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Current time: March 29, 2024, 7:49 am

Poll: Is existence infinite?
This poll is closed.
Yes
16.67%
2 16.67%
No
16.67%
2 16.67%
Other
33.33%
4 33.33%
What the fuck have you been smoking Napo?
33.33%
4 33.33%
Total 12 vote(s) 100%
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Existence and Infinity (Warning: major rambling)
#21
RE: Existence and Infinity (Warning: major rambling)
Yeah I also find the analogy completely pointless when dealing with existence as a whole.

Time is simply one aspect of existence. For me at least. Infinity doesn't necessarily have anything to do with time. Rather it can be to do with scale, which is more what I'm interested in.

If you believe in other universes for example then time might be completely independent for those universes. For those universes each one has it's own 'time bubble'. This comes back to my question of scale, as if there are multiple universes then what are the universes inside of, and does what they're inside of have its own sense of time. And if what they're inside of is inside of something else then does that have time? You see, you still have a problem.

To me, it gets you no nearer to answering the real question, when discussing time. As if my example were to be correct, nothing stops you from having that scale go on forever. Infinity isn't really (in my opinion) all that affected by time. I'd rather explore the scale of existence than if time is infinite, because if you come up with an answer to the former then you'll likely have an answer to the latter.


This is ofcourse all just hypothetical bullshit and precisely why I usually hate philosophy, but of all the philosophical questions this seems to be the only one which I'm bothered about wasting my time on.
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#22
RE: Existence and Infinity (Warning: major rambling)
Time may or may not be infinite, but that's probably a philosophical or a mathematical question that I am not competent enough to answer. There are different theories on this, but I don't think that anyone knows for sure which is the case. I've also come across a lecture on Perimeter Institute in which a physicist argues that time may not even exist (i.e that it's just an illusion). The idea of a timeless reality can also be traced back to Plato and many other philosophers of the past.

Secondly, yes, there may exist other universes which have their own "time bubble" and those universes might even have a different set of physical laws than that of the universe that we are aware of. There could be billions of other universes each having a different set of laws and a different time bubble. Where is the end point in all of that? Obviously, nobody knows.

From a theistic stance, however, we believe that God is the end point, but God Himself has no end point (which sounds like a paradox, apparently). God created time and space and thus He is beyond them. This means that God is a timeless reality. All created things exist in time and space, while God is 'outside' of them and/or not limited by them.
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#23
RE: Existence and Infinity (Warning: major rambling)
(September 2, 2012 at 8:19 pm)Rayaan Wrote: Time may or may not be infinite, but that's probably a philosophical or a mathematical question that I am not competent enough to answer. There are different theories on this, but I don't think that anyone knows for sure which is the case. I've also come across a lecture on Perimeter Institute in which a physicist argues that time may not even exist (i.e that it's just an illusion). The idea of a timeless reality can also be traced back to Plato and many other philosophers of the past.

I'm familiar with this concept. I've often thought that time is merely a human construct myself. Well, it is really. Our idea of time and time travel is often very different to what the universe actually allows for instance.

Quote:Secondly, yes, there may exist other universes which have their own "time bubble" and those universes might even have a different set of physical laws than that of the universe that we are aware of. There could be billions of other universes each having a different set of laws and a different time bubble. Where is the end point in all of that? Obviously, nobody knows.

Well you certainly put in the plug for any conversation on this topic Tongue

Quote:From a theistic stance, however, we believe that God is the end point, but God Himself has no end point (which sounds like a paradox, apparently). God created time and space and thus He is beyond them. This means that God is a timeless reality. All created things exist in time and space, while God is 'outside' of them and/or not limited by them.

Yeah, I simply call bollocks on this.

Aside from the fact of no evidence (which I don't need to go into I'm sure), it doesn't comply with occam's razor for me. Putting god into the equation of existence is a massive complication.

Besides, god does not exist if he is not within this existence.
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#24
RE: Existence and Infinity (Warning: major rambling)
Napoleon, if you're not interested in time that's OK. It is however an interesing topic for those who are into philosophy. Also, I do intend to clear up a couple points of confusion regarding my post.

Ryaan, I'm actually forwarding a philosophical argument aganst an actual infinite formulated by a Muslim philosopher named Al Ghazali.
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#25
RE: Existence and Infinity (Warning: major rambling)
(September 2, 2012 at 8:55 pm)idunno Wrote: Napoleon, if you're not interested in time that's OK. It is however an interesing topic for those who are into philosophy. Also, I do intend to clear up a couple points of confusion regarding my post.

It's not that I'm not interested in time, I just don't find it all that relevant. Existence is more than just time.
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#26
RE: Existence and Infinity (Warning: major rambling)
Then would you say timeless existence is possible?
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#27
RE: Existence and Infinity (Warning: major rambling)
(September 2, 2012 at 3:31 am)genkaus Wrote: First of all, your question is incorrect. "Always existed" means "existed for all time". So you are basically asking "has time existed for all time"? The answer is always yes. The statement is tautologically true. It says nothing about its existence being finite or infinite. For example, I might ask, for the entire period of existence of earth, has earth always existed? The answer is yes, but that doesn't mean that any aspect of that existence is infinite.

Secondly, even of it were infinite, your swimming analogy is incomplete. Since the past stretches back to infinity, then Aquaman would take an infinite amount of time to reach the present wall. And he does have the infinite amount of time since he is starting infinitely in the past.


All right, let's see if the ol' brain is still working at this point. First, of course time has existed for all time. Time obviously can't exist before or after time. What I was asking is if time had a starting point, or does it extend backward infinitely? 

Next, the analogy is meant to put this issue into perspective. The reason I have the guy start from the present wall is because we have a fixed point in the present moment, something we lack in the infinite past (IP). I couldn't say "let's start from the IP and work our way to the present moment" because there is no "point" in the IP to start from. It's infinite. Even if AquaMan had an endless amount of time to reach the IP he doesn't actually reach it. If he were to reach it, it wouldn't be infinite (endless; without end).
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#28
Existence and Infinity (Warning: major rambling)
Since I'm still too lazy to write out that Cantor thing...
Zeno's paradoxes anyone? Projective geometry? Ordinals?
God, math has made me lazy about arguing things "[jargon jargon] and the rest follows trivially." But maybe that's just because this thread doesn't have a clear formulation of/approach to infinity that my argument would have to be reducible to (esp. since the lack of a clear approach is the central issue of the thread anyway).

At least you folks haven't started bickering over "potential infinity" versus "actual infinity" yet. Tongue
So these philosophers were all like, "That Kant apply universally!" And then these mathematicians were all like, "Oh yes it Kan!"
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#29
RE: Existence and Infinity (Warning: major rambling)
(September 3, 2012 at 4:01 am)idunno Wrote: All right, let's see if the ol' brain is still working at this point. First, of course time has existed for all time. Time obviously can't exist before or after time. What I was asking is if time had a starting point, or does it extend backward infinitely?

I'm saying that your question doesn't make sense - even more so because those are not the only two choices. First of all, the words "starting point" assume a temporal context. Secondly, a circle has no starting point and yet is finite. What you are assuming is a constant linear forward progression, whereas we know that there are places where the progression can actually stop.  

(September 3, 2012 at 4:01 am)idunno Wrote: Next, the analogy is meant to put this issue into perspective. The reason I have the guy start from the present wall is because we have a fixed point in the present moment, something we lack in the infinite past (IP). I couldn't say "let's start from the IP and work our way to the present moment" because there is no "point" in the IP to start from. It's infinite. Even if AquaMan had an endless amount of time to reach the IP he doesn't actually reach it. If he were to reach it, it wouldn't be infinite (endless; without end).

And why is that? If he had an infinite amount of time to traverse an infinite distance, why wouldn't he reach it? You're just looking at the "infinite distance" part and not considering how the other "infinite time" would play into it.
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#30
RE: Existence and Infinity (Warning: major rambling)
(September 3, 2012 at 4:36 am)Categories+Sheaves Wrote: Since I'm still too lazy to write out that Cantor thing...
Zeno's paradoxes anyone? Projective geometry? Ordinals?
God, math has made me lazy about arguing things "[jargon jargon] and the rest follows trivially." But maybe that's just because this thread doesn't have a clear formulation of/approach to infinity that my argument would have to be reducible to (esp. since the lack of a clear approach is the central issue of the thread anyway).

At least you folks haven't started bickering over "potential infinity" versus "actual infinity" yet. Tongue

Sorry my thread doesn't conform with your standards Smile

Like I said before, I don't normally do philosophy, mainly because of the amount of shit it entails and that it actually gets you nowhere.

If we aren't going to get anywhere anyway, what does it matter if the thread doesn't really have a clear approach. What's wrong with simple discussion? All we're really doing is brainstorming our different ideas on what existence might or might not entail, this thread wasn't designed for a particular 'approach'. Hell, what makes your approach or his approach or her approach any better than anyone else's? This is philosophy for Stevie's sake, we all just stabbing in the dark no matter what approach we take.

I'm content doing it my way, seems far more interesting to me when talking about this sort of thing with real terms. It's when philosophy starts introducing these labels that I rapidly lose interest.

(September 2, 2012 at 9:03 pm)idunno Wrote: Then would you say timeless existence is possible?

I find it highly dependant on how you define time.

Maybe you'd like to take a stab at it? And I'll give you an answer based on the definition you come up with Smile
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