(September 18, 2015 at 3:20 am)Captain Scarlet Wrote: This seems straightforward to me.I disagree with premise 1. I don't think there is an eternal past. I think time itself had a beginning. so I can only grant half of that premise. the future part.
1) minds are eternal if Idealism is true
2) eternity implies and infinite past and future
3) it is impossible to transcend an infinite series of events (by definition you cannot get to today if the causal precursor is in the infinite past)
4) minds operate through a series of mental events
5) we exist today experiencing mental events
6) Idealism is false from 1), 2), 3), 4) and 5)
this argument, however, has different implications depending on what minds you're talking about. if you're talking about human minds, then they certainly had a beginning. I don't think human minds are without beginning or cause. and given they have a potentially infinite future, all that means is their knowledge of events will increase over time. though there's nothing contradictory about that, nor does it imply a transcendence of infinity.
now if you're talking about God's mind, that's a different story. I believe God is without beginning, but not that he has an infinite past. I think time itself doesn't have an infinite past. God in this case would transcend time rather than transcend infinity. as for the infinite future part, I gave that infinite series expressed as finite functions in defense of that particularly. I see no problem in God having all future knowledge in finite functional terms that can be expressed in an infinite series of events. we express an infinite series of numbers in finite functional equations all the time. I can write many functional equations that all express a different set of infinite sequence of numbers.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.
-Galileo
-Galileo