Yes, it became Arab because Arabs conquered it in the 7th century — BitconnectCarlos

So you think think it was appropriate to correct a situation established 1300 years earlier. That's as ludicrous as suggesting Israel should be abolished because of the past injustices to Palestinians. Irrespective of Palestinian claims, Israel exists and has a right to continue. That doesn't doesn't justify ethnic cleansing. I absolutlely understand Israel's need for security, but this approach seems likely to provoke more resentment from Palestinians and more hostility from Israel's neighbors.

What allowed the Germans to accept that and move on but the Palestinians can't? — RogueAI

What difference does it make? You're judgement of what they "ought" to do doesn't compel them to do so.

Ancient history determines current reality. Jews have lived continuously in the land since antiquity. — BitconnectCarlos

History story is continuous, and you're omitting the reality that over time, the area became predominantly Arab. Jews were a tiny minority until the Zionist movement took off in the 19th century. It was falsely advertised as "a land without people for a people without a land. Still, Arabs welcomed them at the time.

Many countries lose wars and accept the new reality and move on. Why won't the Palestinians? — RogueAI

There's not many close analogies of a conquered people being ejected from their land. But regardless, I'm discussing the reality that they aren't likely to be docile about it.

Jews are indigenous to the land — BitconnectCarlos

Ancient history does not trump current reality. There were few Jews in Palestine before the 19th century Zionist movement.

Yes it sucks for the Palestinians. They lost a war. — BitconnectCarlos

And you think this means they should just accept their lot, like native Americans did? What "should" happen isn't the point. It's what WILL happen. They won't accept it, and neither will their Arab neighbors.

Giving the aggressor what he wants is a way to "peace" very similar to the 1938 Munich Agreement.

Their own failure to annihilate the Jews in the region and secure the land as another Islamic territory is their "Nakba." — BitconnectCarlos

You've completely ignored the history. These Arabs were in Palestine, and were forced out. Israel often excuses this as perfectly fine, because it's so similar to the treatment of native Americans in the US. They see that as perfectly fine.

I'm not defending the actions of Palestinians, I'm explaining why they won't accept the theft of their "reservation". You had claimed it was no big deal. That's utter nonsense.

There was a native, Arab population living the that area of the Ottoman empire labelled "Palestine". After WWI, the winning Western powers carved up the Arab area into "mandates" - quasi-sovereign states under European control (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine). Great Britain ruled Palestine. While the other mandates moved toward self-determination, Great Britain decided to turn their property into a homeland for Jews. At the time, Arabs lived in towns, villages and cities spread across Palestine. They wanted a state of their own, like the other mandates. Jews were a minority population, less than 10%. This grew during WW2 to 30%. After the WW2, the UN voted to partition Palestine to create the state of Israel. Native Arabs were ejected.

So it's not that there was some loyalty to a state, but a sense that they were entitled to their geographical home- like everyone else in the region. Now they're being ejected again.

I put "minds" in quotes. I don't believe a "mind" is an object that exists. Rather, a brain engages in mental activities (perceptions, moderating between stimulus and response intentional behaviors, deliberations, learning...). IMO, experience is the constant flow of these mental activites, which entails changes in the brain

Now you tell me what you mean by "experiences".

It's been 78 years since they were ejected from their homeland, and that hasn't faded from their memories yet. They believe they have a sacred bond to their land,and this part of their culture won't fade. Tribalism not assimilation, is typical in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the Criminal-in-chief is at home talking about how reasonable it was for Putin to invade Ukraine, and blaming Ukraine for "going into" the war. Not to mention his overt politicization of the DOJ, ignoring laws and the Constitution.

:lol:

Trust me, when he believes Vladimir Putin more than his own American intelligence services, that tells something. — ssu

Good point. He does trust authoritarians, and mistrusts democratic leaders. But in terms of making "deals", I don't think he'll intentionally pick Russia over UK. The net result would be the same, because of the trust issue - and his stupidity.

If wishing for the destruction of a culture where e.g. powerful men routinely abuse young boys or human sacrifice is a constant make me a Nazi then so be it. — BitconnectCarlos

Exiling Palestinians from their land will not destroy their culture. It will be a second Nakba.

Trump is Putin's useful idiot.

In his press conference on Feb 13, Trump made it abundantly clear that he completely agrees with Russia with regard to Ukraine.

He said Russia had to go in to Ukraine, to prevent their joining NATO ("They've been saying that for a long time that Ukraine cannot go into NATO. And I'm Ok with that.")

It's Ukraine's own damn fault ("it was not a good war [for Ukraine] to go into, and I think they have to make peace, that's what I think.")

Russia deserves some of Ukraine's territory ("They took a lot of land, and they fought for that land, and they lost a lot of soldiers").

When asked if he viewed "Ukraine as an equal member of this peace process?" Trump responded, in the negative ("It's an interesting question. I think they have to make peace. Their people are being killed, and I think they have to make peace." )

Press conference transcript.

So far, P01135809 has followed Putin in some respects:

• gathered/appeased religious conservatives (and extremists, disillusioned)
• threatened other countries
• efforts to sideline (or remove most) non-loyalists, merits less relevant
• moves to ditch some protection of minorities (or vulnerable)
• lied

(Did I miss any?) — jorndoe

Yes. You missed the Trump administration overtly using the DOJ to achieve political objectives, by ordering them to drop the prosecution against Eric Adams.

JD Vance schools Europe’s overlords. — NOS4A2

Are you under the impression that his "lesson" was well-received by his "students"?

JD Vance attacks Europe over free speech and migration

"The address was met by silence in the hall, and later denounced by several politicians at the conference. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said it was "not acceptable".

"The EU's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, characterised Vance as "trying to pick a fight" with Europe, home to some of the US's closest allies."

"Vance went on to criticise the use of laws enforcing buffer zones, saying that free speech was in retreat and alleging that the Scottish government had warned people against private prayer within their own homes."

Unsurprisingly, his speech was well-received by the leader or the right wing "Alternative for Germany (AfD) party"

Trump really wants to please both the leaders of Russia and China. — ssu

My take on it is that Trump has no favorites, which means he feels exactly the same about the UK or France as he does about Russia or China. So the concept of "allies" is a dead one under the Trump regime.

He's demonstrated that he'll ignore treaties. He may not formally withdraw from NATO (as Bolton predicted), but I seriously doubt he would fulfill a commitment to help if a NATO country were attacked.

Nonsense. Abstractions do not "exist" (A. Meinong) and are not "subject to change". Thus your conclusions are not valid.
— 180 Proof
I am not talking about the abstract objects here. I am talking about experience. Are you denying that you experience and your experience is not subject to change? — MoK

I didn't talk about the mind and its role in the body but the experience. — MoK

Define "experience". A boulder rolling down a mountain has "experienced" the roll, and has been altered in the process. Similarly our "minds" are altered by sensory perceptions and by its own inner processes.

The uncontroversial fact is that the deficit reflects spending more than is taken in. Therefore it can be lowered by decreasing spending, increasing revenues, or both.

2024 spending was $6.9 Trillion; revenues: $4.9 Trillion (deficit: $2 Trillion)

Spending breakdown:

24% Health Insurance (Medicare,Medicaid, CHIP, ACA)
21% Social Security
13% Defense
13% Interest on national debt
8% Federal pensions (govmt & military)
7% Economic security programs (Earned income tax credit, child tax credit, SNAP, SSI)
5% Education
2% Transportation
1% Natural resources & Agriculture
1% Science & Medical research
1% Law enforcement
1% International (embassies/consulates, humanitarian aid)
5% All other

Source

Every year's deficit is added to the national debt. Offset by projected decreases in interest rates.

Decreasing domestic spending will be contactionary (less money going into the economy; lower GDP; lower revenue)

Decreasing taxes is expansionary (more money going into the economy, higher GDP, partly offsets the lost revenue).

Deporting undocumented workers is contractionary (fewer consumers spendin $), and reduces revenue (primarily social security and medicare). Also will raise prices because of higher cost of labor.

New tarriffs will increase revenue, but raise prices so it will be contractionary).
-----------------------------
There's no easy solutions, because all options entail both negative and positive aspects.

Unequivocal corruption:

Order to drop New York Mayor Adams’ case roils Justice Department as high-ranking officials resign

NEW YORK (AP) — Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, and five high-ranking Justice Department officials resigned Thursday after she refused an order to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams — a stunning escalation in a dayslong standoff over the Trump administration prioritizing political aims over criminal culpability.

For years, Trumpists falsely accused the DOJ of being politicized, to provide cover for Trump's criminal behavior. Now they're overtly politicizing it.

Vance had also said Trump would never pardon 1/6 criminals who'd committed violent crimes. What he says is meaningless.

According to Greg, even using conservative assumptions, this fraud SWUNG the election. — hypericin

I object to labelling changes to the law as "fraud".

Changes were made in 2020 because of the pandemic. The changes made it easier to vote. As a consequence, we had record turnout (as a % of eligible voters). A positive consequence of the higher turnout: Trump lost.

The GOP scaled this back, making it harder to vote. Consequently, voter turnout was lower and Trump won.

It's easy to blame the law for the consequence, but I blame voters for not feeling sufficiently motivated to vote in spite of the impediments. I also blame single issue voters who stayed home because they perceived "no difference" on their single issue, and underestimated how bad things would get.

Who's this good for anyway? — jorndoe

There's some good in it for those who will save or make money.

The fundamental problem is that the negative consequences will be: 1) marginal - the majority of people won't suffer directly from failures to find treatment for diseases. 2) not felt in the short term. New treatments that might have otherwise been developed would not have have made a difference during Trump's term.

Sorry, I don’t understand what you are saying then. You seem to keep flip-flopping. First you mentioned that everything exists necessarily such that there is no way they could have failed to exist — Bob Ross

No, I didn't. Here's what I said:

Concrete example:suppose determinism is true. This implies every event, and everything that comes to exist, is the necessary consequence of prior conditions. — Relativist

You correctly noted that I should have said "causal determination", but my meaning is clear. I'm insisting on two things:

• Contingency entails non-actual possibilities
• IF there is contingency, it must have an ontological basis.

Here’s what I am thinking you are attempting to convey, and correct me if I am wrong: saying that a thing could have failed to exist if its parts did not get so arranged (or did not exist) does not demonstrate that it could have failed to exist because it may be the case that there were no other causal possibilities such that it would not have existed. Is that right? — Bob Ross

That's part of it. Also: composition is identity, and contingency implies non-actual possibilities (metaphysically possible).

Consider composed object X. I deny that there are "accidental" properties, so 100% of the properties (intrinsic+relational) are essential to being X. "X" refers to the unique thing that has that particular set of properties. So it's an identity.

In my sense of the term, a table is contingent upon its parts; — Bob Ross

A table is composed of its parts. Contingency implies something that could have been different. What is it that could have been different?

I think you can agree that that particular chair would not exist if its legs, the wood it is made out of, etc. did not exist — Bob Ross

The chair IS the arrangement of parts. So it's equivalent to saying "the chair would not exist if the chair did not exist".

Metaphysical possibility is such that a thing could exist in a manner that does not violate the nature of things; — Bob Ross

I have no problem with this definition, because "the nature of things" means that it's consistent with whatever metaphysical framework is true; in practice, we treat our own metaphysical framework as true.

But this is just definition; it's not an ACCOUNT of possibility: what is the ontological basis for a claim that a non-actual possibility was possible?

It's easy to conceive of non-actual states of affairs, and mistakenly claim it to be contingent. Example: the outcome of a throw of dice seems contingent because we can conceive of a different outcome. But the outcome is actually the deterministic outcome of the physical factors. So, given those factors, the outcome was necessary, not contingent.

contingency is the dependence of one thing on another for its existence; and necessity is the independence of a thing on any other things for its existence. — Bob Ross

Contingency implies something that could have been different. Suppose necessary object A deterministically causes B. B therefore exists necessarily. What is it that could have been different?

Causality is traditionally and widely accepted as explanations of why a thing is the way it is. What you are probably thinking of is physical or material causality. — Bob Ross

The Aristotelean paradigm. The modern physics paradigm is more straightforward, and it omits nothing. Labelling an object's composition its "cause" makes the word "cause" less precise and more ambiguous.
-------------------------

Did you read the whole SEP Article on Divine Simplicity? The section The Question of Coherence brings up a point similar to mine. It references Alvin Plantinga's objection to Divine Simplicity, which is perfectly reasonable under Plantinga's "approach to ontology", but that "Plantinga-style objections will not appear decisive to those who reject his metaphysical framework. "

The same principle applies to me: your argument depends on a metaphysical framework different from mine. You'll never be able to make it fit.

I'll weigh in, starting with this quote from the article:

"What could motivate such a strange and seemingly incoherent doctrine?"

It's motivated by a desire to rationalize an argument for God's existence. I find it ludicrous to purport to "prove" God's existence based on an assumption that is seemingly incoherent. To be persuasive, the premises should be easy to accept.

I consider this good news:

[b]Trump administration sues New York state over immigration[/b]

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday that the Justice Department is suing the state of New York and its top officials for prioritizing "illegal aliens over American citizens."

"As you know, we sued Illinois and New York didn't listen. So now you're next," Bondi said....

Bondi, in her first news conference since being confirmed, said “millions” of people “with violent records have flooded into our communities, bringing violence and deadly drugs with them,” and that states like New York with permissive immigration policies were contributing to the problem.


I welcome this, because it will lead to a rational analysis of the facts. It's well known that the crime rate among immigrants is lower than the general population. The Trump side can argue that even a single violent act by an immigrant would have not occurred if the particular culprit weren't here.

But there's another relevant factor: undocumented immigrants fearful of being deported are unlikely to report crimes committed against them. That's why police departments have historically refrained from enquiring about this and taking action. Perfect border enforcement is impossible, so my going-in assumption is that this argument will be dispositive.

A trial will constitute a well-moderated debate of the facts. I'll be surpised if Trump wins this, but either way, it will provide a good opportunity for critical thinkers to make an informed, rational judgement.

The task of a metaphysician (including us amateurs) is to provide a metaphysical account of the clear facts. The best you can hope for is an account that is coherent and has sufficient explanatory power to address all the clear facts. If you develop or encounter multiple such metaphysical theories, they can be compared to see which seems (subjectively) superior (e.g. more parsimonious; is consistent with other metaphysical assumptions you may make).

So yeah, it's worth pondering - but don't expect to land on a "proven" paradigm.

When you say something is innate, what does that mean? I would say innate means we have them without experience of the external world, or we have it from birth. — Corvus

That's exactly what I mean.

Is past present future innate? — Corvus

That's NOT what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that we have some intrinsic sense of temporal priority: we don't confuse a past action with a present one, and we anticipate/ hope for/ dread future acts but not past ones.

These are examples..I don't know the exact nature of this intrinsic sense of "time", but only noting that there must be something.

I suggest that the best explanation for this vague sense of time, is that it is consistent with reality: there's something ontological; it's not just a figment of the imagination.

It's a secondary matter as to how we account for time, and how we analyze it. We first need to accept that there is SOMETHING ontological to it.

Could "present" be being? Being is a concept which needs some explanation too, my friend. Would you agree? — Corvus

I agree, and I think it's worthwhile to construct a framework that helps us analyze time. A framework that makes successful predictions is better than one that doesn't. Would you agree?

Your view is a form of necessitarianism, — Bob Ross

You're equivocating. You had responded to my example in which I treated the result quantum collapse as actually contingent (and I STIPULATED it as such in the example) by asserting:

"If necessitarianism is true, then there are no other possibilities than the causality that occurred because nothing could have been otherwise".

Apply the label "necessitarianism" to my view if you like, but don't draw inferences based on the label. I absolutely believe there MAY BE contingency in the world, and that quantum collapse MAY HAVE a contingent outcome. This view fits the axiom of contingency I gave you.

I was charitably interpreting your idea of a “non-actual possibility”: like I stated before, possibility is coherence of a thing with a mode of thought (e.g., metaphysics, physics, logic, etc.). — Bob Ross

It's not "charitable" to make an assertion that simply contradicts what I've said, especially in light of the fact that I linked you to Yablo's paper in which he demonstrates the disconnect between conceivability and metaphysical possibility.

You apparently believe contingency is the default: if necessity isn't proved (or accounted for), contingency should be assumed. I believe the converse: if contingency can't be proved (or accounted for), then necessity should be the default. I justify my view on the basis that laws of nature exist and that they entail a necessitation. If quantum collapse has a truly indeterminate outcome, it's still a necessitation in that it necessitates a well-defined probability distribution of possible outcomes (David Armstrong refers to this as "probabilistic determinism"). What's your basis? Can you undercut mine?

composition is a kind of causality — Bob Ross

That depends on the metaphysical system you're using to account for it. My impression is that yours depends on a form of essentialism that considers an object's identify to be associated with an essence, to which "accidental" (contingent) properties may attach. That such essences exist is metaphysical dogma, not something that can be demonstrated to exist. My view is that object identity is consistent with identity of the indiscernibles:

A = B iff both have the exact same set of properties (both intrinsic and relational).

Without contingent properties, your argument from composition fails. That's because an object's constituents are an identity to the object itself.

That’s nonsense. That’s never what contingency has been about in the sense I described; and will never exclusively refer to what you mean here. All you did is axiomatically preclude a discussion about contingency in the sense of being caused. — Bob Ross

The axiom I cited was a direct quote from Amy Karofsky's book, "A case for Necessitarianism". She makes a strong case for the past failure of philosophers to provide a metaphysical account of contingency. She convinced me that contingency needs to be accounted for, not just assumed (as you do). I'm confident she would agree with the way I applied it to composition, not that it matters per se. It's coherent and consistent with everything we know about the world. You obviously don't like it because it's inconsistent your Thomist metaphysical framework. But as I've repeatedly reminded you, YOU have the burden of proof, and in my case - that means you would have to undercut the contingency axiom I stated. You can't, and that's why you're just reacting emotionally now.

This shouldn't have been necessary. It was obvious to me from the beginning that your argument depended on Thomist metaphysics. In my first post, I said "Thomism is a theistic metaphysics - Aquinas developed it from Aristotelian metaphysics, in order to make sense of God's existence. So it's unsurprising that it would entail a God. I get the fact that this would appeal to theists, but it has no power to persuade non-theists, unless you succeed in fooling them into treating the metaphysical framework as true."

You didn't accept this THEN, but I've given you a good basis to accept it NOW.

Even if this axiom were granted, then we would just refer to caused beings then instead of contingent beings: this doesn’t help your case. If a chair is caused by, at least in part, the atoms which comprise it; then, boom, we have the same argument taking lift off…

Composition and cause are two different things. Funny that you relied on this difference in your last post, when you argued that an object that was causally necessitated was (ostensibly) contingent upon it's composition. Since I proved you wrong, you're now backtracking.

Contingenct axiom aside, the necessity of composition can only be false if objects have contingent properties. If such were present then individual identity would violate identity of indiscernibles. Of course, you believe there are contingent properties because you embrace Thomism, which assumes there is essence. The existence of essence is axiomatic to Thomism.

This means that the entity’s composition suffices to demonstrate the necessity of that being because, under necessitarianism, causation could not have failed to be exactly what it is.

I am 100% certain I correctly interpreted what Karofsky said. Her wording was intentional, and I applied it correctly.

Suppose cause C indeterminately causes some one member of a set of possibilties to exist. All members of the set are possible, but only one will member will be actualized. The other members of the set are "non-actual possibilities"

No, no, no. If necessitarianism is true, then there are no other possibilities than the causality that occurred because nothing could have been otherwise—... — Bob Ross

Why the heck does it matter what necessitarianism would entail? I've never suggested I'm defending necessitarianism. I was simply answering YOUR QUESTION: "What the heck is a non-actual possibility?", I simply gave you an example in which I STIPULATED that the outcome was indeterminate, to help you understand the concept. Personally, I'm agnostic as to whether quantum indeterminacy entails metaphysical contingency. But if it does, it's consistent with my contingency axiom.

The only cogent interpretation of a ‘non-actual possibility’ would be either A) a possibility which failed to occur or B) something which is conceivable but not currently actual. — Bob Ross

ROFL! I previously called you out for what appeared to be, your conflating conceivability with metaphysical possibility, which you then denied. But now you're being explicit - suggesting that conceivablity is all that's needed to establish that something is contingent. There's no rational basis for this claim, and that's why IMO my axiom of contingency makes perfect sense to me. Contingency entails "non-actual possibilities", and I find it absurd to think that non-actual possibilities don't need to be accounted for metaphysically. I don't care if you accept that, because I'm not defending an argument with the hope of persuading you. I'm just explaining the reasons I reject YOUR argument.

You are not understanding this argument at all. — Bob Ross

You don't appear to be understanding MY argument. I explained why I'm convinced the past is finite. If you think I made a logical error, identify it.

As an aside, I arrived at my view that the past is finite after spending a good bit of time examining the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which depends on the past being finite. Although I didn't find William Lane's Craig's argument for a finite past persuasive, I studied the issue on my own, applying my math background, and landed on the argument I gave you. My only point here is to demonstrate that I don't simply go into denial when seeing an argument I disagree with. You should try to do the same.

1) it is apriori more sensible to believe so - no examples of property-less objects can be cited


This would be a reasonable a posteriori argument if, again, we didn’t have an example now by way of demonstrating that a simple being is required to explain completely the causal chain of composition of an object.

2)it is an ad hoc assumption, that adds no needed explanatory power


It does, because we cannot explain composition otherwise. — Bob Ross

Apparently THOMIST metaphysics can't explain composition otherwise, but that's irrelevant. I can explain composition with MY metaphysical framework just fine.

Time itself doesn't have past present future. It is us who divide time into those categories depending on what point, and what part of time we want to focus on. — Corvus

Do you deny there's some innate sense of past, present, and future? If you agree that there is, WHY do you suppose we have this?

time itself doesn't become anything. — Corvus

Of course not: time isn't a thing. But the present has just come into being

Do all your all imaginings matter?

You clearly have an intuitive understanding of past present and future - because you refer to.them . Those are "imaginings", but they're primary - innate. No one has to train you to distingish events in this way. You just learn words to apply to your innate sense.

That distinguishes it from your other imaginings about past present and future.

The ordered relation: past-present-future refers to the actual, not to the order we choose to contemplate them.
— Relativist
In theory, the ordered relation is true, but in reality they are one. If you think about it, future continuously becomes present, and present becomes past. In this case, is the division actually valid? — Corvus

It does not follow that they are one. The "becoming" needs to be accounted for, and can be - in a way consistent with your intuitive basis.

It is important to note the difference between a necessary being in the sense of being incapable of failing to exist vs. in the sense of being uncaused. The former still allows for contingency of existence on other things, and the latter entails brute facts. I think this is the crux between us, which rides on a conflation between these two. — Bob Ross

Here's my Axiom of Contingency:

A contingent entity requires not merely a explanation for its being or being such as it is, but an explanation for the possibility that it could have been otherwise.

As previously discussed, an uncaused object exists without explanation, therefore it is not contingent.
Could an uncaused object be contingent upon its composition? Let's see.

First a preliminary point. There is more to a composition than a list of objects. It also includes the arrangement of the objects. Example: A molecule of glucose has the exact same set of atoms as a molecule of fructose, but the atoms are arranged differently (they are termed "isomers").

Now apply the axiom to a composed object, C. C is explained by its composition. C is contingent only if this explanation (the composition) could also explain C's nonexistence. That's obviously false. C IS the specific arrangement of the objects that compose it. It's a strict identity.


Conclusion: an object's composition necessitate the object being what it is; the composition is not contingent. Necessitarian Amy Karofsky puts it this way:

"the necessity of a necessary entity just consists in its being the way that it actually is. Thus, an explanation of the entity’s being as it is will be an account of its necessity. "
(Page 3 of "A Case For Necessitarianism")

What the heck is a non-actual possibility?!? — Bob Ross

This reflects back to the axiom.
Suppose cause C indeterminately causes some one member of a set of possibilties to exist. All members of the set are possible, but only one will member will be actualized. The other members of the set are "non-actual possibilities". Also, if C caused D, then "D's nonexistence" is a non-actual possibility.

There must be a first cause because an infinite series of causes is viscious, NOT because an infinite series of compositions is viscious

This isn’t true, though — Bob Ross

"Viscious" means having a vice; i.e. something objectionable about the account. The vice I identified was that there would be nothing to account for the chain as a whole. You're right, that IF God exists, he could account for it. That might be relevant if it could be shown that the past is infinite. Even if it's a live possibility, it doesn't entail God, it just entails that something must underlie the causal chain. You'd at least have to show that God is the best explanation. Your case would require you to show magical knowledge is plausible, which you obviously can't.

But we don't need to debate that, because there's a worse vice for an infinite past: it entails reaching the present from an infinite past, through a sequence of steps of finite duration. No set of finite duration steps can complete an infinity.

The past process is symmetrical to reaching an infinite future through a day-by-day process. Every step takes you a finite number of days from today. "Infinity" is never reached. The past is a mirror image: it's impossible reach from an infinite past.

Nothing can exist that lacks properties, so no object can exist that meets your definition of "absolutely simple".

Ok, but let’s go back to the composition quick argument I gave you: that demonstrates that your metaphysical theory here is false... — Bob Ross

I showed that your composition theory is inconsistent with my contingency axiom.

so I have not reason to believe that nothing can exist that lacks properties.

It's irrelevant what you believe. You have the burden of proof. But you could try to undercut my belief. I believe objects have properties, because: 1) it is apriori more sensible to believe so - no examples of property-less objects can be cited - 2)it is an ad hoc assumption, that adds no needed explanatory power. 3) it fits a coherent, parsimonious metaphysical theory.

I assume you agree that our imaginings of future and past are not the same as the future and the past.

But when you are reflecting the events in past, present and future, they don't need to always in the order of the past -> present -> future. You could think about the future on what will happen to your project or the world in next year, and then you could go back to the past, when you have started the project, and then think about the present state of the world economy — Corvus

So reflecting on past and future doesn't have bearing on their having actually been a past, nor in there eventually being a future. Right?

The ordered relation: past-present-future refers to the actual, not to the order we choose to contemplate them.

What did you mean by "future" when you said:

I was imagining and meaning some present moment in the future, — Corvus

?

because they're not existent objects, then naturalism is obliged to say that whatever reality they possess is derivative - products of the mind — Wayfarer

This sounds like a denial that they exist immanently. Existing entails them actually existing, but immanently- not as independent objects.

Abstractions are mental attitudes, which are derived by considering multiple objects with common elements, and mentally substracting the aspects that distinguish them. These mental attitudes ("abstractions") have no bearing on the ontology of the objects. They pertain only to how we might think about them.

And I would say, that this relation exists as an intelligible relationship, a regularity that registers as significant for an observing mind. Furthermore that while right angles might exist immanently in particular a carpenter's square they also transcend any specific instantiation. That it is actually a principle, or a form, which can be grasped by an observing mind, and existent in the sense that you and I can both grasp what a right-angle is. — Wayfarer

The right angles don't EXIST transcendently, nor does any "form". That would entail reifying abstractions.

Great. The next question is: what is the ontological status of relations?

Consider 2 straight objects, touching at their ends, and lying at a 90 degree angle to one another (a carpenter's square). I would not say that the 90 degree angle exists (it's not an object in the world), but rather: a state of affairs exists (the carpenter's square), and that the 90 degree relation is a component in this state of affairs. So in this sense, 90-degree angle does exist- immanently, within the state of affairs.

This may, or may not, extrapolate to the time-relation, but it's at least a step in that direction.

Space is not like time. Space exits without measuring anything. Does time exist, if you didn't measure it? Can you tell time without looking at a watch or clock? — Corvus

Both time and space are reference frame dependent. Space isn't an existent; it doesn't have properties. Rather, space (distance; length) is a relation between things that exist.

Time doesn't exist either. It's not a relation between things that exist. Rather, it's a relation between events.