite, it would simply be a brute fact that no countable amount of time, bounded by a beginning, encompasses the entire history of the universe until now. If true, it would NOT mean an infinite amount of time has passed before today, as that clause is a misuse of language and has no meaning. It would mean that "x amount of time has passed before today" is true for any conceivable positive integer value of x, no matter how high. There is nothing logically contradictory about that statement, so your claim is rebutted.