For those of you who think that infinite regression of time is impossible, could you please explain WHY you think that it is? To me, it is obviously not impossible, and in fact is necessarily the reality.
So exactly what is your excuse for believing in a limited past for the universe (besides, "Because that is what I heard on TV")?
It is not impossible, but the only analogy is with the perception of time, vis: just like with an infinitely so called regressed hall of mirrors, the images become smaller and smaller,m,whereupon a critical point in perception is reached, (spatial reduction)-where, the
Image can not be distinguished from the prior image.
Conceivably, it becomes a test of paradox, of infinity as a possibility, and it’s verification.
Conception of what infinity is, is what is at stake here, and it entails a verified state of boundless-ness
Which in fact, can never be verified.
As the regression progresses, boundaries become less and less verifiable between them, and beyond the limit they are not. Therefore, there is a maximum verifiable boundary behind which, no human intelligence, nor artificial for that matter, can attest to infinite regression.
The relativistic question of Einstein’s famous question becomes relevant here, whether anything exists, if there was no one to perceive it. It begs on the state of consciousness.
Infinity and consciousness seem to be the only co-existing guide posts, and therefore the relational attributes between them may become boundaries themselves.
Perhpas their relational paradox is akin to Zeno’s, of infinite divisibility. Consciousness can regress to infinity, but what of where even the law of limitation
Devolves the differentiation between the concept of an infinite consciousness, qua intelligence.
Conceivably, only an infinite intelligence could differentiate itself from IT’s Self, it not fall into the black hole,(figuratively speaking) of a lack of self differentiation.
The calculus of reason as Leibnitz described it, follows this pattern , and the foundation is, two perfect spheres.
The fact that Leibnitz solved the riddle of this distinction, leads to the implication, that there is an infinitely intelligent entity, which can support It’s Self, which is in a state, where the question of the OP, becomes at a certain point redundant.
The point being is, that the two spheres are co-dependent, and never totally mutually excluded from each other. Infinity and boundaries at this point become pure categories of logical necessity.
Because it is counter intuitive to believe something could exist without time and space. To say there was a moment before time space is to say that something existed somewhere and at some moment before time and space existed. We can’t conceive of such a thing because our understanding of ‘things’ and ‘events’ necessarily involves time and space. We have never experienced something outside of time and space before. We would be talking about something altogether different from anything else that we’ve ever known to exist. Something absolutely ineffable, since to identify it in any way would be to put it into time and space. ‘This’ [ holds up to class ] is a piece of what existed before time and space, and it existed ‘here’ [ points to map with no space] and looks like ‘that’ [ shows picture of nothing ].
Yes, but what if the whole infinite universe, if there is one, were to suffer infinite collapse unto it’s self , into a total ‘Black whole’ of some kind. Is that conceivable? The kernel of that black whole being beyond it’s self, but having a potential existence.
I can’t imagine the ‘stuff’ that takes up space and creates time by moving around, ever going somewhere outside of time and space through a hole in time and space. Maybe it would go somewhere else after undergoing some kind of fundamental spin charge modification at the black hole singularity and turning into a strange new element that is spit out the other side.
That’s poetry dude. What is a black hole being beyond itself? Sounds like lyrics to a Sound Garden song or something.
Well, how about another (dig)(reg) ression if after such a catastrophic collapse, the potential for that world would ‘explode’ into another, parallel universe?
But if time ceased at one singularity, how could it be measured in the other? Therefore, parallel universes describe Kant’s notion of the categories of the transcendence of time and space. Is this an improvement over Leibnitz , or, was the latter’ s but a kernel, an a priori re presentation to the former’s?
So I am not exactly pulling it out of a hat.
The problem with the matter of God or the Universe or Nature or whatever you want to call it is the problem of its starting to exist, not of its eternal existence, which is easily conceivable.
Spinoza tackled this problem and sorted it out. If you think of everything that exists in the universe as being an attribute of some sort of another thing, that other thing would need to exist before this thing could exist itself. The thing’s essence is therefore contingent and unnecessary; the chair or the song or the war or the lasagna depend on something else to exist. These other things are the ideas through and with which they are conceived and understood. Everything in the universe is like this; we observe that no thing is necessary and that things are constantly changing anyway. No thing then can have as part of its definition the necessity of its existence, so therefore relies on something else to define it as an individual thing. The one thing that all individual things have in common is this quality of being defined in relation to and through something else. This something else is a characteristic that is a part of the thing’s essence and not its identity. Because existence does not pertain to the essence of particular things (contingencies), there must be something that all things share which is part of something with an existence that constitutes its essence.
This could be called ‘substance’ in the sense of ‘that which stands beneath’, not in a corporeal sense; The ‘stuff’ that must exist is not something that could have ever began existing, because that would mean it wasn’t fundamental but contingent… something that didn’t have to exist (because two seconds ago it didn’t) and then suddenly began existing. But the sharing of the essence of what is fundamental to all things that can exist is what precludes something’s existence. Whether a particular thing exists or not is no negation of the logical necessity of there being a fundamental necessary ‘stuff’, like a magical metaphysical property or something that everything has.
To summarize: something that at one point didn’t exist and then began existing, would have to have as the cause of itself something external to it that existed prior to it. This implies that there be some kind of cause that did exist and that it needn’t depend on another cause to exist, itself. And what could that be? Well it would have to be precisely what we are talking about here; some kind of essentially fundamental power stuff that has always existed. This stuff cannot ever have begun to exist, nor could it ever stop existing.
If something can be said to be caused it must be a particular contingent event in time and space. That underlying property of all existing things that is part of the essence of existence cannot be caused by something external to itself… it is not an ‘event’ or ‘thing’. Gods and Universes don’t start existing. It’s existence is necessary before all else and it cannot not exist. What you call ‘it’ is irrelevant. Some call it Jamesean Noise.
You guys can figure out that there can not be a “time before space and time”, right?
Time is merely a measure of relative change.
How can change begin without a cause that had already begun?
Well, sure, and that is a basic transcendental category. In other words proof for the a priori synthetic notion Kant put out. (Way before the advent of astro-physics).
I prefer “Affectance”. 
Yes, and across this Affectance Noise is a plane of causal immanence that is establishing an infinite number of orders and suborders of particular causes and effects throughout the entire system. Information systems that could be called ‘conscious’ if you play around right with that word, but in the least, complex enough in their relations to be called a system. When an ecological system comes to consist of intentional creatures that use an environment, the two become one in a systems sense. The environment becomes what the creatures using it want it to become, so the environment is intentionally structured, hence the transepiphenomemal change from cartesian spirit acting upon a material world to the interactive anomalous monism of Davidson’s triangulation.
Aha!
Not so fast. Can Dennett’s criteria for ‘intentional systems’ be given to the ecological system created in the interaction between an intelligent creature and an environment? If we have a symbiotic relationship here, the entire economy of the organism in its environment could be seen as a single predominant intention to reproduce and sustain itself; all systems have this property first or they cannot function as a system. If the environment’s environment is directed and controlled, the part of the interaction that was once more random is now eliminated and the environment is manipulated to be a certain way on purpose. Doesn’t this manipulation via the transphenomenological intentional properties given to the material activity of the creatures give the environment the property of intentionality in a Dennettean Intentional System?
Discuss.
The only caveat I can think of, Zoot, to the idea that Gods and Universes do not start existing, is in the lack of clear differentiation between them. they are contingent, even God and the Universe, therefore they are not identical. So, Since universes are not
absolutely identical to God, although they are never absolutely different or mutually exclusive either, they can come into existence. Their co-dependence
consists of Creation. Creation has offspring in
renewal, repetition, eternal recurrence, and in a sense they give off the semblance of identity. As in infinite regression.
The topical representation is the embedded idea
formed by the optical manifestation of the hall of mirrors effect. In a hall of mirrors, each re-occurred image formed is a little smaller, and the limit is reached, where the image becomes indiscernible.
The reoccurred universe(es), also reach a functional
limit as they approached innumerable repetitions, and they appear here, to be identical.But as in Zeno’s Paradox, the necessity to find a perfect identity fails.
There is no absolute certainty, between the two, setting the stage for the coming uncertainty-(in God’s
case, a matter of the diminishing affect of faith)
perhaps this to do with some form of ‘affectance’
or noise?
The manipulation may also be but a semblance, or a contingent effect. Intention shallows out at this point,
,the identifiable features of contingency, is overcome by necessity.
Error: in the above unidentifiable elements, instead of identified, are overcome.
So that’s how it’s gonna be then? You gonna do me like that?
To somehow resolve this need more time. conflict resolution ain’t easy. It’s more logical contradiction then anything. In the process of infinite reduction, or it’s semblance, patience is needed, so as to balance the intended effect, with the visible affect.
This may be simply the manifestation of the effect thinning out as the noise increases, as the the volatility caused by the pressure of re-integration of differential logical systems cause a shift toward one or the other.
James, I’m not arguing this. But, some people might. They might say, “because everything else that’s ever been observed appeared to have a beginning”.
Back again to this [for me]:
[b]Bryan Magee from Confessions of a Philosopher:
For a period of two to three years between the ages of nine and twelve I was in thrall to puzzlement about time. I would lie awake in bed at night in the dark thinking something along the following lines. I know there was a day before yesterday, and a day before that and a day before that and so on…Before everyday there must have been a day before. So it must be possible to go back like that for ever and ever and ever…Yet is it? The idea of going back for ever and ever was something I could not get hold of: it seemed impossible. So perhaps, after all, there must have been a beginning somewhere. But if there was a beginning, what had been going on before that? Well, obviously, nothing—nothing at all—otherwise it could not be the beginning. But if there was nothing, how could anything have got started? What could it have come from? Time wouldn’t just pop into existence—bingo!–out of nothing, and start going, all by itself. Nothing is nothing, not anything. So the idea of a beginning was unimaginable, which somehow made it seem impossible too. The upshot was that it seemed to be impossible for time to have had a beginning and impossible not for it to have had a beginning.
I must be missing something here, I came to think. There are only these two alternatives so one of them must be right. They can’t both be impossible. So I would switch my concentration from one to the other, and then when it had exhausted itself, back again, trying to figure out where I had gone wrong; but I never discovered.[/b]
Then he poses the same quandary re “space”.
Me too.
But so much more to the point: what are the odds that any mere mortal on this planet in this solar system in this galaxy in this universe – one perhaps of an infinite of others – actually might know the “correct answer”?!!
It is always and ever fasicnating to speculate about things like this. But what does it tell you about the frame of mind of those who actually do believe that they have in fact “figured it all out”?
Sure they have.
Yes, I have heard that argument (recently). But of course, the set of all things is infinitely different than"a thing" that had a beginning. Has anyone ever, ever observed the beginning of all things … even once? How would you know if they did or didn’t? Without logic, there is no knowing. With logic, there is no beginning.
Oh, I’d say pretty close to 100%
That they have hope from the trying.
I’m just saying, when something has never happened within the view of anyone, it’s hard to believe it happened. Like that woman that allegedly gave birth without getting fucked and nutted in. I mean…shit’s kinda hard to believe.