Not in an infinite space. — Banno
IT would be simple to take this argument's logic and show that there are no integers. Assume there is no first integer. Then there cannot be any next integer... — Banno
No, I'm referring to the general style of arguing from any sort of first principle to a self-serving conclusion. They are examples of confirmation bias, not of philosophy. If you assume there is a first cause, it will not be surprising that you can conclude, validly, that there is a first cause. But no one else need agree with you. They are dreadful arguments. — Banno
That's just repeating the same assertion. It's not proof — Luke
Presentists don't need to accept the assumption about past existence - it's not part of presentism — Luke
Let''s say I don't accept your assertion that the present would not exist unless the past did exist. How are you going to prove that? — Luke
"Only now always existed" is grammatically incorrect and incoherent, combining both present and past tenses.. It attempts to refer to a past tense existence of the present moment ("existed"). The present moment does not exist in the past, by definition. — Luke
"A start of time" is an essential to where you want to go — Frank Apisa
Never heard the term 'presentism.' Does such a thing exist if our biology requires a small lag time in our experience of 'now' in essence turning into 'then?' — julian kroin
have this thought; entropy explains everything (though I 'm not privy to that explanation) — julian kroin
If you believe the past did exist then you believe it no longer does exist and that it therefore does not exist. — Luke
Presentism and eternalism are about temporal existence. A creator outside of temporal existence doesn't count as a temporal existent. — Luke
"All time" for a presentist is only the present moment. If a presentist were to also believe in the existence of the past and the future, then they would be an eternalist. — Luke
don't know, maybe your timeless creator of time came before it. What came before E if it has a start? — Luke
Presentism makes no claims about the existence of the past. It is your assumption that the past has existed. Only the present moment exists according to presentism. — Luke
Your reference to an infinite regress appears to reveal your assumption that presentism entails not only the existence if the present moment but also the existence of the past. But that is not presentism. — Luke
Only the present moment exists (P)
Past, present and future moments all exist (E)
There is either a start to P or not, and there is equally either a start to E or not. Why should this count for or against one but not the other? — Luke
Your reference to an infinite regress appears to reveal your assumption that presentism entails not only the existence if the present moment but also the existence of the past. But that is not presentism. — Luke
For other questions like this, though, I'd simply make no assumption whatsoever, because there's insufficient information. There's certainly no way to assign probabilities to something for which we have no information, no frequency data — Terrapin Station
I thought you were arguing the opposite — Luke
Why can't presentism have this too? — Luke
The creation of the universe isn't, so sometimes deductive argument is needed to create an epistemological conclusion; a conclusion that is not driven by mathematical principle, but by rational reasoning. — SethRy
But there's no epistemic justification for assuming a 50/50 split on the question of whether someone committed a murder in that case. There would be no justification for assigning any probability to it whatsoever. — Terrapin Station
That alone, is pure evidence that an epistemic is absent, as we are looking for an answer without numbers, without involving statistics — SethRy
'Only now exists' and 'there is a start of time' are incompatible views
— Devans99
How? — Luke
Which is completely arbitrary with respect to what's the case without their being any epistemological justification for two options being equally likely. — Terrapin Station
For a god/entity's existence, there is not, hence the conclusion; your mathematical statement has no epistemic justification. — SethRy
It just doesn't make any sense anymore. There is no epistemic justification behind the 50/50 argument of God's existence, — SethRy
You simply can't calculate the beginning of the universe by starting at 50/50 with no epistemic justification and having a basis solely because there are two factors — SethRy
I agree with him. Really. More than one person thinks your calculations are flawed; and I know conforming to utilitarian principles is not always right, but this time it might be. — SethRy
Analyse it this way, if it's 50/50 for both suppositions or; extremes, then it is also 50/50 for me to walk down the street, and encounter a case of gold, or I do not. — SethRy
i would agree that absolute truth can rarely be found using discrete mathematics or boolean algebra — James Statter
Seems to me that there is an assumption here that logic tells the universe what to do. I don't think it works that way. Rather, we choose a logic - a language or grammar - that best suits what the universe does. — Banno
So the line of philosophising that you adopt is fraught with potential error. A better way, the physicist way, is to find a language that describes what is going on... to do experiments and theorise using mathematical models that suit what you see — Banno
The style of argument you use in this OP - and elsewhere - is that adopted by medieval monks to show that God exists. Just as with those arguments, no one was convinced except the monks. — Banno
An odd way to phrase it - 'always existed'? That's not how presentism is typically defined — Luke
What infinite regress? Where is your reasoning or argument for this "requirement" of presentism? — Luke
Starting at any value would be completely arbitrary, wouldn't it? — Terrapin Station
If the present is considered to be the origin of one's spatio-temporal coordinate space, then there is no reason to consider past eternity to be any more complete than future eternity. — sime
The same is also true of certain models of cosmology, for example the Hawking-Hartle Model that does not single out any point of space-time as being the unique causal-origin. — sime
So the problems begin there. What would be the epistemological basis for saying it's 50/50 at any point? — Terrapin Station