RE: The Principle of Contingent Causation: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress.
July 22, 2023 at 1:51 pm
(July 22, 2023 at 1:32 pm)Nishant Xavier Wrote: Angrboda, you did not engage with this:
"Again, all you have to do to realize the Universe cannot be actually infinite in the past, given that we got here, is count backward into the past.
You claim it is a false analogy to say that if we started from 1,2,3, we will never get to infinity, but allegedly, starting from infinity, we can get to 0.
All you have to do is count backward in time. If we started from -infinity, we would never get to 0. We got to 0, therefore we didn't start from -infinity."
I said it to Polymath in the course of a reply to him, where I engaged seriously with all his arguments; but it also applies to your position, since it is similar.
Where did you engage with it?
While I empathize with the intuition underlying your argument, it's another thing to logically demonstrate that it's impossible for an infinite past to finally get to the present moment, even if we presuppose the A-theory of time (which I personally don't hold to, but whatever).
Consider your use of the words "started from -infinity", what would that mean exactly? If you start with a premise that doesn't make much sense, you're not going to get to the conclusion you're after in a logical manner.
