Back from holiday! Rome. Just coincidence.
Conde Lucanor wrote:
It's the other way around: beings have a past and a future. They are located in the space and time dimensions. You seem to acknowledge only the space dimension, a static universe where there are no events, no change, no movement.
'Dimensions' are the names of the
measurements we make; they are not places such that things are
located within them. For example, we might describe a point within the universe in terms of co-ordinates, but there is no metaphysical edge to the universe where there is an 'x' axis etc.
Measurements are comparisons; I can compare this object to that ruler in a particular way and say 'it is 10cm long'; i.e. that one of its dimensions is '10cm', and others will understand me. But that 10cm only arose as a function of my choice to single out that object; I could have combined that object with another object, or taken it apart, in which case I would have different measurements. I do not believe there is a dimension 'length', such that the '10cm' has some sort of independent existence within a metaphysical totality of 'length-ness', irrespective of my choice.
I think we need to avoid mixing up 'dimension' as in 'measurement', with 'dimension' as in 'alternative worlds'.
Me: In one sense I am a different object to the new born baby, in another sense I am the same object. Which sense you take will depend on which of my characteristics you want to give the label 'Londoner' to, and that is your choice, it depends on what you want to do and what you want to communicate.
You're still saying "I am", you're still advocating the reality of being. To speak figuratively, as if adding "in one sense" dissolved the concrete objective being in an abstract representation, does not do the trick: you're still Londoner, and whatever happened to the baby born Londoner affected the being of the adult Londoner in the present and will continue to do it in the future. We have just one changing Londoner.
What about before I was conceived, or born? Or when I am dead and decayed? Am I still the one changing Londoner? I would say that whether we wanted to count these states of being as still 'Londoner' is flexible, that "in one sense" we still
might call the dispersed atoms of my body "Londoner" but for most purposes we would say they are so different from the present "Londoner" the name no longer fits. There is no right answer, it just depends on what we are trying to communicate. A scientist might argue that "Londoner" never did exist, since there is no reason to differentiate that particular assembly of atoms from the rest of the universe - it is all the same stuff, obeying the same laws.
To say that '
We have just one changing Londoner' makes him like that broom we have had all our lives - the one where we have replaced the head five times and the handle five times...
Surely we might want to agree on a criteria of being real before evaluating whether something is real or not. My definition of real is something that has objective existence, that is there, independent of our consciousness.
I do not think it is at all easy to fix on that criteria. For example, as far as something exists objectively,
independently of our consciousness, then how could we know it? We can only know via our consciousness, so how can we disentangle the thing in itself from the nature of the consciousness that perceives it?
And again there is the problem with the 'something'. Whatever we have singled out as a particular 'thing' can indeed be said to have certain properties (exist in time, have length etc.) but these have only arisen as a function of that initial singling out; when we are giving what we might think of as objective descriptions of the 'thing' we are really extrapolating on that 'singling out' decision, which was a subjective choice.
Does not matter much that you don't claim to know god. What matters is that you imply that you cannot know god, which is the same as taking the agnostic position. Obviously, you cannot infer properties of something you cannot even discern or relate to existence.
The agnostic position would be that we can know certain things, but the existence of God is not one of them. My position is that on certain metaphysical questions we cannot know anything at all. When God is discussed in terms of 'omnipotence' and all the rest, I think that this puts God into that category, along with
'what is real?' and the rest.
I'd say that an idea of God that puts him outside the scope of science, maths, logic etc.
does just that. That is the correct position to take. Whereas to say 'that idea puts him outside the scope of science etc. -
and therefore it is incorrect' is a mistake.
Me: Usually their knowledge of God is drawn from other things, like personal revelation or scripture. You might well want to question that, but it would be a different subject to the one we are discussing here, i.e. God's relation with time etc.
You're contradicting yourself, because you have claimed directly and indirectly the impossibility of knowledge of god. That impossibility includes "personal revelation" or scripture, which are pretty much in this side of the universe, aren't they? They are as human as can be.
Absolutely. As I say, I am distinguishing arguments about God based on the infinite (which I think are mistaken - irrespective of which side is using them) from those claims of knowledge of God based on claims of personal subjective experiences. I was simply observing that in practice religious belief tends to be more based around the second, rather than the theorising about abstract notions of God that we are discussing. (Philosophy boards perhaps being an exception).
Me: If something has no ends, no borders, then not only can nothing be outside it, but nothing can be inside it either. That is because whatever 'thing' we said was inside it, would be limited to the total quantity of that thing. And if that thing had a total quantity, then it would be finite.
You're thinking about a finite container with discrete quantities of things inside. By saying "total quantity" you are already making it finite, because you're counting up to the last number, which implies there's a last number. An infinite universe that has no end will be continuous and things will be part of that continuum. A good analogy might be the Möbius Strip or any loop, where even discrete objects put along the strip can be counted on and on without reaching a last object of the series, thus not reaching a total amount.
If the objects on the strip were discrete, then they would be distinguishable one from the other. It is necessary that they must be distinguishable in order for us to count them. That being the case, then to call them a 'series' and to say the series does not end would require us to both distinguish each object individually but simultaneously to think of it only as only being part of a series, which would be self-contradictory.
Suppose we imagine the strip, then try to imagine those 'discrete objects'. Whatever we imagine (numerals, pictures, dots) are not infinite. It is true that they might be made so similar in that our eyes could not remember each shape, such that we could not remember where we had started counting, but that would just be a failure of human perception, easily remedied by marking the start.
And, of course, the Mobius Strip is itself an object; there could be two strips, or a longer strip, thus increasing the series of objects.
My point again is that however we visualize 'infinity', whenever we say 'an infinity
of X', then we create these sorts of problems. Infinity only makes sense as something
purely abstract.