on the notion of beginless past and endless future
Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2019 3:30 pm
Just a piece of my mind, feel free to respond in any way.
(Taken from 'Naturalistic philosophy denies life')
DQ: "Again, the problem lies in your likening the present moment to the very last moment of an infinite future (or the very earliest point in an infinite past). The core reason why the very last moment in the infinite future cannot be reached is not because it would take an infinite amount of time to get there, but because no such point exists. The present, however, does exist. Because of this, the attempt to use the argument that the very last moment in the infinite future cannot be reached to prove that the present cannot be reached from an infinite past has no basis to it. "
Comment:
Temporal notions of causality involve an establishing of 'sequence' of events, which involves making demarcations between that which ‘precedes’ or ‘succeeds’ a thing. This demarcation can be said to be brought about by conscious factors such as memory, perception of change, perception of staticness, and the void that conditions consciousness at the very least. From our understanding of causality that any finite thing must be caused by what it is not, an event A that precedes event B can be said to be determined by B just as it can be said that B is determined by A. But in the case when A hasn't yet 'begotten' B, it must still be caused by something other than itself. If causality is limited to a temporal context, then it can be said to be logically true that any event( or moment) in time must have a ‘preceding’ event as a cause (and thus you have the notion of an infinite or beginless past). One can notice however, that there is no logical compulsion for an infinite succession of future events (effects), since the present moment already can be said to be defined by a preceding cause.
Of course, if one considers A to be 'caused' by something that lends the perception of being eternally static (and thus not meriting the terms as 'preceding' or 'succeeding' anything), then I don't see the logical compulsion to say that it must have a preceding cause in a temporal sense. This 'something' that is eternally static doesn't need to be abstract, the present moment conception of A can be said to be static and logically it must be defined by something other than itself (the perception of the observer at the very least)
In conclusion, although the points David makes about a beginless past in WOTI and in discussions on GF seem intuitively compelling and stimulating, they seem to lie more in the realm of empirical investigation rather than philosophical logic. I'm thinking like this because I'm still coming to terms with reconciling temporal notions of causality with logical causality.
Could the usage of these concepts just be a tool to stimulate the notion of continuity, similar to the manner that David does here -
(Taken from 'Naturalistic Philosophy Denies Life')
DQ: "This is a sophistic argument, akin to Zeno's paradoxes. Zeno, with tongue in cheek, tried to prove that a thrown ball could never reach the wall, and did it by mentally dividing up the distance between the ball and the wall into increasingly smaller segments - e.g. 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc - and emphasizing that such a sequence could never reach an end.
The disparity between the physical act of successfully throwing a ball against the wall and Zeno's "proof" that such an act is impossible is generated by Zeno's initial contrivance of dividing what is essentially continuous into segments. The very act of mentally dividing up the continuous into artificial segments is what sustains Zeno's false proof. Zeno is merely exploiting the distorted consequences of this artificial behavior."
It is my understanding that the very idea of continuity can only be explored by the contrast provided by discretization (i.e. segmentation), or more specifically, infinitesimal discretization. At least from an unenlightened perspective.
(Taken from 'Naturalistic philosophy denies life')
DQ: "Again, the problem lies in your likening the present moment to the very last moment of an infinite future (or the very earliest point in an infinite past). The core reason why the very last moment in the infinite future cannot be reached is not because it would take an infinite amount of time to get there, but because no such point exists. The present, however, does exist. Because of this, the attempt to use the argument that the very last moment in the infinite future cannot be reached to prove that the present cannot be reached from an infinite past has no basis to it. "
Comment:
Temporal notions of causality involve an establishing of 'sequence' of events, which involves making demarcations between that which ‘precedes’ or ‘succeeds’ a thing. This demarcation can be said to be brought about by conscious factors such as memory, perception of change, perception of staticness, and the void that conditions consciousness at the very least. From our understanding of causality that any finite thing must be caused by what it is not, an event A that precedes event B can be said to be determined by B just as it can be said that B is determined by A. But in the case when A hasn't yet 'begotten' B, it must still be caused by something other than itself. If causality is limited to a temporal context, then it can be said to be logically true that any event( or moment) in time must have a ‘preceding’ event as a cause (and thus you have the notion of an infinite or beginless past). One can notice however, that there is no logical compulsion for an infinite succession of future events (effects), since the present moment already can be said to be defined by a preceding cause.
Of course, if one considers A to be 'caused' by something that lends the perception of being eternally static (and thus not meriting the terms as 'preceding' or 'succeeding' anything), then I don't see the logical compulsion to say that it must have a preceding cause in a temporal sense. This 'something' that is eternally static doesn't need to be abstract, the present moment conception of A can be said to be static and logically it must be defined by something other than itself (the perception of the observer at the very least)
In conclusion, although the points David makes about a beginless past in WOTI and in discussions on GF seem intuitively compelling and stimulating, they seem to lie more in the realm of empirical investigation rather than philosophical logic. I'm thinking like this because I'm still coming to terms with reconciling temporal notions of causality with logical causality.
Could the usage of these concepts just be a tool to stimulate the notion of continuity, similar to the manner that David does here -
(Taken from 'Naturalistic Philosophy Denies Life')
DQ: "This is a sophistic argument, akin to Zeno's paradoxes. Zeno, with tongue in cheek, tried to prove that a thrown ball could never reach the wall, and did it by mentally dividing up the distance between the ball and the wall into increasingly smaller segments - e.g. 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc - and emphasizing that such a sequence could never reach an end.
The disparity between the physical act of successfully throwing a ball against the wall and Zeno's "proof" that such an act is impossible is generated by Zeno's initial contrivance of dividing what is essentially continuous into segments. The very act of mentally dividing up the continuous into artificial segments is what sustains Zeno's false proof. Zeno is merely exploiting the distorted consequences of this artificial behavior."
It is my understanding that the very idea of continuity can only be explored by the contrast provided by discretization (i.e. segmentation), or more specifically, infinitesimal discretization. At least from an unenlightened perspective.