Clizby Wampuscat
Well-Known Member
I have heard this but it does not make sense to me. There are infinite distances between 0 and 1 foot yet we can step the entire one foot in one step.
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Infinite Regress
- Thread starter Clizby Wampuscat
- Start date
I think what you mean is that a foot can be infinitely divided into smaller segments. Which is true. But a foot is a finite length. So you can actually reach the end of it. You can never reach the end of a ruler of infinite length.
Tinker Grey
Wanderer
I'd say an infinite regress is not impossible. I defend against the idea taking an "infinite time to reach the preset so we'd never reach now" this way: I did not, in fact, traverse an infinite amount of time to get here even if there were an infinite number of event preceding now. I came into the universe at a time and I will exit at a time. No infinite traversal required.
When people thought the universe was infinite in space, no one imagined that one had to traverse that infinite space to reach Earth. You were born here. Likewise, you were born now-ish.
If anything is traversing, it may be protons (and other massless particles). But they travel at the speed of light and thus don't experience time at all. I believe it was Feynman that proposed the thought experiment that there is just one electron; it's just everywhere, every-time.
ETA: Likewise the universe is time. It does no traversing.
gnostic
The Lost One
As far as we know, infinite regress is merely a “what-if” philosophical conjecture that have no basis in reality.
No one have yet show evidence infinite regress is likely.
Brian2
Veteran Member
It may not be needed.
I was taking 'infinite regress' to mean the infinite series of cause and effect events going into the past.
But since I see it does not have to mean that, then.....................
Tinker Grey
Wanderer
Really? This happened and prior to that something happened and prior to that something happened and prior to that ...
Seems pretty likely. The only situation in which it becomes impossible is when there is a god and that god is the "first cause". Ask yourself, when in that god's infinite existence did it decide to create a universe. How much infinite god-time elapsed before the universe was created?
So, while inductive, it sure seems that an infinite regress is likely.
Brian2
Veteran Member
It looks like you are imagining what God did and how and assuming it needed time as we know it.
Just looking at linear time does bring me to the conclusion that we could not be at this point in time yet if time has been infinite into the past.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
You are assuming space is infinitely divisible. If space is granular, ie there is a minimum quantum of space (or time) then it is not infinitely divisible.
The plurality of space and motion was addressed by Zeno of Elia in the 5th Century BC. His paradox of the arrow asserts that an arrow fired at a target can never reach that target, if it has to halve the distance between itself and it’s target an infinite number of times. This clearly doesn’t conform to our observations, suggesting that space is not infinitely divisible.
Tinker Grey
Wanderer
Of course I'm evaluating from a human stance; what else can anyone do?
Whether there was infinite god-time or an infinite sequence of god-events (try thinking of a way a being can do *anything* without time, but never mind), if there is a god that is somehow infinite, then that being had an infinite number of things to do before doing anything. I.e., such a being cannot do anything.
firedragon
Veteran Member
By logic. One could only try and avoid it with a theory to avoid it. It's not an epistemic infinite regress made possible, but a theory to avoid the logical impossibility.
leroy
Well-Known Member
There are many arguments that show the incoherence of an infinite number of stuff which would also apply to an ininite regress.
Then one that I like the most is that it leads to the conclusion that “events with zero probability can happen”
If there if an infinite number of balls in room, the probability of me picking randomly a specific ball is zero
But nothing can stop me from picking a ball, so these leads to the conclusion that
1 ether events with zero probability can happen
2 or that an infinite number of things can’t exist.
Since “1” is absurd you have to take “2”
There is a third alternative, which is
3 deny the possibility of a random event, (it´s impossible to randomly pick a ball) but that seems the high price to pay in order to keep the coherence of infinity.
leroy
Well-Known Member
I would deny that claim
A foot is made out of “fine” units otherwise you would have big paradoxes
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
In the context of infinity, anything that can happen, will happen. Indeed, it already has - just perhaps not yet.
leroy
Well-Known Member
That was not my point, but is also a paradox that one inherits when one affirms infinite regress.
Given infinite time, bolzman brains that dream about living in a physical planet and participating in forums by the name RestlessSoul will emerge every once in a while.
So how do you know that you are not a Boltzmann brain?
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
I can’t know anything with absolute certainty. But I can and do make reasonable assumptions and, with good reason, reject apparent absurdities. Solipsism is as absurd and unreasonable to me as is atheism (though not agnosticism), so I assign to it a value of zero, both philosophically and probabilistically.
That said, I acknowledge that I hold many beliefs, some from theology, some from natural philosophy, which others may consider absurd.
Brian2
Veteran Member
That is my reasoning when time is involved.
I don't know how it might work without time being involved, it is hard to imagine. So I imagine that it all would happen at the same time.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Well, it is a bit more complicated when it comes to solipsism, because there are relevant for knowledge 2 variants.
I only know that I exists and nothing else.
All claims of knowledge requires a knower and nothing can be known as in the strong sense independent of the knowner.
I don't accept that the first one, but I accept the second one.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Are you familiar with Carlo Rovelli, and the Relational interpretation of QM? Basically this is an argument from physics, that all phenomena exhibit characteristics only in the manner of their interaction with other phenomena. Objects have neither substance nor qualities independent to themselves; their reality, which is always fluid, never fixed, is defined by context, and perception of that reality is dependent on the frame of reference of the observer; moreover, the observer herself is a participant in the whirling cosmic dance of convergent and divergent phenomena; we are defined by our surroundings, and the manner of our interactions with them. Thus the illusion under which we labour is not the existence of external world, but the appearance of our separation from it.
leroy
Well-Known Member
Ok and infinite regress leads to solipsism therefore infinite regress is absurd. (In response to the OP)
gnostic
The Lost One
I think “reasoning” alone isn’t evidence, no matter if it is inductive or not, logical or not.
Without evidence, all the inductive in the world, would still make the reasoning, “speculative”, could be right, but also could be wrong.
And there is certainly no evidence for any god...
...the only evidence that exist, in regard to god, is that there are evidence that there are people who believe in god, because humans have invented gods through either their imaginative beliefs or their deluded beliefs.
Including “god” into any debate of “logic”, like the question of “first cause” or “infinite regress”, is exercise of mental contortions...like trying to stick a square block into small round hole.
I still think infinite regress is just philosophical question, having little to do with sciences.