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Either time is a measurement of motion, or motion is a measurement of time. Which is more basic? Motion, or time? . . .

I've said this before: Things moving presuppose time.

Can you define time?

If "things moving presuppose time," then time should exist even when nothing is moving, correct? So, imagine that nothing in the universe, including yourself, was moving. Nothing at all is happening. Nobody is writing a forum post. Nobody's heart is pumping. The earth stopped rotating on its axis. The Sun stopped creating light. The entire universe shut down. What then is time? What does time mean in such a context?

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In that link, I don't understand why the infinite is impossible.

ITOE pp 148, Rand discussing invalid concepts, and measurements that are omitted (as per her theory of concepts)

The same applies to the concept "infinity", taken metaphysically. The concept of "infinity" has a very definite purpose in mathematical calculation, and there it is a concept of method. But that isn't what is meant by the term "infinity" as such. "Infinity" in the metaphysical sense, as something existing in reality, is another invalid concept. The concept "infinity," in that sense, menas something without identity, something not limited by anything, not definable. Therefore the measurements omitted here are all measurements and all reality
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  • 3 weeks later...
ITOE pp 148, Rand discussing invalid concepts, and measurements that are omitted (as per her theory of concepts)

I've read it and still do not understand why infinity should be considered invalid. Why should it imply "without definition"? It simply means, "without terminus".

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When Rand says that infinity as a mathmatical concept is a "concept of method", I read that as meaning that in mathematics, infinity does not stand for something, in particular, but only as a representation of a methodological process. For instance, related to the idea of a limit, derivative or an integral. For example, you cannot do arithmetic with infinity as you would with a bounded entity like 4. In that sense, infinity does not actually exist as a thing, such as 4 or 5 or 20, but rather is a place holder for an epistemological method. This is where mathematics maybe confuses us, because we seem to sometimes represent it as an existent, such as 4 or 5, but it is not.

So too in reality. Infinity contradicts identity. It cannot be a measure for instance because it in reality means, no measure in particular. Identity refers to characteristics, in particular. It can be an epistemological device (i.e. a device of method - such as in mathematics), but nothing in reality is infinite.

As anti-axiomatic, it should show up (or not show up) in everything, and be validated perceptually. What do your senses tell you?

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How, then, does one make sense of the fact that magnitudes of infinity are used to produce predictable results in physics.

Do you then claim that 4 exists as a thing?

Why should infinity in reality contradict identity since such a notion does not imply the existence of infinity but of an infinite existence--and since you seem to claim that the natural numbers exist, and are infinite, you seem to have committed yourself to at least one such infinite set.

I have heard from scientists that the best current model for the Big-Bang is that it happened "everywhere at once" and presumes the lack of finity in matter and space. So while I'm not perfectly convinced of it, I suspect that the universe is infinite.

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How, then, does one make sense of the fact that magnitudes of infinity are used to produce predictable results in physics.

Infinity is not a magnitude. Are you referring to limits, integrals, etc? If so then the concept of infinity is used as a method to arrive at always bounded results in physics. Show me a physical (not just mathematical) problem that results in an answer (i.e. in a real thing) being infinite.

Back in a minute.

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Do you then claim that 4 exists as a thing?

I didn't mean to imply that 4 exists as a "thing" outside of mathematics. In math though, 4 is an example of something that has identity. By the way, you're making my head hurt, which usually means I'm pushing the bounds of my understanding of the topic. Don't be surprised if you find me backing off soon... :thumbsup:

Why should infinity in reality contradict identity since such a notion does not imply the existence of infinity but of an infinite existence--and since you seem to claim that the natural numbers exist, and are infinite, you seem to have committed yourself to at least one such infinite set.

hmmm. there is an error there, and I think it has to do with whatever and "infinite existence" is. I didn't claim that numbers are existents in reality so I'm not sure that that is enough to accept your claim. So the idea if I understnad it is "why couldn't the universe go on forever, but with everything in it being a bounded entity, just an infinite number of them...?" is that right?

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Infinity is not a magnitude. Are you referring to limits, integrals, etc? If so then the concept of infinity is used as a method to arrive at always bounded results in physics. Show me a physical (not just mathematical) problem that results in an answer (i.e. in a real thing) being infinite.

Back in a minute.

Well, infinity as such is not a magnitude in the same sense that the range of magnitudes of stars is not a magnitude--it's a rang. But there are provable magnitudes of infinity--aleph_0, aleph_1, and so forth into infinity (but into which infinity?).

There is a formula which makes use of such "trans-finite" numbers as values. It's usually not put into the form where the value of the equation, when all variables are substituted for values, is equal to infinity, but I see no reason why it could not be. I cannot find the formula with a very quick search, though I could ask friends if they remember where to find it. And, as applied, it does not produce a determinate result but a probability of results. All the same, the itself probability can be tested and verified.

A definition is a terminus in a certain sense. A definition serves to separate where one concept "ends" and another "starts."

Well this certainly applies to many things which may be described as infinite. The natural numbers are infinite, and yet they "start" at the "end" of the negative numbers and they "end" and the real numbers. To say that the set of particulate matter which composes the universe is not finite still separates the matter from the non-material (such as from the energy, and from empty space).

I didn't mean to imply that 4 exists as a "thing" outside of mathematics. In math though, 4 is an example of something that has identity. By the way, you're making my head hurt, which usually means I'm pushing the bounds of my understanding of the topic. Don't be surprised if you find me backing off soon... :thumbsup:

Fair enough. All the same, I'd have trouble learning the identity of 4. You see, I've never met 4, I have not studied it, nor have I read any reports on it. (I'm obviously playing devil's advocate in order to make the language in this conversation more precise.)

there is an error there, and I think it has to do with whatever and "infinite existence" is.
That's easy enough to explain. Think of a set of finite existent objects, and then think of that set as having more members. How many more? The number is not finite. If you could make intelligible the notion of the first set being finite, surely you can make sense of the new set being not finite. Another way to put it is, for every arbitrary, practical account of the content of the universe, there some content that is not accounted for.

I didn't claim that numbers are existents in reality so I'm not sure that that is enough to accept your claim. So the idea if I understnad it is "why couldn't the universe go on forever, but with everything in it being a bounded entity, just an infinite number of them...?" is that right?

Sure. Or moreover, why couldn't any given thing be infinitely divisible? I'm not sure even I take this to be intelligible, but for the sake of argument I will pretend that I do. You will have some given thing and it will be no more than what it is; and it will be separate from what it is not. It is a mere curiosity that, at any given arbitrary stage of sub-division, a further one is possible.

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1. Well, infinity as such is not a magnitude in the same sense that the range of magnitudes of stars is not a magnitude--it's a rang. But there are provable magnitudes of infinity--aleph_0, aleph_1, and so forth into infinity (but into which infinity?).

2. There is a formula which makes use of such "trans-finite" numbers as values. It's usually not put into the form where the value of the equation, when all variables are substituted for values, is equal to infinity, but I see no reason why it could not be. I cannot find the formula with a very quick search, though I could ask friends if they remember where to find it. And, as applied, it does not produce a determinate result but a probability of results. All the same, the itself probability can be tested and verified.

3. The natural numbers are infinite, and yet they "start" at the "end" of the negative numbers and they "end" and the real numbers. To say that the set of particulate matter which composes the universe is not finite still separates the matter from the non-material (such as from the energy, and from empty space).

4. That's easy enough to explain. Think of a set of finite existent objects, and then think of that set as having more members. How many more? The number is not finite. If you could make intelligible the notion of the first set being finite, surely you can make sense of the new set being not finite. Another way to put it is, for every arbitrary, practical account of the content of the universe, there some content that is not accounted for.

5. Sure. Or moreover, why couldn't any given thing be infinitely divisible? I'm not sure even I take this to be intelligible, but for the sake of argument I will pretend that I do. You will have some given thing and it will be no more than what it is; and it will be separate from what it is not. It is a mere curiosity that, at any given arbitrary stage of sub-division, a further one is possible.

Aleph, I added the numbering to your quote above. Thanks for providing. It helps me think through it.

My biggest question is: aren't all of these examples, examples of the use of infinity as an epistemological device, that is as a concept of method? All except for #4 that is.

1. conceptually developing the concept of an infinite series - whose method is take the last number and add one to it to get the next.

2. method of using the concept of infinity to solve a physics problem where the final referrents to reality are acutally limited.

3. Another conceptualization of an infinite series.

4. Positing an infinite series as an actual existent in reality.

5. Conceputalizing the method of subdivision, and extending that infinitely. This is Anaxagoras problem as well which is quite simple to resolve and see only as an issue of mistaking method for reality.

Certainly we use infinity as a method often, especially in mathematics, but what is it that in any way indicates to you that such a thing exists in reality? Just because you can create a method does not in any way necessitate its existence as an actual real thing.

If I understand your idea of infinite existence (that is, that every existent in the universe is bounded, but that the number of existents is infinite), then this instance of infinity would be a unique singular aspect, right? Now, the universe is not a thing, per se, but rather it stands for the collection of all existents. My question then becomes, how would one induce its existence as infinite? That is, by looking at only a few elements of the universe, how would one be able to tell, not that other parts of the universe exist, but that those other parts are, in fact, infinite?

The fact that infinity shows up somewhere in a physics equation is not satisfying since infinity shows up in all sorts of places as a concept of method. How do I know that this infinity actually correlates to an infinity in reality if the others do not.

I'm nowhere near up on the physics, but I know enough about limits to be pretty clear that all measurements of the universe will be finite, even if the existents in the universe are infinite. That is, if I could separate a portion of the universe from the rest and then measure the aspects of that rest piece relative to my portion, even if the rest is infinite, I will always measure a finite quantity. For example, the graviational pull of an infinite mass spread out along an infinite distance is a finite value. It would read just as if it was a finite mass at some finite distance, so how do I know it's not?

It's an interesting though, I'm just not sure how anyone could claim that the universe is infinite from any sort of evidence...

... which makes me still wonder if I haven't made a mistake somewhere in accepting your premise, but honestly. I'm not sure what that is.

The guy who has this stuff down cold is Binswanger. When my head starts spinning on these concepts very near to metaphysics, he's usually the one who will point out the error. Looks like I'm ready to go get this tape.

http://www.aynrandbookstore.com/prodinfo.asp?number=CB04D

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Aleph, I added the numbering to your quote above. Thanks for providing. It helps me think through it.

My biggest question is: aren't all of these examples, examples of the use of infinity as an epistemological device, that is as a concept of method? All except for #4 that is.

Well, that's the question. To give my view, I am somewhat Fregean. I take number to be inextricably tied into being and concept--at least, for the natural numbers, which I take to be the most important and fundamental class of numbers. To be one is for a concept to have one instance. Number is existence and existence is number. We may suspend our investigation into what it is that exists and study the behaviors of would-be quantification--i.e. quantification of "any arbitrary concept". So our formal mathematics is purely a set of rules, a game, which stands in an isomorphic relationship to the real world. Ironically, this last idea is perfectly juxtaposed to Frege.

What does this have to do with infinity? Well, in our formal system infinity will simply be another element in the formal language which creates more expressive power. Outside of the formal language, it will simply mean a concept without limit to its extension. That does NOT mean that any given object which falls under the concept will be without limit in every way. To my knowledge, only monotheists talk about a being that is infinite in an infinite manifold of ways. In this view, however, an arbitrary object will have limits--in fact, it may be "saturated" by limits, a term I ad hoc-ly coin to mean that there is nothing about it which may be called infinite. (Whether there may be objects which are limited in some ways but not in others, such as taking the universe to be a single object and having no limit to its length, I leave on the backburner, along with the question of real numbers and others.) But I see no reason why it would be invalid to say this: the concept "a thing which exists" has no "last instance". It's not just an epistemological fact, put this way, but a metaphysical one. The guy counting things that exist might see it as an epistemological issue, but we are saying, "Assume that the extension concept 'a thing which exists' is infinite. What contradiction ensues?" Here, the question forces the conversation to stand in metaphysics, and I see no inherent contradiction.

Certainly we use infinity as a method often, especially in mathematics, but what is it that in any way indicates to you that such a thing exists in reality? Just because you can create a method does not in any way necessitate its existence as an actual real thing.

If I understand your idea of infinite existence (that is, that every existent in the universe is bounded, but that the number of existents is infinite), then this instance of infinity would be a unique singular aspect, right? Now, the universe is not a thing, per se, but rather it stands for the collection of all existents. My question then becomes, how would one induce its existenceas infinite?

That's a good question and I leave it to the scientists. But it reminds me of a couple things. The most apparently relevant is mathematical induction. Prove a property holds of the base case and prove that, if a property holds of any given thing then there is a "next" thing that also has that property, and so there becomes an infinity of things with that property, none of which need be proved directly. The other thought is that there was a scientist who said we will never know the content of the stars because we cannot get to them. Within a decade after his death they invented spectroscopy. From what little I know, scientists today hypothesize the infinity of existence by means of the infamous Universal Background Radiation.

I'm nowhere near up on the physics, but I know enough about limits to be pretty clear that all measurements of the universe will be finite, even if the existents in the universe are infinite.

A physics Ph.D. friend of mine tells me he's more than comfortable measuring distances as magnitudes of infinity, and though I know string theory is increasingly anathema these days, it's interesting that some scientists are now proposing that the set of points in space are of cardinality aleph_1. I don't know. I'm mostly interested in possibility--can we straight-off disregard any science which talks about infinite beings or concepts with limitless instances in the same way that we can disregard science which talks about the existence of contradictions? So the question of whether we have evidence for some thing that is infinite is more or less uninteresting to me.

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The fact that infinity shows up somewhere in a physics equation is not satisfying since infinity shows up in all sorts of places as a concept of method. How do I know that this infinity actually correlates to an infinity in reality if the others do not.

http://www.aynrandbookstore.com/prodinfo.asp?number=CB04D

I just had an argument with my logic professor and found this to be a weak point my argument. I believe I largely carried the day until he mentioned that purely formal systems (mechanically rigorized methods of producing theorems) can never be complete. I suppose I need to study math more to know exactly how integrals and complex numbers work, but though they seem to make use of formal languages, the power of proofs must rest in the human mind. So exactly what "method" does the human mind use?

Find anything from Binswanger?

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Your logic professor must have pulled a fast one (Goedel's incompleteness theorem) on you.

Recursion. Seriously.

I saw it coming from a mile (i.e. years) away, but yes, Godel's Incompleteness is a high hurdle. Although I think I have an unverbalized response which I need to make verbal. Recursion, being susceptible to exactly this problem, is not the answer. Clearly.

Any other thoughts?

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Goedel's "incompleteness theorem" says that a purely formal deductive system (ie, a purely rationalistic system) is not closed. D'uh.

A purely formal deductive system does not have any facts drawn from reality. A system of knowledge is not closed unless it's got facts drawn from reality. Incorporate facts of reality into your purely formal deductive system and presto! you've no longer got a purely formal deductive system.

Goedel is an absolute genius for realizing that pure rationalism does not admit the facts of reality into its system. But he is an absolute asshat for confusing a pure rationalism with actual knowledge, and declaring that knowledge is therefore not "closed".

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But he is an absolute asshat for confusing a pure rationalism with actual knowledge, and declaring that knowledge is therefore not "closed".

I'm gonna defend Godel here... He actually spoke out against people interpreting his result as saying that actual knowledge is not "closed". He held firmly that the result of his theorem was only that rationalistic(though he would have said formal) systems weren't closed.

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From what fact of reality do you derive the distance 2^(1/2)?

Where did Godel ever correlate formal theories with human thought or knowledge? As far as I know, he was very careful to distance himself from that and only very cautiously did he come to acquiesce to the idea that he had defeated Kantian formalism. It was everybody surrounding Godel that took his result to be as philosophically and epistemologically significant as many now like to see it.

Here here, Cogito.

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That's a good question and I leave it to the scientists. But it reminds me of a couple things. The most apparently relevant is mathematical induction. Prove a property holds of the base case and prove that, if a property holds of any given thing then there is a "next" thing that also has that property, and so there becomes an infinity of things with that property, none of which need be proved directly. The other thought is that there was a scientist who said we will never know the content of the stars because we cannot get to them. Within a decade after his death they invented spectroscopy. From what little I know, scientists today hypothesize the infinity of existence by means of the infamous Universal Background Radiation.

aleph_0,

I wanted to get back to this item because I've been thinking about it.

The "mathematical induction" concept that you propose. It seems pretty unique to me. The universal background radiation is not an example of it. Note that the inductive proof would be that given something(s) exist(s), that it necessitates the existence of something else. The UBG sort of induction simply tries to use what is known to show that something else is acting on it and to try to account for its magnitude. What you propose is really different. I'm not sure I've seen any framework that attempts to make this sort of induction.

This makes me wonder if the technique really only applies to mathematics and whether or not it would be applicable to reality. That something necessitates something else seems like primacy of consciousness stuff to me.

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Mathematical induction is actually a rather meat-and-potatoes tool in metamathematics--unless you meant that it only applies to mathematical "objects". But you're right, I never claimed that the universal background radiation was an example of it. As I said, the topic reminded me of two things: mathematical induction and the universal background radiation. It actually reminded me of several more, but I left it at this.

As for its applicability to reality, I took it merely for a proof of at least one thing that is able to indirectly prove facts about an infinite domain of discourse. At the end of the conversation, remember that I flatly don't know how scientists came to their conclusion that the universe is infinite. But I also don't know how one could exclude, on principle, such a conclusion. The idea of an infinite universe is clearly intelligible and defined--the state of affairs that must hold in order for the statement "the universe is infinite" to be true is understood by everyone. There are, then, three questions: Could that state of affairs hold of actuality, and why or why not?; could we ever know that such a state of affairs holds (do we have any other means of investigation besides checking finitely many things in an infinite universe)?; and does that state of affairs hold?

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I beg to differ. Imagine a passage of time with literally, fundamentally, and absolutely no change. What would it mean, here, to say, "Time has passed"? In what way would this situation differ from a world in which there is no time at all? There would be no difference in any possible way, and "two" things which share all of the same properties are the same thing.

I'm glad you put 'two' between quotation marks. You're supposing there're two worlds - now stick to it: They're not the same thing.

And besides, I think there's a difference between a world with time and one without: The latter would not exist. My intuition is that time and being presuppose each other.

I'm not sure there is such a huge difference. Then again, I'm not sure there is not such a huge difference. One might say, "Consider the comparison of length and height--you can't! One is essentially a separate dimension from the other, and you cannot commensurate distinct dimensions. If you measure length by anything it must be by measures of length--not height." On the other hand, time might have some unique property which makes it incommensurable in this regard. Perhaps the reversibility you mention would be relevant. I don't know, and it's not obvious.

You'll have to agree with me that for example height and lenght are quite interchangable. If height becomes lenght and vice versa, you'll just have to tilt your head to get the old picture. I'd say there's no really fundamental difference between the three directions - but there is between spatiality and temporality. To me these really seem to be (two of?) the most fundamental 'axes' of our thinking, and I don't see how one of them might be reduced to the other, or how both of them might be reduced to something even more fundamental.

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Can you define time?

If "things moving presuppose time," then time should exist even when nothing is moving, correct? So, imagine that nothing in the universe, including yourself, was moving. Nothing at all is happening. Nobody is writing a forum post. Nobody's heart is pumping. The earth stopped rotating on its axis. The Sun stopped creating light. The entire universe shut down. What then is time? What does time mean in such a context?

No, I can't define time. Not in a way that makes sense, that is. But can you?

If you can imagine a universe where truly nothing happens, you could still also imagine a clock sitting 'next to' (that is, not within) this sad universe obediently ticking away time. Nothing is happening within the frozen universe, but thanks to the clock that's not a part of it, you still know that time is passing within it. What does time mean in this context? It means what it always does: The universe passing from time-state to time-state. There's just no way of knowing that this is happening, but that doesn't mean there is no time. You can still imagine that if there were a working clock in this frozen universe, you would be able to know that time was passing in it. Stopping all movement isn't going to stop time, it merely stops our being able to know that time passes.

And consider this: If you imagine a universe, this universe should include you yourself as well. The universe is everything that is, after all. If every movement in the imagined universe is stopped, you could still know that time was passing in it. Just think "one, two" and you'll know. Thoughts take time. Then perhaps we should stop all thought as well? In that case you're not going to be able to know what a timeless universe is like, or whether it exists in the first place. Knowing takes time as well. At this point we're at the esse est percipi again, but I actually darenot flatout deny it at this point. In this context I can see where people advocating it are coming from.

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You'll have to agree with me that for example height and lenght are quite interchangable. If height becomes lenght and vice versa, you'll just have to tilt your head to get the old picture. I'd say there's no really fundamental difference between the three directions - but there is between spatiality and temporality. To me these really seem to be (two of?) the most fundamental 'axes' of our thinking, and I don't see how one of them might be reduced to the other, or how both of them might be reduced to something even more fundamental.

There are really two senses of the term 'time'. There's proper time and coordinate time. Proper time is completely different from coordinate time. In any scientific argument involving relativity related issues one cannot mistake the one and the other as always being identical.

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I'm glad you put 'two' between quotation marks. You're supposing there're two worlds - now stick to it: They're not the same thing.

And besides, I think there's a difference between a world with time and one without: The latter would not exist. My intuition is that time and being presuppose each other.

Actually, strictly speaking, to say that there are "two things" does not imply that they are "two distinct things". For instance, Mohammad Ali is a man and Cassius Clay is a man, they are two men, but they are indistinct men. The average speaker of English would say, "They are the same man." But let's think about that: "they" is a word denoting plurality. Re-written, but truth-functionally equivalent, is the sentence "These two men are the same man."

Wittgenstein has famously poked fun at this, but it is the standard understanding of the way we speak. If you want to insist upon an idiolect for our particular conversation, we may, though I think it may require that we loose some expressive power.

Anyway, as for your intuition, what do you refer to as "time"? What is it? What are its properties? How do you know when it exists, and how much of it there is?

By most (if not all) accounts of time, the passage of time is the progression of change--going from one moment to the next. When there is literally and absolutely no change, then it is right to say either or both that there is no time or that there is only one "moment" which does not move on to the next. Here, I suppose you might say that there is a time but no passage from one time to another.

Granted that, you might reconstruct the hypothetical as: Tell me the difference between a universe with no change and a universe with only one moment, which does not pass on to any next moment. They are inextricably linked and defined in terms of each other.

You'll have to agree with me that for example height and lenght are quite interchangable. If height becomes lenght and vice versa, you'll just have to tilt your head to get the old picture. I'd say there's no really fundamental difference between the three directions - but there is between spatiality and temporality. To me these really seem to be (two of?) the most fundamental 'axes' of our thinking, and I don't see how one of them might be reduced to the other, or how both of them might be reduced to something even more fundamental.

I would at least agree that they are commensurable, and I agree that in some sense there is a qualitative difference between these taken collectively (taken as space) and time. However, whether that difference is relevant to our conversation, I don't know. Squirrels are very different from humans, but shoot either in the head with a high-powered rifle and it will die. Their differences are not relevant in that particular regard. I would need to see evidence and argument that the differences between space and time are relevant.

If you can imagine a universe where truly nothing happens, you could still also imagine a clock sitting 'next to' (that is, not within) this sad universe obediently ticking away time. Nothing is happening within the frozen universe, but thanks to the clock that's not a part of it, you still know that time is passing within it.

Because, ex hypothesi, these two are not in the same universe, I don't see how this shows that time progresses in a universe with no change. Here, you have stepped into something like a "third" universe which subsumes these two and so, while in the first nothing happens and in the second something does happen, the only reason it is sensible to talk about time is because there is progression within that universe which contains both of these. If we restrict ourselves to a universe with no action, there is no sense in saying that it has time or that time progresses in it. As I said, take this universe and compare it to a universe that has no time or "one moment". They will be indiscernible in absolutely every way, and so they will be identical.

The universe passing from time-state to time-state. There's just no way of knowing that this is happening, but that doesn't mean there is no time. You can still imagine that if there were a working clock in this frozen universe, you would be able to know that time was passing in it. Stopping all movement isn't going to stop time, it merely stops our being able to know that time passes.

You have a contradiction built into your hypothetical, sort of like hypothesizing about a round square. You cannot have a ticking clock in a "frozen universe".

If you imagine a universe, this universe should include you yourself as well. The universe is everything that is, after all.

But certainly I can imagine a universe without me in it. I will be thinking about it, certainly, but I will not be in it. In exactly the same way, when pointing to a city, your finger is not a part of the city even though the finger is referring to (or is in some way "about") the city. So there is no reason to suppose, in any universe, that you must exist within it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Existence exists, to be is to be something, to possess identity, causality is a corollary of identity, i.e.: the law of identity states that an entity will have a certain kind of nature under a given set of circumstances and will have no other nature under those circumstances.

Time is the attribute of causation called sequentiality. Causation is a relationship between an entity and an event - specifically it is the relationship that identifies that a given event must be preceded by the motion of an entity which gave rise to it. Time is the attribute of this relationship that identifies that effects follow from causes in a particular sequence.

Space is unoccupied volume, i.e.: between two buildings.

The philosophical premise of metaphysical objectivism is true, and has been validated I'd argue far before the the detonation of the atomic bomb, but for the physical validation of the already discovered philosophical premise of metaphysical objectivism I suggest you watch the detonation of the atomic bomb and look at the physics behind it.

Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed.

The universe is finite but measurement does not apply to the universe, which, by definition, is everything that exists as a whole.

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