wtf wrote: ↑Mon Nov 23, 2020 7:06 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Nov 23, 2020 12:39 am
I insist there IS a backward causal chain. That's empirical and obvious.
I'm showing you it's mathematically impossible that it's an INFINITE backward causal chain.
How interesting. Then you'll have no trouble identifying the first integer with no immediate predecessor.
I didn't say that. You're missing the key point again.
The point is that there is ALWAYS a prerequisite. ("Predecessor" means somebody died, by the way.) There is no digit that can be written (Just try it, and see) because the prerequisite for the prerequisite for the prerequisite...infinitely backward...is never located. Since the chain of causes is said to go back infinitely, no prerequisite is ever met. And nothing ever happens.
But you can see that something IS happening, which means the chain of prerequisite causes cannot even
possibly be infinite. If it were, you would not be here. Your parents wouldn't have been born, because your grandparents weren't born, because your great grandparents were never born...and so on.
Infinity-past as a causal chain, you see, is not a number. It's a
concept, the concept of an infinite postponement of everything.