devans99 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 30, 2018 2:27 am
1. The number of events in an infinite regress is > any number
2. Thats a contradiction (can’t be both a number and > any number)
3. Making up magic numbers is not allowed (can break any theory if magic is admissible)
4. There must be a first event.
5. Time must be finite
HA! I've encountered this reasoning exactly 24 years ago, give or take 2 years.
The person who denied that infinite is a number was a retired philosophy professor at the University of Toronto. I forgot his name.
This denial is easy to refute.
You accept that space is infinite, and that along one line in space you can go forever, and never reach an end.
How long is this line? Infinitely long.
Now let's measure distances on this line. Two steps, approx., is one meter.
Four steps is two meters.
X steps is X/2 meters.
How many steps in the line? Infinite number of steps.
A number is defined as the count in a quantity. A quantity is made up of a count and of a unit.
How many finite units in the stretch of an infinitely long line? an infinite number of units. Another way of saying this is "infinite units".
Infinite = a number.
Going back to your claim, there is one number that is larger than any finite number. That number is infinite.
Your original axiom compares not any number that is greater than any number, but any number that is greater than any FINITE number.
Thus, your axiom one becomes
1. The number of events in an infinite regress is > any finite number
Why is this true, and why can't we demand, that it read this way:
1. The number of events in an infinite regress is > any number, finite or infinite
Because if the number of events is infinite, then it is EQUAL to infinite, not greater than it.
This little difference is the crux of the false thinking. You introduced what Aristotle termed "Equivocation". It is a type of fallacy, where a word is used in two different places, the same word, but with different meanings.
When you wrote
1. The number of events in an infinite regress is > any number
in the first occurrence you meant (left of the inequality sign) infinite, and right of the equality sign you meant finite.