Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jul 24, 2020 4:27 am
Actually, that is the impossibility that we can rule out with absolute certainty, mathematically. An infinitely regressed chain of causes
has no starting point. And that makes it certain that if such a thing were posited it never started.
It was never started, because it has gone on since time infinite.
Having no starting point does not mean it cannot exist. What you point out correctly is that it never startred.That is true. You go on thinking from there that it never existed. You have this incredibly iron-clad belief that if something exist, it must have had a starting point of existence. Yet it does not.
Regarding your math progression of "not being able to say an integer number before saying the one smaller by one previous to it". You insist that if we make that rule, no number could be uttered, since you never end going into the past needing to name a one smaller integer. (Negative integers.)
That posit is only true if you restrict yourself to a FINITE amount of time going backward into the past. But if you throw away that restriction -- and you should throw away that restriction -- then your objection is nullified. If you can go back INFINITELY long into the past, then you can do the progression. And why could you not go back infinitely into the past? It is not impossible to do so, since the time past is infiite long too! If you have a string that is two feet long, you can go back two feet. If you have a string hundred feet long, you can go back hundred feet. If you have a string infinite long, you can go back infinitely. You just can't pin it down to a certain yardage when it's infinite. That's all.
Because you can't pin it down, you insist it can't be done. But that is wrong, illogical reasoning. If you go, say, 100 numbers a day, each day, then in inifinite number of days you can cover the entire length of the number progression. Your reasoning fails because you can't imagine that it can be done. It is your own limitation of reasoning power or imagination that renders the task impossible, not the inherent impossibility of the task itself.
If you ask a dog or a monkey to build a motor car, and somehow could explain to the dog or monkey what you propose, it will tell you, if it could speak its thoughts, "no, that can't be done." Yet it can be done, only the dog or the monkey is incapable of visualizing it prior to getting it built. You are that thinker in a similar sense, who, because he can't imagine something possible as possible, declares the thought impossible.