Why infinite regress is impossible?

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But it actually fails in the physical world because there are lower limits to both distance and time. Limits below which the concepts of space and time have no meaning.
 
snarflemike said:
But it actually fails in the physical world because there are lower limits to both distance and time. Limits below which the concepts of space and time have no meaning.
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I don’t see the proof that there are lower limits to time. Can you provide a proof that Planck time (Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
is anything more than a point at which gravitational effects become important. IOW, for time smaller than the Planck time, the physical effects are negligible with today’s models. As more research is done on string theory, more may become known about quantum gravity which is relevant to the question.
I would like to see your proof that there is a shortest possible time interval.
 
I’m not a physicist, and, no, I don’t have any proofs. Let me just ask, is it possible in principle to observe distances e.g. 10^1000 smaller than the Planck distance? Is it possible in principle to observe time intervals 10^1000 times shorter than the Planck time?
 
snarflemike said:
I’m not a physicist, and, no, I don’t have any proofs.
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I didn’t think so. Whether or not time is discrete is up for discussion and has not yet been settled definitively. For one thing, it becomes problematic if you agree with Lorentz invariance.
Let us suppose though that you do not accept a reverse Zeno paradox argument on the basis of discrete time. That then will present another problem as far as infinite regress is concerned, at least from the point of view of recent computer simulations based on quantum gravity. If you will read the following article:
Bojowald, Martin. “Back to the beginning of quantum spacetime.” Physics Today 66 (2013): 35.
you will see a computer simulation of a running backward in time of the evolution of the cosmos. As you approach the time of 13.7 billion years ago, the universe reaches a small, but finite size corresponding to the limit set by quantum geometry. But when the universe hits this size, it starts to expand again being pushed outward by a repulsive force. IOW, the physicists interpret this simulation as suggesting that the cosmos did not have a beginning in time, but cycles back and forth from Big Bang to Big Crunch in an infinite loop of creation and destruction.
 
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Gorgias said:
It’s not a question of whether we find the cause – it’s a question of whether the cause exists! And, we reach a paradox: if an entity has only intermediate causes, and no first cause, then it cannot be said to exist as an effect from a cause.

If the claim were merely “there are an uncountable number of intermediate causes”, then you’d be OK in your reasoning – we’d just be saying “we can’t get through all the intermediate causes in order to reach the first cause”. However, that’s not what the argument against an infinite regress is saying. Rather, it’s saying that there is no first cause , and instead, only intermediate causes. That’s what makes it untenable as a solution.
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Why it is untenable solution?
 
STT said:
Why it is untenable solution?
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Because it implies that nothing that exists has a fully-defined cause of its existence. (NB: I’m not saying “fully known cause”. The question isn’t whether the cause may be fully known, but whether there exists a fully-defined cause.)

If there’s an “infinite regress”, then by definition, the cause cannot be fully defined.
 
Gorgias said:
Because it implies that nothing that exists has a fully-defined cause of its existence. (NB: I’m not saying “fully known cause”. The question isn’t whether the cause may be fully known, but whether there exists a fully-defined cause.)

If there’s an “infinite regress”, then by definition, the cause cannot be fully defined.
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No, cause can be fully defined. Infinity has this property infinity+any number=infinity so there is not any first cause.
 
STT said:
Infinity has this property infinity+any number=infinity so there is not any first cause.
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This is where Zeno’s paradox comes into play. No matter how close you get to a “fully-defined cause”, you never quite reach it with infinite regress. That’s why it’s not explicative of existence.
 
I know this is redundant, but maybe a proof by analogy would be helpful.

I believe that there was some Native American people that believed that the whole world was on a turtle’s back. Well what was that turtle standing on? It was standing on another turtle. What about that one? Another turtle. Well what about that turtle? It’s turtles all the way down.

Well what is the last turtle standing on? Another turtle.

It sounds untenable to me.

This is analogically similar to what @wesrock said:

(I wanted to qulte him/her but am having some technical difficulties.)

No one addressed him/her, and I think someone should.
 
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It’s untenable because you have assumed what you are trying to prove: that there is a last turtle.
 
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But if there isn’t a last turtle how do the turtles stand?
 
Read it. Didn’t thoroughly analyze it, but it came across as, “let’s see what assumptions we have to make to support our conclusion, and work backwards”. There are a lot of negligibles that have to exactly cancel to give zero damping. Not convincing.
 
Do me a favor. Pick anything that must have a cause, and give me an example of the first few (last few?) causes in the infinite chain of causality. I’m not looking to pick apart your example, just to understand exactly what it is we are talking about.
 
The question at hand really is “why is there something rather than nothing?”

Catholics (and all religious people) have an answer to that question. Atheists and materialists do not.
 
snarflemike said:
Do me a favor. Pick anything that must have a cause, and give me an example of the first few (last few?) causes in the infinite chain of causality. I’m not looking to pick apart your example, just to understand exactly what it is we are talking about.
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I was arguing about an important property of infinity: infinity+any number=infinity. Think of an infinite number of dominoes which they are falling. A part of these set of dominoes are still standing and another part fell. Now, you can go back into minus infinity and see that there are dominoes which fell. You can go further and still see dominoes which fell. The question of the first cause therefore is irrelevant because you can always find a domino which was cause of fall of another domino no matter how far you go back.
 
I understand, but I want to understand in some fashion the nature of these causal dominos. So can you give me an example, any example, your choice, of a thing and the first (last) few causes in the link of causation?
 
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