(February 12, 2018 at 8:28 am)polymath257 Wrote:(February 12, 2018 at 7:36 am)Grandizer Wrote: But how does one even start the adding if there is no start to it? And how does the adding have already happened without a start?
Well, that is sort of the whole point. There *is* no start. It is an ongoing process with no start.
Again, think of the integers (.....,-4,-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3,4,.....)
There is no start and there is no finish. Every integer has an immediate predesessor and an immediate successor.
And again, this is not a proof this happens in the real world. It is, however, a demonstration that there is no *logical* issue with an infinite regress.
Which isn't something I'm contesting. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the math is wrong, or that an actual infinity cannot be possible/logical. I'm saying that, in the real world, it seems the act of going through a process of counting from negative infinity seems to be impossibility. If I can't reach my destination in the "negative infinity" direction through counting to the very "end" of the counting process (because there is no end), then how can I even "start" from there all the way back to some arbitrary integer (0, for example)?
Your math example only shows that we can talk about actual infinities (even in the physical world), but it doesn't show me that one can really start counting from "negative infinity" all the way to, say, -4. And similarly, I can go past 4 and count towards the positive direction, but I can only stop at an arbitrary integer eventually, not at the very "end" of the whole set (simply because there is no such thing).
