mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
It is unknown at present, how the universe started.
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The first cause argument
- Thread starter firedragon
- Start date
It is unknown at present, how the universe started.
ppp
Well-Known Member
Ok. But that has no bearing upon the fallacious nature of the premise.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
So you like logic. I find that it has limits like any other human behaviour.
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
You know exactly this is not what I meant.
ppp
Well-Known Member
You said...
How is that different from you producing light? If you say it's you consume other creatures to produce your light , then I would say that the Sun consumed the corpses of other stars to produce its light..
How is that different from you producing light? If you say it's you consume other creatures to produce your light , then I would say that the Sun consumed the corpses of other stars to produce its light..
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
ppp
Well-Known Member
Oh? Then what is the difference between the two?
Sorry, this leads nowhere.
And yet, it is true. The only difference is that the light you emit isn't in the visible spectrum.
The sun emits light, in part, because it is hot. It is hot because of the gravitational energy that is converted to heat and the nuclear energy that is released by nuclear fusion.
To say it is uncaused is simply wrong.
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
In the source (sun) illumination is uncaused from outside.
muhammad_isa
Veteran Member
@Polymath257 , in case you missed it..
OK .. The distances between galaxies are increasing.
We've established that.
Infinity is not a determinable magnitude. It is an unrealisable limit.
We can say that the universe is expanding and approaching the limit. We cannot say that the universe is infinite, without saying precisely what is meant by that.
Do you follow?
OK .. The distances between galaxies are increasing.
We've established that.
Infinity is not a determinable magnitude. It is an unrealisable limit.
We can say that the universe is expanding and approaching the limit. We cannot say that the universe is infinite, without saying precisely what is meant by that.
Do you follow?
ppp
Well-Known Member
In the same way that your illumination is uncaused from outside.
Why is it unrealizable? I agree that you cannot build up to it by adding finite amounts to it. But nobody claims that is how it is realized.
It isn't approaching a 'limit'. Again, if it is infinite at one time, it is infinite at all times. Just like my line example, space itself is expanding. It is NOT the case that the universal expansion is matter moving *through* space.
The universe is, as far as we can tell, homogeneous and isotropic: meaning it is the same (on a large scale) at all places and in all directions. In other words, there is no 'boundary'.
So, if the volume is not finite (and finite volume can happen only if space is positively curved given the homogeneity and isotropy), it is and always has been infinite.
Do you follow?
Yes, I follow your ideas. I just think they are very far from being obvious and quite likely to be wrong.
So is the whole point that one sequence involves a self-generated phenomenon that is reflected off of other things and the Johns have new generation at each stage?
But, certainly, there was a first ancestor of those Johns that passed its genetics to the next generation. it was certainly NOT human and was likely to be unicellular, but there was a first one, right? So Both sequences require an uncaused cause for their ability?
And what did you mean? We produce light (infrared) from within. We do so because we have a temperature above absolute zero.
muhammad_isa
Veteran Member
That's what I mean. Whatever finite quantity one comes up with, there is always one bigger.
If we consider the limit zero, it is realisable.
In calculus, we can say: limit x ---> 0 for 1/x is ∞
In this case, infinity is not realisable. That is how I see it.
It is invalid to divide by zero. It gives meaningless results.
That's what I originally said. There seems to be more than one concept of "the infinite".
Yes, I realise that it is space itself that is expanding.
What I can't fathom, is if something is already of infinite magnitude, it can increase. The concept of what is infinite must be different from the limit as I discussed above.
Yes, it is. The limit idea is only one of many different notions of infinity. I have mentioned that before.
Cardinals have to do with the number of elements of a set. So infinite cardinals correspond to infinite sets. There are different sizes of infinite sets as defined by whether there is a one-to-one correspondence or not.
Ordinals have to do with the order of the elements (first, second third, etc). These turn out to be a more refined notion of infinity. So, if you add one to an infinite cardinal, you get the same cardinal. That is not true of ordinals, although the order of operations is important.
Limits, like those in calculus, are another notion of infinity. These are closest to the classical notion of 'potential infinity' while cardinals and ordinals are a type of 'actual infinity'.
Then there are notions of infinity that simply mean 'more than any finite measure of this'. So a line has infinite length since its length is more than any finite line segment in it. Similarly, a plane has infinite area and three dimensional space has infinite volume if it is Euclidean. In all cases, we can define what is meant by 'finite length' or 'finite volume' and certain sets are larger than anything with those properties (you said a line is absolutely infinite--not the same as Cantor's notion, though).
These are four *distinct* notions of infinity. Cantor was primarily concerned with cardinals and ordinals. His 'absolute infinity' had to do with sizes of sets *not* with limits or volumes. Calculus is primarily concerned with limits. And topology (math) and cosmology (physics) are concerned with both limits and the 'more than finite' versions.
So, when cosmology says that the universe is expanding, they mean that the distances between points is getting larger over time. They also mean it has infinite size in the last notion: larger than any finite amount.
You seem to get stuck on the notion that you can add certain infinities and get the same infinities back. That certainly happens with cardinals and limits as well as the 'larger than finite' versions, but it is not the case with ordinals.
But, in the case of infinite space in cosmology, the volume stays 'larger than any finite amount' while the distances between points increases.
And the moon *also* emits light from within. That light isn't *visible* light, but it is there and measurable. It is emitted simply because the moon doesn't have a temperature of absolute zero.
Here's another example. If you have something (say, a pot or molten glass) in a kiln that has been heated up, that object will emit visible light. That light comes from 'within' that object and is solely due to the object being hot. But we would not say that the light is uncaused.
We Never Know
No Slack
Yet the illumination is caused, same as the sun had a cause, same as the solar system had a cause, same as the galaxy had cause, same as etc etc etc had a cause. But at one point we don't know if there was a cause or not.
But if we go by evidence, everything we know had a cause...so
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firedragon
Veteran Member
So what difference does that make? I just dont understand your point. Maybe I didnt see your earlier posts.
muhammad_isa
Veteran Member
Mmm .. so infinity here means "more than finite".
.. the concept is neither finite or ∞ [ limit ]
I suggest that no such quantity exists in reality.
The distances we measure between galaxies are finite. It is only the belief that the volume of space that they occupy might be "non-finite" that allows us to think that the universe is infinite.
i.e. it relies on the concept that there is an infinity of infinities.
I suggest that if space is 'flat' and infinite, if you set out in one direction in space it would go on "for ever".
i.e. the volume of space is infinity x infinity x infinity
The question is, does that have the property of being able to increase?
I suppose it does. It "goes on for ever" whether it increases OR decreases .. infinity is weird. It is the way the mind works, I suppose.
I find it easier to imagine infinitesimals.