Checkmate in 3 moves

[ALotLessThumb]

Secondly; It is logically impossible to add up to an infinite quantity, because there is no greatest number which transcends a finite quantity…

I apologize for cutting this down, I wished to focus on the gist of the whole post.

It has been shown logically over the last two centuries that there are actual infinite sets, and some of them can be counted.

 

[shoe]

No, it is saying the exact opposite of that: If there is no point in time in which the universe does not exist then it cannot “begin” as that implies a point of not existing, there’s no point before that first one to come from to be called a beginning.

Since its an endpoint in/of both time and space, it cannot have any temporal causality as perceived from within spacetime, itelf.

Are you familiar with the analogy that shows that the quesion is asking ‘what’s north of the north pole?’?

The explanation is that it is uncaused. There was never nothing. That the Universe just is.

But if the universe “just is,” then that would indicate that the universe is infinite in age. But if the universe is infinite in age, then that would make energy infinite as well, which seems to defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics that says the universe is now running out of available energy; otherwise, if the universe had always existed, then the universe would have passed its energy expiration date a long time ago and it would be dead already. And also, to arrive at the present moment in an infinite universe, an infinite amount of time would need to be traversed; however, to traverse an infinite about of time to arrive at the present moment is not possible. I believe that the most logical inferences from all the scientific evidence available would indicate that the universe had a beginning, which, of course, would also indicate the universe had a Beginner.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

I apologize for cutting this down, I wished to focus on the gist of the whole post.

It has been shown logically over the last two centuries that there are actual infinite sets, and some of them can be counted.

Let me ask you a question. And i want you to answer honestly, otherwise i am not going to reply to you anymore.

Have you been shown that infinite sets can have a distinct ontological physical reality? Or rather have you been shown mathematical concepts (in the subject of pure mathematics) which really have nothing to do with the nature of ontological physical quantities.

 

[Perplexity]

I apologize for cutting this down, I wished to focus on the gist of the whole post.

It has been shown logically over the last two centuries that there are actual infinite sets, and some of them can be counted.

I’ve already tried this route brah, didn’t seem to get anywhere

Edit**

Cf. all this talk of abstracta being shown to be physical?

 

[MindOverMatter2]

I’ve already tried this route brah, didn’t seem to get anywhere

Edit**

Cf. all this talk of abstracta being shown to be physical?

We are not dealing with imaginary distinctions, but rather this is about ontological distinctions.

So you are correct. Pure mathematics, is not applied mathematics, and it alone is not going to shed light on what is physically possible or impossible. That is a question of metaphysics, not mathematics or science.

 

[Perplexity]

We are not dealing with imaginary distinctions, but rather this is about ontological distinctions.

So you are correct. Pure mathematics, is not applied mathematics, and it alone is not going to shed light on what is physically possible or impossible. That is a question of metaphysics, not mathematics or science.

Your point here seems analogous to saying “but those numbers don’t physically exist” in response to me counting pencils on a desk. Of course they don’t (well…my utterances do, but the numbers they exemplify don’t), but who said they did?

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Your point here seems analogous to saying “but those numbers don’t physically exist” in response to me counting pencils on a desk. Of course they don’t (well…my utterances do, but the numbers they exemplify don’t), but who said they did?

The pencil on the desk evidently have a real physical ontological quantity. Infinite sets do not.

 

[Perplexity]

The pencil on the desk evidently have a real physical ontological quantity. Infinite sets do not.

Right, because sets are mathematical objects. But, pointing this out in relation to an infinite amount of pencils is just as odd as pointing out that the number of a finite amount of pencils isn’t physical. e.g., No one means the number 5 is physical when they count 5 objects, say pencils.

 

[CatSci]

But if the universe “just is,” then that would indicate that the universe is infinite in age.

Not necessarily.

So, the Universe is a 4 dimensional manifold:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold

And it has some particular “shape”… it is finite, yet unbounded. (Much like the surface of a sphere is. A sphere is finite, but if you’re on the surface, you can just keep on going around and around forever.)

It has existed for a finite amount of time, but since we’re talking about time, itself, then describing its earliest parts as a “beginning” loses sense.

I believe that the most logical inferences from all the scientific evidence available would indicate that the universe had a beginning, which, of course, would also indicate the universe had a Beginner.

What causes the North Pole to begin to exist at the particular place it is on the globe? Isn’t that a nonsensical question? The north pole is just there, for no particular reason (disregarding the magnetic aspect of the poles). You wouldn’t say the Earth “begins to exist” at that point any more than it does at any other point. That’s how the earliest parts of the Universe are. Its just another point on the 4D manifold.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Right, because sets are mathematical objects. But, pointing this out in relation to an infinite amount of pencils is just as odd as pointing out that the number of a finite amount of pencils isn’t physical. e.g., No one means the number 5 is physical when they count 5 objects, say pencils.

Your’re the king straw-men.

 

[CatSci]

There is a point where change begins, insofar as the fact that there is no preceding events of changing things. In other-words where there is a finite amount of change it can be rationally inferred that it has a beginning.

No, not when we’re talking about time itself. Time can’t begin to begin, because that would require a point in time where time didn’t exist, and that’s contradictory.

Its irrelevant that there is not a time when time has not existed, since all that really means is that there was nothing physical before the point of change.

There isn’t even a “before” in which to have the lack of something physical because there is not time in which to have a before.

1. Out of nothing comes nothing.

1. Therefore out of non-change comes non-change.

3 It therefore follows that a thing cannot begin to change by itself.

Its not difficult to understand what that means.

I understand what it means, I’m just telling you why its wrong.

There is no point in time where there is nothing. At every point in time there is something. You have a false premise there.

1. The sufficient cause of change is necessarily timeless and is therefore not a part of the physical universe.

Which means it never exists… or it exists nowhere…

 

[ALotLessThumb]

If you stick to only natural numbers to correspond to objects, I don’t see how you can have anything BUT an immanent universe.

No transcendence= a pantheistic deity at most, which is not the Christian deity in any sense, as far as I can understand.

But if you want to have correspondence, I suggest you check out tempered tunings on stringed instruments starting in 15th century which were based on irrational numbers. Then there is now about 4 centuries worth of calculus, with real world applications (like flight) that show a lot of correspondence to physics, just not in the same way as you count pencils…

 

[ALotLessThumb]

Not necessarily.

So, the Universe is a 4 dimensional manifold:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold

And it has some particular “shape”… it is finite, yet unbounded. (Much like the surface of a sphere is. A sphere is finite, but if you’re on the surface, you can just keep on going around and around forever.)

It has existed for a finite amount of time, but since we’re talking about time, itself, then describing its earliest parts as a “beginning” loses sense.

What causes the North Pole to begin to exist at the particular place it is on the globe? Isn’t that a nonsensical question? The north pole is just there, for no particular reason (disregarding the magnetic aspect of the poles). You wouldn’t say the Earth “begins to exist” at that point any more than it does at any other point. That’s how the earliest parts of the Universe are. Its just another point on the 4D manifold.

What you are explaining is, I believe, called aperion, “an unboundness.”

Like I posted on the last page, I can’t see how time isn’t epiphenomenonal to motion, so referencing an immortal, eternal or everlasting present has no equivalence or analogy in reality outside of analytic language (and following current linguistic insights) in the ability of man to speak with embedded recursion in his language. Otherwise, there is no synthetic accounts.

All Indo-European languages have a complex subject-predicate relation not found in other languages; it shouldn’t be a shock that this feature curiously lead to pretty advanced philosophies with similar conclusions (Both the axial age Socrates and Siddhartha come to pretty similar conclusions when confronted with their cultures.)

That relationship adds a dimension of speaking about duration in…for lack of a better word…geometric terms. You don’t find this feature in, say Hebrew. An act either continues or it does not. This “simpler” grammar can still be seen in verb conjugations in Indo-European languages but structures have changed enough where we use recursion to give a spatial dimension to every action, presupposing the enclosed and finite cosmos that comes along with it. There is a decent, if a bit unsystematic, book on this: “Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek” by Thorleif Boman.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

No, not when we’re talking about time itself. Time can’t begin to begin, because that would require a point in time where time didn’t exist, and that’s contradictory.

If time is finite, then it necessarily has a beginning. Its irrelevant that there isn’t a point where time does not exist. There is however a distinct physical point which represents the first part of motion.

There isn’t even a “before” in which to have the lack of something physical because there is not time in which to have a before,

All that means is that there is no “physical before” the point in question. “Nothing” is not a physical quantity. It does not change the fact that time is finite. There is a finite quantity of physical change.

There is no getting around that fact.

I understand what it means, I’m just telling you why its wrong.

No. You are telling me that because i cannot speak of a before time, i cannot say that time is finite, which is evidently false. Its true that i cannot speak of a “physical before” time, but that doesn’t mean i cannot speak of time as being a finite quantity of “evolving events” that require a cause. The fact of the matter is, time is by definition a finite quantity of evolving events, as apposed to a static being that just exists. So long as there is change (an actualization of possibility/potentiality), we have to account for it by positing some kind of cause (non-physical if necessary).

Your argument gives a deadly blow to the idea that the universe has a physical cause. But what you have said does not effect my particular argument at all, because all you are saying is that you cannot get physically past the point from which change originates, which is only to be expected if change has a first part of motion. That there is no physics before any particular point, only verifies my argument, since it does not change the fact that anything that is finite in its process is necessarily contingent upon a cause for that process; and this is to say anything which has a point which represents the beginning of a process requires a sufficient cause for the existence of that process because you cannot get change or potentiality out of nothing.

1. There is a point that has no before. There is nothing physical before it.
2. You cannot get something out of nothing and therefore every effect requires a cause.
3. Change is an effect. It is therefore necessarily an actualization of potentiality or possibility.
4. Since there is nothing physical before time, the cause cannot be physical.

Conclusion: There-is a non-physical cause, and by being non-physical, it is possible (and is the only possibility) for that cause to exist simultaneously with the effect of time.

There doesn’t have to be a physical before, and the fact that there isn’t does not change the fact that time is an effect which requires a cause.

Your argument amounts to saying that because we can say that there is no physical before time, that therefore we can just say that time exists for no reason; that it is an effect without a cause. But, logically speaking it doesn’t work like that because you cannot get potential out of nothing. Therefore you cannot get change out of nothing. You would have to contradict that fact in-order to say that the process of time simply existed by itself according to itself.

There is no point in time where there is nothing.

Its irrelevant. Change cannot begin to exist from nothing. If change is finite then it requires a cause that is not physical.

.

 

[vz71]

e.g., No one means the number 5 is physical when they count 5 objects, say pencils.

So what physical entity are people referencing when they count infinite?

 

[Perplexity]

So what physical entity are people referencing when they count infinite?

Well, ‘counting’ means something different a lot of the times when you get into infinite sets. But, the physical members being counted could be anything…really. Let’s take gunk as an example. Gunk is a technical notion in mereology. It’s controversial whether there is any most fundamental physical stuff out of which all material bodies are composed of. That is, it’s possible every material thing can be broken into further material things, and so on forever.

Let’s take the set of all material things. Let’s just suppose that material reality is gunky. Then, this set has an infinite amount of members, and each member is a physical entity.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

That is, it’s possible every material thing can be broken into further material things, and so on forever.

That is not what science teaches. It teaches that quantities can be broken down in to smaller quantities in terms of form and function. But the idea that there is an actual infinite of smallness (the idea that there is no smallest physical quantity), or that the physical size of an object is forever relative to other objects, is something that you have added, and has no rational basis in either science or logic, anymore than saying that - o is a physical ontological quantity.

 

[Perplexity]

That is not what science teaches. It teaches that quantities can be broken down in to smaller quantities. But the idea that there is actual infinite of smallness (the idea that there is no smallest physical quantity), and that the physical size of an object is forever relative to other objects, is something that you have added, and has no rational basis in either science or logic, anymore than saying that - o is a physical ontological quantity.

Where did I say this is what science teaches? Where did I say the physical size of an object is forever relative to other objects?

If your problem is with gunk, I’d say I’m in far better company than you are.

 

[ALotLessThumb]

Well, ‘counting’ means something different a lot of the times when you get into infinite sets. But, the physical members being counted could be anything…really. Let’s take gunk as an example. Gunk is a technical notion in mereology. It’s controversial whether there is any most fundamental physical stuff out of which all material bodies are composed of. That is, it’s possible every material thing can be broken into further material things, and so on forever.

Let’s take the set of all material things. Let’s just suppose that material reality is gunky. Then, this set has an infinite amount of members, and each member is a physical entity.

But in order to create a set to “count”- you have to accept that at least one of your axioms is unprovable.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Where did I say this is what science teaches? Where did I say the physical size of an object is forever relative to other objects?

That is, it’s possible every material thing can be broken into further material things, and so on forever.