If one number is greater than the other and so forth, e.g 1,2,3,4…
how do we know there are infinite amount of numbers when we can’t count to infinity? Indeed, we do not even know what infinity is! We can say a numerical progression does not have an end, but we can’t say the series of numbers are infinite for we can not comprehend infinity.
Oh, and I am back. I enjoyed my holiday. So what has everyone been up to?
Hi PoW. I dont think its a matter of having infinite amount of numbers (or names) we simply could say “and add one more” so the problem becomes a time/space issue.
What would end first: time/space or adding another number? Is time/space infinite? Most astrophysicists don’t believe so, so I assume counting would come to an end when our space/time did.
Re what have I been up to? I’ve become a gay bashing, muslim hating KKK member (Kristian Koalition Korp) and have started to experiment with wearing womens underwear. I particularly like the feel of the G string/thong – its like flossing your arse. At least I wont have worry about plaque build up. Welcome back.
what I find absurd is that people talk about infinity as if they know it exists. which as we all know is impossible.
Hello PoR! Good to have you back! 
However, I do think that it is, in fact, possible to know that infinity exists. At the very least, we can be sure that infinity exists as a concept. We know infinity to be the precise state of being that is anything other than that which we can acsertain(sp?) to be finite or limited.
Certainly, there is no tangible esscense/form of infinity, but this does not rule-out the existance of infinity in a mathematical or physics form.
Numbers, by definition, must be infinte. It may only be that we as humans have assigned names to the first trillion sequences of them (numbers). But in theory, if we came up with labels to represent quantities which exceed the trillions, then once again, the scale of numbers would increase.
Just my two cents, anyways… 
i think time is an illusion… it does’nt exsist, but something man has fabricated. infinity exsist ‘imo’ and we are in it and a part of it, and when i think about it mankind also fabricated numbers.
Hello all, new to the forums here, i have been reading for several days and decided to make a post. btw: i would like to say i really enjoy this site and the content. this is the first time i have joined a site about philosophy and i am not very knowledgeable on the subject, but it was recommended by a friend that i find a site dedicated to the things i like to discuss. i have been posting mostly on music related forums on the net and i guess i was just in search of more interesting content and people in general who like to discuss “cool” stuff.
Steve.
BMW-Guy
hi, good to see you again. so how are things?
hum… if you describe infinity as a concept, can you tell me what is infinity? Because defining infinity as “the precise state of being that is anything other than that which we can acsertain(sp?) to be finite or limited.” does not tell us what is infinity. it’s like someone asking ‘what is a woman’ and someone else goes, ‘a woman is someone who is not a man.’ you may know what a man is, but saying a woman is not a man does not say exactly what a woman is.
and if numbers are infinite then what is by definition the infinith number?
numbers get bigger and bigger, but as far as we know and can know, numbers will always remain in the domain of the finite.
Hi Artifact and welcome… If time is an illusion, then so too must be space since they are inextricably interlinked right?
hi there… thx for the welcome.
yes i believe time and space are very much connected, but only when we are using the Scientific approach or Physics approach to explain it.
living beings no matter where in the universe we/they reside i feel or like to speculate that “we” are space and time. Just mabye we are the outcome of the stuff of the universe and all living things are space and time at its most evolved state? they say evolution never stops. Carl Sagan happens to be one of my favorite philosophers/cosmologists, and he said it the best to my ears… (we are all just star stuff). hence my username which is supposed to really be CosmicArtifact
i can connect with him fully also that he stated that we are the universe in a state of evolution searching to better understand ‘itself’.
Infinity is a side-effect inference which seeps over analytical a priori rationalizations when occuring through a conscious negation of some being.
A priori because it isn’t empirical, it is rational, something deduced and self-evident via Cartesian doubt. Quantification of the world begins with the ontological life of the concept “Self.” That is the first and only “one” entity. All mathematics are negations of gratuitous being and number concepts are rational depictions of phenomenological experience in profiling the world: “That” is a “one.” “Those” are a “two.” Completely rational constructs that are not verified in experience but by experience. Mathematics is a mode of arranging sensibility into pattern, repetition and frequency, what would otherwise be non-existent without the presence of negation, the “breach” of pure being, so to speak. The cogito.
“Counting” takes place when the Self reflects on objective beings…empirical as substance, having mass and form occupying space, though not countable as distinct entities…the apple is the same stuff as the chair, only extended differently via empirical sensibilities. We look at an apple and call it “one” object…we look at the chair and call it another object. We look at them both and call them “two” objects. In reality the items are not different, not in the least, as every characteristic assigned to each item during the profile of its identity is yet another subject of objectivity, that is, to prove its existence, some quality or another must be reflected on, opening an endless deduction of sub-characteristic-characteristics, etc., etc. So we don’t arrive at the postulate “one object” through the empirical experience of some being, as everything is composed of “even more” qualities, but by the rational application of Self first, and then the object as “other-than-me.” Mathematics is essentially adjective, that is to say, giving an object the value of “one” is no different than giving an object the value of “good.” Describing something will always involve transcendent evaluations, begging the question unless the cogito is admitted, as “counting” is nothing more than this:
“I see a chair”= “(A)Me and a chair.”
“I see a chair and an apple”= “(B)Me and a chair-and-apple”
“I see a chair, an apple, and a Monooq”= “(C)Me and a chair-and-apple-and-Monooq.”
Notice that the value of the items I “see” are morphological. A, B, and C are single experiences. There are only two ontological distinctions here; me-ness and that-ness.
The concept of infinity comes about when one begins to break A, B, and C into individual values, setting off the “infinite” deduction of qualities and sub-qualities. Being is infinite in so far as there can be no nothingness without a negation…being is fullness but it is not something that can have the attribute of “many.” These descriptions are purely structures of consciousness.
We might treat the river paradox this way.
Just as I say to myself now that that river isn’t the same, as I can conceptualize “change” rationally, but not experience it via Imp’s “now-ness,” (which I agree completely with), I also say to myself that phenomenologically the river doesn’t change if by change I mean “things are no longer composed of more things,” which is originally the case to begin with, and I know that. By calling out “river” I am profiling a state of being which is contradictive by its very definition: A thing consists of changing things, which changes that thing, but doesn’t change things because they always change anyway.
I gotta tell ya’, I’m stumped on that one.
wow, me too… i have to look twice to see if i was reading in a forigen language and not english?
i have much to learn of philosophy… [/insert, flys over head emoticon here]
No, not really. What happens with my posts is very common. I have a terrible habit of not really saying anything specific, saying too much beyond the subject, or not enough about the pending subject…instead I move all around it. My ability to wrap up a premise and a conclusion into a nice tidy basket of eggs is few and far between.
Its not always the readers fault in my case. I’m still learning how to write coherently. I have no trouble thinking…but putting the concepts into “straight-jackets,” as Dunamis once called them, is a vigorous task for me.
oh no, you do just fine there, i understand your last words completely with what you just said. atleast you are able to explain to me so i better understand, because some places i have visited i begin to wonder if the people posting there on certain subjects were not just some type of digital anomoly? but i see you are very human… its a good thing…
btw: what i mean “(i) have much to learn” well put it this way, i dont even know half the people quoted in others sig’s or yours for that matter, i am an auto mechanic with no previous schooling in this subject at all, so pardon my ignorance if i reek of it.
Cool, I’m a carpenter. Lemme see your hands…
[inspects hands for callouses and stature]
Good strong hands, my friend. Not many can turn a torque wrench and live to tell about it.
Other than that, feel at home with me. I’m a highschool drop-out who stays stoned most of the time. I don’t know where that puts me on the “society’s greatest hit” list, but I do pay my taxes most of the time, and I haven’t killed anyone yet, so I reckon they’ll have me.
Hey, is there some philosophy to auto mechanics? Surely there must be.
yes actually there are quite a few, well mabye my own but here goes…
.if they built a car that lasted how would they sell you next years model?
.nothing is built to last
.you break em, we fix em
.failure is intergrated by design
and one of my favorites i actually got from a doctor when i had a visit to the emergency room once, and im scared as heck of hospitals…
.ahh looks like were in the same line of work then
which loosend me right up because he nearly had me rolling on the floor with that one. i realize they may not be philosophy “yet” but ill try to get a better one after i actually understand better what philosophy is.
What would the thought:
“Everything is happening all the time.”
…mean to anyone here.
If you had to explain it, what would you say?
détrop
You have said alot, but I some how have the feeling that you haven’t said anything at all. You are behaving like an expert politician. hehehe
That your thought seems counter intuitive. Whatever it is that is happening all the time, it isn’t my intuition, damnit.
the only way i could picture it… if i could us this in the same vein as the word association topic, it would say to me…
a serpentine butterfly effect
Rather than every event happening only once, every event happens repeatedly. The field of time contains infinite copies of every event. At every point in time you can find every single event. Every event is happening now. July 4, 1776 is not far away, it is here with us right now. The same is true of all events. Past and future are human labels and have no relation to the position of events in the field of time.
Forth dimensional beings have none of our limitations and can move freely in the field of time and can experience any event in any sequence.
The word time actually means movement or change. There is really no time, only change.