Time elapses “since” some moment in time (not necessarily an absolute beginning in time of the universe) “to” some other moment in time.

If not, then I don't understand what you mean by “passed”.

Yes. The gift I expect is that you refrain from posting for a month. :-) -- don't take me seriously, please.

And then it's clear that there are an infinite number of years that have passed already to the present day.
— god must be atheist

...since when? — Amalac

Time elapses “since” some moment in time (not necessarily a beginning in time) “to” some other moment in time.

If not, then I don't understand what you mean by “passed”. — Amalac

By "an infinite number of years that have passed" I meant "an infinite number of years each of which came after another".

If you want to pinpoint the phrasing to points in time, then "an infinite number of years have passed in a series of infinite number of points in time, each point being between two consecutive years." This is just one way of an infinite way of saying the same thing.

That doesn't answer my question.

“5 years have elapsed since 2016 to today” has a clear meaning for me, but “infinitely many years have passed since «never» to today” doesn't.

Something that happened/passed since “never” is something that in fact didn't happen/pass.

Something that happened since “never” is something that in fact didn't happen. — Amalac

I did not say "It happened since never."

I answered your question. Which part of "infinite number of points each of which are between two consecutive years" do you not understand? I'm willing to work with you on that.

“5 years have elapsed since 2016 to today” has a clear meaning for me — Amalac

I would venture to assume that if you can conceptualize five years that have passed since a point in time, then you can also conceptualize one year passing since a point in time.

I did not say "It happened since never." — god must be atheist

Then since when?

I answered your question. — god must be atheist

I thought earlier you said the question wasn't even legitimate. But anyway, just tell me how you define the term “passed” (what I asked you before).

“X amount of time passed” by definition implies that it passed since some point in the timeline to some other point in the timeline.

So if you say an infinite amount of time has passed up to the present day, then you must also say that it passed since some point in the timeline, otherwise I've no idea what you mean when you say an infinite amount of time “passed”

If you have trouble understanding a simple English word, then my teaching you the meaning of "passed" may have some dire difficulties.

If you need to know how I defined "passed", which is a commonly used English term or word, then how can I be sure ahead of time that the terms I use in the definition will be clear to you? You may turn around and ask me to define each word in the definition. It is not an impossible expectation by me that you will, because if you don't know what "passed" means, then there are very likely a lot of other things you don't know.

So if you say an infinite amount of time has passed up to the present day, then you must also say that it passed since some point in the timeline, otherwise I've no idea what you mean when you say an infinite amount of time “passed” — Amalac

I actually said, if you would kindly check, that an infinite number of years passed, not an infinite amount of time.

I understood this question by you, and I answered this way:

"an infinite number of years have passed in a series of infinite number of points in time, each point being between two consecutive years." — god must be atheist

I appreciate that my composition is awkward. So please consider this. It has your point you insist on, it has infinity, and it has the years. It's all in there. Please read carefully.
"A year passed after a point in time that marked the end of the previous year, in an infinite series."

You are forcing me to mince words, and you know that; it's fine, I can do with some English construct exercises. Thanks.

If you need to know how I defined "passed", which is a commonly used English term or word — god must be atheist

As it's commonly used, “passed” or “elapsed” implies a beginning and an end.

This sort of definition is the one I have in mind:

Elapsed time is simply the amount of time that passes from the beginning of an event to its end.
(...) In simplest terms, elapsed time is how much time goes by from one time (say 3:35pm) to another (6:20pm).

That definition doesn't assume that the universe must have had a beginning in time, for if the universe has no beginning in time, I can still say for instance: 13.8 billion years have elapsed since the Big Bang happened to today. But I can't say: infinitely many years have elapsed since ??? happened to today.

If you say that time doesn't have to pass or elapse “since” some moment, then you are using the term in a way that's different from how it's usually used, hence why I ask you to tell me what you mean by that.

I actually said, if you would kindly check, that an infinite number of years passed, not an infinite amount of time. — god must be atheist

Isn't an infinite number of years an infinite amount of time? I don't see how that distinction is important.

"A year passed after a point in time that marked the end of the previous year, in an infinite series." — god must be atheist

Surely, this doesn't answer the question: “Since when did infinitely many years pass up to the present?”

If I asked someone: “since when have 5 years passed? I expect them to simply answer: “since 2016”.

So if I asked you “since when have infinitely many years passed?”, I expect you to answer “since year X”.
So what's the value of X?

Perhaps you just mean that if the universe has an infinite past, then an infinite amount of time “exists” or “It is the case that the past is infinite”, which is fine by me, and doesn't fall prey to Kant's criticism.

I am losing patience, which cost me once my professorial career. (I kept on screaming at my students.)

But I can't say: infinitely many years have elapsed since ??? happened to today. — Amalac

You're right. And this is why I paraphrased it. And I assure you I did not use it differently from you. You can live with that definition, as long as you are able to comprehend my paraphrasing the concept.

Watch this carefully:

I use the same term in the same way and in the same meaning as you in this:

In simplest terms, elapsed time is how much time goes by from one time (say 3:35pm) to another (6:20pm).

I will NOT change the meaning or the usage, but you must follow me carefully.


Can a year pass after a year ends? Yes or no. If you answered yes, you were right.

Can you name the end of a year a point? Yes or no? If you answered yes, you were right.

Can you imagine three years in a row, with two occurrances of one year ending, and another beginning at one point in time in the three-year period? If you can imagine that, please continue.

Can you imagine a thousand years in a row, with a thousand minus one occurrences of one year ending, and another beginning at one point in time in the thousand-year period? If you can imagine that, please continue.

Now... take a deep breath... if there are an infinite number of such one points, that each of them are between two consecutive years.... is that hard to imagine? Yes, or no? If no, then forget it, I can't show it to you.

Now... a passing of a year is between two points. Each of the years in the above series passed between two points... and there is an infinite number of them.

Does this make sense to your pedantic insistence on the proper use of "pass", "year", "infinite" and "and" and "you" ... etc. etc.

Isn't an infinite number of years an infinite amount of time? I don't see how that distinction is important. — Amalac

Exactly. You are absolutely right. But to get the point, as it may be, across to you over the hurdle of pedanteria, you had better accept that the two are equivalent.

So if I asked you “since when have infinitely many years passed?”, I expect you to answer “since year X”.
So what's the value of X? — Amalac

If you go back, I did point it out to you that this is the wrong question. Much like asking "how manieth infinitely small point is the end point in a straight line segment consisting of an infinite number of infinitely small points?"

If I could bet on something it would be the existance of a type of energy that includes everything. All the information United.Like genes in people for example. And there won't be any past no future or any kind of time. Just Everything together in a united form of energy which includes all universal information and "history". I don't say that this happens indeed just saying my lucky guess. For sure though the term past is a human "invention". There isn't such a thing in Universe

, not quite sure I agree with the quote.
I perceive/sense location and distance, which are different from the located and distant (like objects), and perceiving/sensing this takes time.
My coffee is out in the kitchen, some meters away, not everywhere, anywhere, nowhere, but somewhere.
I perceive/sense change when fetching it (and that I do, consistently).
None of this is the coffee, and neither is it existentially mind-dependent (no more than the coffee, if you really must).
Spatial differentiation is perceivable/sensible, yes? (hm not sure "sensible" is the right word here)
Or at least so it seems? :)

cannot find the reference — Cuthbert

I had a couple of references, but they keep moving around...

• James Harrington
• Craig Skinner

Don't think it's contradictory (implies a contradiction, p ∧ ¬p), but it is counterintuitive.
Why would the backward recitation end at one time and not another, any other?
A definite earliest time means a definite age (at any time), so why this age and not another, any other?
Weird.



What's violated here seems to be the principle of sufficient reason.
Skinner writes "Take your pick"; maybe "Pick your poison" is better?

Spatial differentiation is perceivable/sensible, yes? (hm not sure "sensible" is the right word here) — jorndoe

What you say here reminds me of David Hume's view (as Bertrand Russell interprets him) that we percieve relations of time and place, although we do not perceive causal relations.

According to Kant, it can be proven that space is a necessary pre-condition (“anschauung”) of all perception. One of his arguments (though a dubious one) is that we can't imagine anything as not being in space, but can imagine empty space (space with nothing in it). Bertrand Russell interprets this as implying that Kant's space is absolute, not relational.

So, if we suppose that Kant managed to imagine absolute empty space, then it would seem that space could be perceived in the mind's eye, though not perceived in the world. But as Russell pointed out, it is hard to see how one could imagine space with nothing in it.

Witnessing indicates observation. To witness an object from outside its limits merely indicates observing the object’s spatial boundaries.
— Mww

What is the boundary of the world then? I guess you mean something like the CMB? — Amalac

I diverge from Kant here, and adjoin Schopenhauer, re: the world as “will and representation”, in that I consider the world to be the immediate unity of phenomena, that which directly appears to my representational faculties, a much narrower view of experience proper. All else, being possible experience doesn’t change the my idea of world, but rather, enlarges its content and thereby its limits. As such, the boundary of my world is the totality of my possible experience, and, because of that restriction, the CMB is irrelevant.
—————

Assuming the absolute validity of the principle, the only reconciliation is simultaneity, in which time is no longer presupposed, yet for which account is given.
— Mww

So by simultaneously you don't mean “at the same time”, what do you mean by that then? Logically simultaneous? — Amalac

I think more the simultaneity of the initiation of phenomena, with the possibility of the representation of them, by an eventual intellect equipped with a cognitive system predicated on it. Within such a system, time is not an object so doesn’t depend on the ontology of objects, but it is used by the system in referencing objects to the system or to each other, so as soon as objects become possible, so too does the possibility of referencing them. Time is therefore irrelevant if there are no objects and if there is no system.
————-

If there's no present, and an infinite amount of time has elapsed as Kant maintains in the first thesis, since when to when did it elapse? — Amalac

Again, he doesn’t maintain it, he supposes it in order to have something to debunk. There is a world in existence, therefore an infinite time is impossible, for that world. There may be an infinite time regressively from the beginning of the world, but not from an infinite time progressively to the beginning of the world. There is no present for the world from a progressively infinite time makes no sense. From the progressively infinite time point of view, to ask what time elapsed to what time, makes no sense. What is there to reference it to?

If you read the antinomies, you should have found he did the same thing in the antithesis. In the thesis he supposed the world had no beginning then proved it did, in the antithesis he supposed the world had a beginning and proved it didn’t. They are called conflicts of transcendental ideas for just that reason; either can be proved in its own way.

I wish to know how the two concepts in Kant's definition are described: infinite and infinity. — god must be atheist

Didn’t I do exactly that? Dunno what else you want.
—————

If the infinite is an adjective as you say,
— Mww

you are using it as a noun. You used it as a noun when you quoted Kant.

Are you referencing this: “Now, just as the unit which is taken is greater or smaller, the infinite will be greater or smaller”?

Ehhhh....that just means regardless of how many minutes there are in an infinite time, there will be more of them than an infinite time composed of hours.

Easy peasey — god must be atheist

, I'm sort of thinking that perception itself is temporal or process-like (comes and goes, interruptible), and what we perceive (along with locations/distances, the located/distant) is change moreso than time.
I might be thinking wrong, though.
_{(I guess Hume, Kant, Russell left some imprints decades after reading and mostly forgotten.)}

Mww, you must use more care with the quote function. Your way of using it attributes to me YOUR utterances. That is not only sloppy, it is misleading and unfair. Please clean that up.

Yeah, my bad. I saw it, but couldn’t fix it without starting over. Compromised between making an effort and taking the heat.

@Amalac

I apologize for butting in but I want to run something by you.

There are three parts to time - past, present, future.

The future presents no problems as regards it being an infinity for the simple reason that it doesn't, in a sense, violate our mind's "integrity" which seems to, in this particular case, hinge on the Aristotelian distinction between actual and potential infinity - that the former kind is ontologically suspect while the latter kind is acceptable.

The past, however, is treated as something complete - done with so to speak - and thus, any talk of the past being an infinity immediately sets off alarm bells inside our heads.

It might be of some help hsre to look at the definition of infinity. I visited the Wikipedia page on infinity and among the various meanings of infinity, I find this:

but infinity continued to be associated with endless processes — Wikipedia

Concentrate all your fire on the nearest starship...er...I mean focus your attention on "endless". Infinity, it seems, is defined in terms of an end, to be precise, endless. There simply is no talk of the corresponding concept of an end viz. the beginning.

Could this mean we can't, shouldn't, apply the idea of infinity to beginnings? If yes, then infinity and a beginning to time or anything else for that matter can't be harmonized in a way that we can grasp.

Why, you may ask, is it that people (philosophers/scientists/theologists/etc.) continue to investigate this matter as if it makes sense?

For my money, this is the situation because we're reversing the arrow of time i.e. we're looking at the past as a time traveller. When we do that the past flips in a manner of speaking and morphs from an actual infinity to a potential infinity. How you look at the past (normally or as a time traveler) will cause it to flip-flop between an actual infinity and a potential infinity. This, in all probability, will play havoc with our minds. My puny brain at least is baffled beyond measure.

The past, however, is treated as something complete - done with so to speak - and thus, any talk of the past being an infinity immediately sets off alarm bells inside our heads. — TheMadFool

Is the series of negative integers, ordered from smallest to biggest (ascendingly), complete? Yes, in the sense that it ends with its last element -1. That’s true in spite of the fact that it has no first term.

Likewise, if the universe had an infinite past, the temporal series would “end” in the present moment.

My view is that the concept of time passing or elapsing is only applicable to finite intervals of time, so I disagree with Kant when, paraphrasing, he says: “If the universe had an infinite past, that implies that an infinite amount of time has elapsed“, I don’t think an infinite past would imply what he says it implies.

I just don’t see why we would want or need to say that an infinite amount of time elapsed, if the past were infinite.

Time is just a measurement and yes, one may measure infinitely in either direction, negative numbers or positive numbers, past or future. Although one million-billion years seems like a lot of time, it will occur going forward and has occurred going back, if one wants to measure that far. However, all that really exists is the timeless present moment which is always here and is the only place where anything may be done, including measuring time.

I diverge from Kant here, and adjoin Schopenhauer, re: the world as “will and representation”, in that I consider the world to be the immediate unity of phenomena, that which directly appears to my representational faculties, a much narrower view of experience proper. All else, being possible experience doesn’t change the my idea of world, but rather, enlarges its content and thereby its limits. As such, the boundary of my world is the totality of my possible experience, and, because of that restriction, the CMB is irrelevant. — Mww

Hmm, ok.

I think more the simultaneity of the initiation of phenomena, with the possibility of the representation of them, by an eventual intellect equipped with a cognitive system predicated on it. Within such a system, time is not an object so doesn’t depend on the ontology of objects, but it is used by the system in referencing objects to the system or to each other, so as soon as objects become possible, so too does the possibility of referencing them. Time is therefore irrelevant if there are no objects and if there is no system. — Mww

Ok, that makes sense (I guess?)

Again, he doesn’t maintain it, he supposes it in order to have something to debunk. — Mww

Well that's what I meant, it seems I expressed myself poorly (english is not my mother tongue).

There may be an infinite time regressively from the beginning of the world, but not from an infinite time progressively to the beginning of the world. — Mww

If the past is infinite, then there would be an infinite amount of time regressively from the present moment, right? You say, it seems, that there is no “present moment”. But how, then, do you define “the past”, if not as the time previous to the present moment?

If you read the antinomies, you should have found he did the same thing in the antithesis. In the thesis he supposed the world had no beginning then proved it did, in the antithesis he supposed the world had a beginning and proved it didn’t. They are called conflicts of transcendental ideas for just that reason; either can be proved in its own way. — Mww

Yes, I know how his antinomies work, but if one of the arguments for a thesis is fallacious, then one can't even say that you can “prove it in its own way”.

Well that's what I meant, it seems I expressed myself poorly (english is not my mother tongue). — Amalac

Actually, never mind: going back to that post you're refering to, what I said was that he maintained that if the past were infinite then that implies that an infinite amount of time has elapsed.

I'm not saying Kant maintained that the universe had an infinite past, I'm doubting the truth of that hypothetical proposition.

But how, then, do you define “the past”, if not as the time previous to the present moment? — Amalac

That is how I would define it, but I didn’t use “past” in my statement. You transcribed the term into it.
———-

I'm doubting the truth of that hypothetical proposition. — Amalac

Hence, the antithesis. Or in your case, a possible antithesis, upon your presentation of a thesis self-consistent and necessary in its own right, but constructed with different initial conditions than he used.

As long as the Kantian antinomies are the ground of the discussion, best to keep in mind.....

“....Thetic is the term applied to every collection of dogmatical propositions. By antithetic I do not understand dogmatical assertions of the opposite, but the self-contradiction of seemingly dogmatical cognitions (thesis cum antithesis), in none of which we can discover any decided superiority. Antithetic is not, therefore, occupied with one-sided statements, but is engaged in considering the contradictory nature of the general cognitions of reason and its causes. Transcendental antithetic is an investigation into the antinomy of pure reason, its causes and result. If we employ our reason not merely in the application of the principles of the understanding to objects of experience, but venture with it beyond these boundaries, there arise certain sophistical propositions or theorems. These assertions have the following peculiarities: They can find neither confirmation nor confutation in experience; and each is in itself not only self-consistent, but possesses conditions of its necessity in the very nature of reason—only that, unluckily, there exist just as valid and necessary grounds for maintaining the contrary proposition....”

....so if you’re going to argue the falsity of all or parts of the series of antinomies, you should stay in the context provided by the section in which they are found.
————-

I'm not saying Kant maintained that the universe had an infinite past, I'm doubting the truth of that hypothetical proposition. — Amalac

So you’re doubting the truth of the hypothetical proposition that the universe had an infinite past. Regardless of what that has to do with Kantian antinomies, and best you refrain from referencing them when expounding on how you conclude the fallaciousness of that hypothetical, what truth contained in it is doubtful, and how is it doubted?

On the other hand, if you insist on referencing the antinomies, perhaps start with this.....

“.....Now the infinity of a series consists in the fact that it never can be completed by means of a successive synthesis. It follows that an infinite series already elapsed is impossible...”

......which, while having nothing to do with the universe, does.....er....maintain....that no infinite series can have a past, an “already elapsed”, so the truth of the hypothetical proposition “the universe had an infinite past”, is already refuted, so you are correct in doubting it.
————-

what I said was that he maintained that if the past were infinite then that implies that an infinite amount of time has elapsed. — Amalac

So is this where you’re coming from? And by association, is this the hypothetical proposition the truth of which you find doubtful?

“....up to every given moment of time, an eternity must have elapsed, and therewith passed away an infinite series of successive conditions...”

You’re equating your “if the past were infinite” with his “an eternity must have elapsed”, probably, which is fine. Close enough. As well, your “an infinite amount of time must have elapsed” is close to his “therewith passed away an infinite series of successive conditions”.

So why are you doubting the truth of what he says given you are saying practically the same thing?

The problem arises upon recognition that his hypothetical proposition is prefaced by granting there is no world. You can find the truth doubtful in his hypothetical proposition, just as he himself does, from the excruciatingly sufficient reason that there is a world.

All I can do now, is grant I got the hypothetical propositions mixed up, and that’s not what you’re talking about at all. If so, you’ve successfully confused the hell outta me, and I’m at the end of my dialectical rope. So fix the confusion, or forget the whole thing.....up to you.