I'm suggesting it could be that you have one life and experience it multiple times. So each time you experience it, you never remember the previous time, so it feels like the first time. If you remembered the previous experience, it would not be the same life. — Devans99
Again, this simply doesn't make sense. You can't watch a film for the first time numerous times, can you? On your view you can. So much the worse for your view. It doesn't make sense. — Bartricks
But living numerous indistinguishable lives is not the same as living the same life again and again. Living the same life again and again would mean watching a film for the first time numerous times - which is obviously impossible. — Bartricks
Think about 4d spacetime. There is no past/present/future in 4d spacetime. All moments have the same status. So I introduced the moving spotlight idea (not mine) as a way to have eternalism and have a distinction between 'now' and past/present. We can distinguish now from past/present so the concept seems to be a requirement. The moving spotlight moves over Jan 2020 and then X billion years later, it moves over Jan 2020 again. — Devans99
The point is this: on your view, 'now' is also 'future' and 'past'. So, this moment right now, is also future and also past. No good saying that it is just 'presently now', for it is also presently future, and presently past - on your view. — Bartricks
The proof is actually all intelligent beings must be benevolent:
1. You are an evil person. You meet a good person. You are punished
2. You are an evil person. You meet a evil person. You are punished
3. You are an good person. You meet a evil person. You are punished
4. You are an good person. You meet a good person. You are rewarded
It is an example of the thinking of a human intellect. — Punshhh
Perhaps I should ask you to define God, or which theological system you are referencing?God cannot be omniscient unless he has a very strange nature. The clue is 'know thyself'.
Perhaps I should ask you to define God, or which theological system you are referencing? — Punshhh
God might be in eternal communion with a near endless number of other Gods, wh oas a collective are essentially omniscient — Punshhh
On the contrary God might be in eternal communion with all other real beings (remember, I am suggesting that we as we know ourselves are not real, but constructs). — Punshhh
Well I don't think we can answer that, or even if it is a valid question. I don't see why it is important, he might be in contact with all the beings in a discreet eternal space. This does not negate other possible discreet eternities.But how could he ever proof to himself that he is in contact with every possible being?
All point [3] says is 'If there is no nth moment there is no nth+1 moment'. In the case of time ending, then there is an nth moment, so argument [3] does not apply to that scenario. — Devans99
So the spotlight would have had to start somewhere, no doubt at the Big Bang — Devans99
Sure, which is not proof.I disagree — Devans99
Maybe?moments are arranged sequently so they must be representable by the real number line or the naturals — Devans99
I've just addressed a couple of them — Leibnizian sufficient reason and your mathematical induction (and similar) — neither of which work. No use in repeating them I s'pose. I can show you again why they don't work. Here's the latter again:That is about 5 proofs I've given that time has a start — Devans99
I'm not aware of any such proof. As mentioned somewhere, it's not a mere logical matter.Vs 0 proofs you have given that time has no start — Devans99
I take "become undefined" to mean more or less "cannot exist". In the abstract, supposing a (definite) 1st moment = "removing all previous moments", which then, by this ↑ supposition of yours, implies that "all subsequent moments become undefined".if you remove a previous moment, all subsequent moments become undefined — Devans99
I think of God as some sort of benevolent, timeless architect of the universe — Devans99
If time is circular then why would the spotlight have started at the big bang? It could have started at any point. — khaled
If time is circular, events must be deterministic, because if they're not they wouldn't repeat given the same conditions, so time wouldn't be circular — khaled
Barring special pleading, "atemporal" thinking sentience is nonsense. — jorndoe
The almost certain existence of a start of time mandates that something atemporal and intelligent exists. You have to remember that as humans we are only familiar with a small fraction of possible states of existence - God maybe something completely different to what we are experienced with. — Devans99
Mind reading fallacy? (I'm entirely irrelevant.) — jorndoe
1. Assume time has no start
2. Then there is no first moment
3. If there is no nth moment there is no nth+1 moment
4. But we have moments (contradiction)
5. So time must have a start — Devans99
Since all real moments are indefinite, it is logically impossible to distinguish one from another, let alone "remove" one. We can arbitrarily designate instants to mark off intervals of time with fixed and finite duration, but we cannot "remove" those, either. It straightforwardly begs the question to treat time as if it were isomorphic to the natural numbers, which are discrete and have a first member, thus ruling out the possibility that time is truly continuous and does not have a definite beginning.If we remove any moment or time interval if you prefer, then all subsequent moments or time intervals become undefined. — Devans99
Real time as a whole either has first and last instants or indeed "must return into itself," but we cannot determine which is the case solely by means of a strictly mathematical "proof."It may be assumed that there are two instants called the limits of all time, the one being Α, the commencement of all time and the other being Ω, the completion of all time. Whether there really are such instants or not we have no obvious means of knowing; nor is it easy to see what "really" in that question means. But it seems to me that if time is to be conceived as forming a collective whole, there either must be such limits or it must return into itself. This is an interesting question. — Peirce, NEM 3:1075, c. 1905
Mathematical time, conceived as truly continuous, necessarily "returns into itself, and begins again."You may, for example, say that all evolution began at this instant, which you may call the infinite past, and comes to a close at that other instant, which you may call the infinite future. But all this is quite extrinsic to time itself. Let it be, if you please, that evolutionary time, our section of time, is contained between those limits. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that time itself, unless it be discontinuous, as we have every reason to suppose it is not, stretches on beyond those limits, infinite though they be, returns into itself, and begins again. — Peirce, RLT 264, 1898
Peirce's own cosmology is not "elliptical" (or "circular"), but "hyperbolic," positing that the states corresponding to the initial and final instants are different from each other as ideal limits, rather than actual events--complete chaos in the infinite past, and complete regularity in the infinite future.Observation leads us to suppose that changing things tend toward a state in the immeasurably distant future different from the state of things in the immeasurably distant past ... It is an important, though extrinsic, property of time that no such reckoning brings us round to the same time again. — Peirce, NEM 2:249-250, 1895
But at any assignable date in the past, however early, there was already some tendency toward uniformity; and at any assignable date in the future there will be some slight aberrancy from law. — Peirce, CP 1.409, c. 1888
If we remove any a moment or time interval if you prefer, then all subsequent moments or time intervals become undefined. Time with no start means no initial moment/interval, so the basic argument therefore still holds. — Devans99
We can arbitrarily designate instants to mark off intervals of time with fixed and finite duration, but we cannot "remove" those, either. — aletheist
How would you suggest removing a moment from time? — Metaphysician Undercover
Since all real moments are indefinite, it is logically impossible to distinguish one from another, let alone "remove" one. — aletheist
We cannot even mark off intervals of time by designating instants, because as special relativity indicates such designations would differ depending on your frame of reference. — Metaphysician Undercover
This is exactly backwards. An infinite past entails that there has never been a moment that was not preceded by another moment, consistent with the continuity of time that we directly perceive in the present. A definite beginning of time entails that there was one moment in the past that was not preceded by another moment, making it a discontinuity.... we know that an infinite past essentially comes with a moment removed at the start so such a construction is therefore impossible. — Devans99
Again, this is exactly backwards. Infinite past time entails that there was never nothing, instead always something--namely, time itself. A definite beginning of time entails that something came from nothing, or that something outside of time created it. As I said before, a strictly mathematical "proof" is insufficient to determine which hypothesis--infinite past time or a definite beginning of time--is correct.Infinite past time is like a something from nothing - there is no initial state, so no subsequent states - the existence of the present would therefore be like a magic trick. — Devans99
This straightforwardly begs the question by presupposing that being "fully defined" (whatever that means) requires an "initial starting state." Grasping at straws, really.What you are missing is that the past defines the future and an infinite past can never be a fully defined past because it has no initial starting state (so it must by induction be null and void all the way through). — Devans99
Again, it is impossible to "prove" that time has a start with only mathematics and logic.There are about 6 other ways to prove time has a start. I gave a couple here: — Devans99
Again, it is impossible to "prove" that time has a start with only mathematics and logic. — aletheist
Begging the question (again).Time with the way one moment defines the next is a example of an infinite causal regress, all of which are impossible as they have no first element. — Devans99
Non sequitur.We can also use physics too: perpetual motion is impossible, therefore time has a start. — Devans99
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