Join the Majesty of Reason Discord! Link: dsc.gg/majestyofreason ALSO: At 27:10, the conclusion should say “So, infinite causal DEPENDENCE among…”, NOT “So, infinite causal regresses among…”
21:00 Small annotation (I am not sure if this affects ur argument) Q the set of all rational numbers does not include infinity as it is not an integer. The problem that I have is that with most religious arguments use infinity as a countable conclusion to their regression. If u count a series of rational numbers u will never reach infinity even if u count an infinite numbers. Infinite is much more of a mathematical concept and i feel like people skip due diligence when they use it colloquially. Very often because its convenient or to dazzle people with how hard it is to grasp.
Great argument. Let me try some rebuttals: -- Premise (2) reason #1: We could respond by simply stating that omiscience does not require knowing all truths simultaneously, but only the ability to know any particular truth at any time. This way, not all knowledge is actual in God's mind/consciousness simultaneously and therefore, there don't exist infinitely many things in God's mind/consciousness. On this view, God is also not required to have knowledge about every future state already in his mind, but he is still able to have knowledge about any future state which he chooses to think about. So, not all possible knowledge of all future states is actual at the same moment in God's mind and this seems to be not in violation of dependence finitism. The same argument goes for infinitely many ideas. You might think: "Oh but then there are things God has never thought of." And you were right. But I don't see how this would be problematic for most types of theism. Since God will think of these things, if he chooses to. I would also deny that knowing something depends on all possible truths that can make you know that thing, but only on any amount of sufficient truths. For example: I know that I am in Germany right now. It is true, that I am in Germany. It is also true, that I am currently in Remscheid (town in Germany). It is additionally true, I am currently in North-Rhine Westphalia (state in Germany). Me knowing that I am in Germany does not depend on all these truths. It just depends on any truth that makes my belief true. So, my knowledge only depended on any sufficient truth or amount of truths (and not all possible truths), that could give that knowledge. -- Premise (2) reason #2: My objections will be very similar as my objections were to reason #1. God is perfectly rational given the knowledge he holds in his mind. Hence he does not hold all knowledge at the same time, but only sufficiently enough knowledge. He makes zero logical or rational errors during his decision processes. I also see here no violation of dependence finitsm. "But doesn't this imply that God has not thought every possible thought about which world to bring about before bringing it about." Yes, that is implied. But again. I think most types of theism do not imply or require this. -- Premise (2) reason #3: It seems to me that I only need to reject the idea of infinitely small units. Obviously, you can always think of a smaller unit. But you can never think of an infinitely small unit. And therefore, there is never dependence on time or space steps indefinitely for any particular movement or change. If you think that the fact that we can always think of a smaller units proves that there is an infinitely small unit, then we could simply reject that and argue for an extremely small base unit. The unit is way smaller than any device could ever possibly measure and it is so small that all our math and physics work perfectly fine. Also, computer simulations have base units, too and we can see this as analogous to the real world. Additionally, we could propose an observer related smallest base unit. Meaning, the closer we look, the smaller the base unit gets. This also avoids any kind of infinity. This is also how any possible virtual world could ever do it. It is in principle impossible to have a virtual world with infinitely small base units that can be calculated by any computer that is physically possible. Which might be a hint that the real world is similar. -- Premise (2) reason #4: As you said, you can go with nominalism. Or you could simply state that only a finite amount of numbers exists and all the other numbers are just variations/combinations of these base numbers. But I am not confident about that idea. But if it is true that e.g. all numbers are just combinations of the numbers "-1" and "1" (or something along those lines) then you only need to believe that these two numbers are real and all other numbers are just different applications of these "base numbers" by minds. So some base numbers would be real and the rest would be contingent on minds. But this is just some idea that comes from the top of my hat and might be completely bogus. Hope these thoughts are helpful. Appreciate your great work. Keep on going!
Hey bro, i know it has been 3 months since you commented this and that i am not Joe and that i dont have 1% of his knowledge, but i would like to give my thoughts on your comment. I will try to make sense and i hope you tell me if i don't :D. I want to talk about your first rebuttal, because i tried to think of something in the other two but i couldn't, lmao. First, i would like to say that that idea of "God only knows what he chooses to know" is really smart and i have never heard of that, i dont know if you thought of this first but even tho you don't, props to you! But the problem i thought of it its basically that i still think that idea would violate dependence finitism. For example, God don't know every single mathematical truth at once, He only knows a fact when He wants to. But still for the omniscience be there, that would still imply that God needs to be able to know every single mathematical truth. If God is able to know 1+1=2 at any moment He wants, but He is not able to know what some other mathematical fact is, then i think we have a problem with His omniscience. There are infinitely many mathematical truths, thus, for knowing them all and being omniscient, God would have to be able to know any mathematical truth at any moment He wants, because if He is not able to know some mathematical truth even tho He chooses to, He would be not omniscient. Here, at least by my lights, we have a violation of the dependence finitism, because it would mean God would have to be able to know infinitely many truths at any time He wants. Or maybe i am just dumb, lmao. Hope you see it and if you do, i would love if you could give your thoughts on that!
"Philosophy and Reason - I hardly knew thee" ought to be engraved on my headstone when I go. Lost count of how many times I backed up the video to clarify my muddled mind, still I enjoyed the video (masochist?) And to think that I once thought that my basic Philosophy classes were some of my favorites.
Hi Joe. Interesting argument. A few concerns include: 1) the omniscience case using dependence of knowledge on infinitely many truths might be objected to as the following: Any mathematical or logical truth appears to be dependent on a finite fundamental set of axioms. For example, I know that "there exists a prime p greater than natural number n" for all (countably infinitely many) n in natural numbers N. That is based on the truth of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic and the proof of infinitely many primes, which are dependent on the finitely many axioms of our number system (Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory for example). Logic would likely boil down to finitely many axioms or laws, and if you can get to the existence of finitely many things to which logic can be applied you might be able to avoid infinite dependency. I think you could argue this for non-arbitrarily generated sets, as we typically use in mathematics. But you could argue that maybe an omniscient being must actively know the greatest common divisor of all subsets S of the natural numbers, which would require its knowledge to be dependent on infinitely many facts. A temporal being can process a set to determine this (at least for some subsets), but one that is not temporal may not be able to use more fundamental ideas to process dependent ideas since processing seems to require some kind of sequence of events - and therefore may need to know all truths without using fundamental ideas to come to know them. 2) I think this is solid, although it seems weird to accept that God has infinite foreknowledge. You could argue that heaven is timeless so everyone is frozen in a moment, but that may be heretical. A theist may also believe that the physical world will end when Jesus's returns, but I'm not a Christian so I don't know that well. 3) I don’t know for sure, but many continuous theories are successful because they deal with approximations much larger than the discreteness of the system. So if GR and QFT haven't been tested close enough to Planck scales, we won't know whether they support space-time continuity. Like if we approximate sand pouring through an hourglass as a fluid, it works pretty well at predicting how long the sand will take, but is insufficient at modelling exactly how they move 4) I think we could attempt to use something like 0 and 1 exist, and the successor function exists, then you get infinitely many natural numbers from 3 things and finitely many fundamental relations. Same criticism to this as in 1. Good work though. Hope this gives something to consider
This is amazing work! Also, ya the grad school app. fees can be staggering. But that juicy NYU or Rutgers (Princeton and ND too I assume) stipend will make all of those fees look like chump change... I'm excited to hear about your application successes. Good luck!
Listening to someone laying out philosophy well (like you do) makes me want to listen at a slower speed because you talk quite fast. But it also makes me want to listen at a higher speed, because every little detail is twisted and turned in so many ways that I risk getting bored if it's not moving forward. The fact that you do it well enough that I enjoy the compromise of 1x is some sort of compliment, hopefully!
Thanks for this video! It’s plausible that a bit of knowledge wouldn’t depend on anything that wasn’t explanatorily prior to it. (Even if that knowledge was about a fact not explanatorily prior to that knowledge.) One’s knowledge of the endless future (and even the beginningless past) could be deduced from knowledge of only two facts. As soon as this person knew a fact X and also knew the only possible timeline given X, he would know the endless future (and the beginningless past). That way he could know the endless future without the future being explanatorily prior to his knowledge. Then it would be plausible that his knowledge of those infinitely many facts would not depend on infinitely many facts. And so, even granting dependence finitism, he could know the endless future.
Your image depicting dependence could be thought of as a partial order (look up partially ordered sets on Wikipedia). Then we would call the diagram you drew a Hasse Diagram. The proposition of linear causal finitism could then be phrased as: There exists a finite set of elements called "least causes" {L} which is a subset of all causes {C}. It must satisfy the following property: For all l in L and all c in C\L (read as C without L), l ≤ c.
"Companions in guilt" I haven't heard this term before, but in basic logic, if A implies B, and we know (or discover) that B is false, then we automatically know that A is false. And where there are chains (A implies B, B implies C, C implies D, D implies E - and we know that E is false, this disproves the entire chain - but only backwards from the point at which we learn that the point is false (i.e., if E also implies F, knowing that E is false doesn't say anything about F). In parallel, this doesn't work: If A implies B, and A implies H, and A implies L, if we know that B is false, this proves that A is false, but doesn't tell us anything about H or L. And then there's this one: If A and B taken together implies M, then if we know that M is false, then A might be false (but not necessarily), or B might be false (but not necessarily), both could be false. In other words, they can't both be true. I also like "proof by the opposite implying a logical contradiction." In other words, we have some proposition A. We then explore the implications of "not-A," and discover some chain of logical implications of "not A" that imply a logical contradiction, which disproves "not A," thus implying that A is true. I'd had Euclidean and Non-Euclidean geometry prior to this, but Number Theory was where I truly came to see the beauty of logical reasoning. And Abstract Algebra after that was just icing on the cake.
Observe the asymptotic structure of the graph y = 1/x. Time could have an "origin" (the asymptote) while simultaneously having infinite (infinitesimal) causality.
@MajestyofReason, I have to know your thoughts on this: Cause and Effect are inherently temporal -To be the cause of an effect you must be a part of time -For what caused the effect of causing the universe? -If a causer was uncaused, then its thoughts / actions must have causes, ad infinitum To be outside of time is to be void of cause and effect -in a timeless state of no change, no thoughts, no desires -for thoughts and desires are based on cause and effect, i.e. temporal The universe and the cause of the universe couldn't have began simultaneously -Something can't come from nothing -Both are caused by something that had to be caused An uncaused causer falls into the same logical paradoxes as an infinite causal chain problem with infinite regression paradoxes = relativity / human POV? There's some assumption or missing piece that I can't figure out. infinity must be possible for a universe to exist either universe has causal chain, or God has causal chain
Hey Joe! Interesting argument. I wonder if one of the distinctions between causal finitism and dependence finitism is that dependence finitism can be false for cases of actual infinites (non-diverging, bound infinities. E.g. real numbers between 0-1), but causal finitism wouldn’t generally interact with bound infinities, since the the bound-infinity may still require grounding outside the bounds. If there can be realized bound-infinities, but not realized unbound-infinities (numbers above 0), perhaps this is a key distinction that breaks symmetry.
If time is emergent and doesn’t exist fundamentally. Even if causal finitism is true, the universe can be eternal, if we define it as the totality of what exist. Because causation is a relationship between spatio-temporal events (See the metaphysics of causation from standford online encyclopedia of philosophy). There is existence independent of time, because from this existence time emerges. And that existence wouldn’t entail causal infinitism.
The reason I've never understood this line of thinking is because I can't understand how emergence can exist (occur) if there is no time. To me they seem fundamentally linked. No time, no emergence.
I didn't realize I was copying a type of argument. I always thought it was weird how many Christians were very against infinites while supporting a position that contained them. I understand many of them don't see their position as one that contains infinite. But it's kind of clear that's what the position is when a being is dealing with infinite quantities of things. I can't understand why they can't see it. I mean I can. We are all blind in this way. But the reason it baffles me is because this further pushes the narrative that Christianity is just a propositional position. You have to accept lots of arbitrary positions for Christianity to become "obvious "
Good video! Here are some thoughts: 1.) The theological arguments. -God's knowledge: God's knowledge of the infinite future does not depends on those infinite future events, but simply on his knowledge of himself. The creation, as you know, is argued to be a communication of the excellencies of God in a material modality. Creation is the beam as God is the sun; thus created history beams forth God's perfections. God knows created reality and history as the way in which his own excellencies and nature are (or can be) refracted in a material mode. Second, God knows the infinite future as having a beginning terminus, and so every point that God gazes upon exists in a finite dependence chain. -God's knowledge of number. Math, s some philosophers have argued, is derivable from the number one, the concept of multiplicity, and the concept of division. From the threeness-in-oneness of God, God derives all numbers from the knowledge of himself (having multiplicity and divisibility in the number of the persons), and that derivation involves seeing all numbers in their relation. Set arguments: -Sets do not depend on their members, but are conceptual collections. As such, they are ways of organizing numbers, just as an arrangement of shells is an organization of those shells. -For math arguments, see above in which God derives all numbers from his inherent oneness-in-threeness 3.) Non-discreteness of time and space. I think here, we can distinguish between conceptual and metaphysical infinites. Time isn't infinitely divisible if we use the same unit of time throughout, nor is space. Dividing spatial extension into an infinite number of things is a conceptual imposition, not the metaphysical reality. From this, we might refine the cosmological argument as such: an infinite *dependence* chain is impossible given the entire and total state of affairs of the world. Here's what I mean. Consider S1, which is a frozen slice of all things that exist. S2 happens when there's even just one change in that totality. If the current moment depended on an unending number of prior changes, then this moment would have never happened. We would have never gotten here. And it's not clear to me that "change" can even be conceptually infinitely divided up (e.g. if there is even one change, whatever it might be, in S1, then S1 becomes S2). B theory of time doesn't fix this problem. If B theory is true, and suppose my wife is waiting for me to come home, then if there's an unending space of change between my wife waiting and me coming home, I never come home.
Thanks for your comment! You say: “God's knowledge: God's knowledge of the infinite future does not depends on those infinite future events, but simply on his knowledge of himself. The creation, as you know, is argued to be a communication of the excellencies of God in a material modality. Creation is the beam as God is the sun; thus created history beams forth God's perfections. God knows created reality and history as the way in which his own excellencies and nature are (or can be) refracted in a material mode.” I don’t think this avoids a violation of dependence finitism, however. There are infinitely many facts reporting what happens on each day of the endless future. Even if God knows these facts by knowing himself in some manner, it remains the case that there are infinitely many such facts, and that God knows them *because they are true*. Again, even if this knowledge is gleaned either from his own essence or his creative act, what matters is that the knowledge is still responsive to and partly explained by the relevant facts. And since there are infinitely many such facts, ~DF follows. You say: “Second, God knows the infinite future as having a beginning terminus, and so every point that God gazes upon exists in a finite dependence chain.” This is true, but it doesn’t engage reason #1, since reason #1 didn’t say that any point God gazes upon exists in an infinite dependence chain. The relevant dependence chain in reason #1 is God’s knowledge partly being explained by the facts known. :) You say: “God's knowledge of number. Math, some philosophers have argued, is derivable from the number one, the concept of multiplicity, and the concept of division. From the threeness-in-oneness of God, God derives all numbers from the knowledge of himself (having multiplicity and divisibility in the number of the persons), and that derivation involves seeing all numbers in their relation.” To be sure, this is a fascinating view. However, again, it doesn’t seem to address the reason I gave. So be it if all the numbers, and all God’s knowledge of numbers, ultimately derives from knowledge of himself. This will simply involve adding another node beneath the infinitely many nodes of the numbers corresponding to God’s knowledge of himself. This doesn’t change the facts that (i) there are still infinitely many such nodes, and (ii) those nodes still explanatorily contribute to another node above them corresponding to God’s knowledge of all the numbers, since God’s knowing that there are numbers partly depends on there being such numbers there to be known in the first place. So again, even if all this ultimately derives from God’s knowledge of himself, we still have a node at the top being explained by infinitely many nodes beneath it, which violates DF. You say: “I think here, we can distinguish between conceptual and metaphysical infinites. Time isn't infinitely divisible if we use the same unit of time throughout, nor is space.” Well, first, a ‘unit’ is simply a way of conceptually carving up some reality into intervals so that we can more readily measure things. The fact that such intervals, when equal, don’t infinitely divine the relevant reality doesn’t entail that the relevant reality isn’t continuous; it simply implies that the concept we’re applying to the reality doesn’t allow us to get that fine-grained. Second, the relevant ‘units’, if space and time are continuous, are instants and points, and these *do*, indeed, infinitely divide time and space. You say: “Dividing spatial extension into an infinite number of things is a conceptual imposition, not the metaphysical reality.” But this is the very thing that reason #3 is denying. Granted, you can reject continuous views of space/time if you wish; that’s fine. As I said in the video, I was setting this rejection aside. (And I also gave brief reasons for accepting accepting continuity. I don’t know whether space/time are continuous, but those are still reasons favoring continuity. Also note that reason #3 only needs the *possibility* of continuous space/time.) You say: “Here's what I mean. Consider S1, which is a frozen slice of all things that exist. S2 happens when there's even just one change in that totality. If the current moment depended on an unending number of prior changes, then this moment would have never happened. We would have never gotten here.” I don’t think this is right, and I’ve never seen anyone - including philosophers like Craig - justify this. They just assert (but do not justify the claim that) if there were infinitely many prior events, the current event would never have been able to be reached. I also address this with philosopher Wes Morriston in our video not he successive addition argument. :)
@@MajestyofReason //I don’t think this avoids a violation of dependence finitism, however. There are infinitely many facts reporting what happens on each day of the endless future. Even if God knows these facts by knowing himself in some manner, it remains the case that there are infinitely many such facts, and that God knows them *because they are true*. Again, even if this knowledge is gleaned either from his own essence or his creative act, what matters is that the knowledge is still responsive to and partly explained by the relevant facts. And since there are infinitely many such facts, ~DF follows.// What follows is the falsity of the claim that there can be no actual infinites (which I agree--I think that claim is false), not of dependence finitism, since every fact that God knows--even if infinite--has a finite chain of explanation leading back to him. Thus, even if we say that God's knowledge is explained by the facts known (even if these facts are about himself), the facts known have a finite chain of explanation. I think that addresses the second comment as well! //To be sure, this is a fascinating view. However, again, it doesn’t seem to address the reason I gave. So be it if all the numbers, and all God’s knowledge of numbers, ultimately derives from knowledge of himself. This will simply involve adding another node beneath the infinitely many nodes of the numbers corresponding to God’s knowledge of himself. This doesn’t change the facts that (i) there are still infinitely many such nodes, and (ii) those nodes still explanatorily contribute to another node above them corresponding to God’s knowledge of all the numbers, since God’s knowing that there are numbers partly depends on there being such numbers there to be known in the first place. So again, even if all this ultimately derives from God’s knowledge of himself, we still have a node at the top being explained by infinitely many nodes beneath it, which violates DF.// I don't think the violation of DF obtains. Each node has a finite chain of dependence leading back to God at the top of such nodes. So each node, insofar as those nodes are derivations of God's knowledge of himself, has a finite chain of dependence. Even if each numerical node explanatory contributes to a logically prior node, it goes back to God. More precisely, since "there being such numbers to be known" derives from God's knowledge of himself (so number itself is derivative from God's threeness-in-oneness), the being of such numbers--which grounds God's knowledge of them--itself depends on God's being, and thus goes back to God in a finite chain of dependence. //Well, first, a ‘unit’ is simply a way of conceptually carving up some reality into intervals so that we can more readily measure things. The fact that such intervals, when equal, don’t infinitely divine the relevant reality doesn’t entail that the relevant reality isn’t continuous; it simply implies that the concept we’re applying to the reality doesn’t allow us to get that fine-grained. Second, the relevant ‘units’, if space and time are continuous, are instants and points, and these *do*, indeed, infinitely divide time and space.// Ah--I do agree that reality and time are continuous, but finitude really specifies *limit*. That is, something is finite if it has some bound or limit to it. So yes, space and time are continuous, but they are metaphysically finite insofar as (and only if) they have some end, or bound. Thus, the reason any unit we use consistently to carve up reality has a finite end is rooted in a metaphysics of the finite: a unit can reach the "end" of something insofar as it can transgress the bounds of that something's being. I think that addresses the other comment. "I don’t think this is right, and I’ve never seen anyone - including philosophers like Craig - justify this. They just assert (but do not justify the claim that) if there were infinitely many prior events, the current event would never have been able to be reached. I also address this with philosopher Wes Morriston in our video not he successive addition argument. " I'm not quite raising a successive addition argument, but more specifying the conditions it takes for change to "elapse" and working from there. Thus, the assertion can be justified by pressing into what it means for a given amount of changes, or time, to elapse. If there is an infinite distance of time between my wife getting home and me getting home, it can never "elapse" because for time to "elapse" is just for that time to *finish* becoming. In other words, the elapsing of time (say the elapsing of 5 minutes) is just for 5 minutes to finish--for the limit to be reached. But infinitude is the negation of limit. Therefore, infinite time can never elapse.
@@MajestyofReason Oh, one more thing on that last point. Time very well might be continuous; I'm perfectly happy conceding that. But change doesn't seem to be. If S1 and S2 are different even by *one* difference (discrete), then they're distinguishable by at least one thing (whatever it may be). In order for S2 to finish becoming, its preceding events must finish becoming, or it it will never be (or finish becoming). Put differently, if I depend on a chain of events to receive my being from that chain, but that chain of events never finishes getting to me (and it can't finish because the number of changes needed to pass never finishes), then I never come to be. If it takes me an infinite sequence of changes to write a paper, then I never finish writing because the sequence never finishes--and it never finishes, because it doesn't have a limit (hence is not-finite, or infinite). We can rephrase that in terms of "elapsing" and I think it amounts to the same sort of argument.
hi, how would you respond to someone claiming that the knowledge of God an infinite number of events in the future? If we accept actual infinite doesn't exist but a traditional view of the future. Btw I am muslim. I am confused with your response. Also, can you expand on the knowledge of God being non propositional. God thinks in one thought and not infinitely many thoughts.
Assumption 1: if every part of the wall is green then necessarily the whole wall is green Assumption 2: Circular explanation is not possible Imagine there is an wall with infinite height and breadth 1 meter and there is being that paints the wall from past eternity He just finished painting the last portion (one Closer to ground ),he is a humanoid robot programmed in such a way that he paints every portion (1 meter square)of wall one after other from top to bottom and chooses the colour of the previous portion The last portion of wall is painted green bcz the second last portion was green and so on …. Now we have entailing contrastive explanation for why the every portion of the wall is green Which implies x :we have entailing contrastive explanation for why the whole wall is green( from assumption 1) But x is false bcz there is no external explanation and explanation cannot be found in its parts (assumption 2) Contradiction!
you bring up very interesting points Joe. However, I'm not sure that causal finitism is the same as Dependence finitism. For example you can form infinite words with just 24 letters. While you cannot have contingent things that do not ultimately end up on a neseceray cause or a foundation. So you should be able to have infinite complex processes but not causes because it leads to an impossible situation where nothing can come forth. I think that we have no reason to think that out intuition about infinite are wrong because we have not seen infinity yet. Theists can just claim that God has maximal knowledge rather than infinite and cannot have a mind out of illogical things ( if DF is true) like they do with the Omnipotence paradox by claiming God is limited to only logical actions.
Is dependence finitism partially motivated by foundationalism being the most plausible form of justification? And would any justification for dependence finitism have bearing on this debate?
Could it be argued that everything necessarily depends on infinitely many things? - if for example one could argue that any one thing depends on the existence of everything else. ie an infinite universe. (commenting just 2:52 minutes into the video here, sorry - this might be addressed later 😅)
This is interesting. It’s something that might be argued, yes. Various Eastern philosophies adopt (something like) the interdependence of all things; and if there are infinitely many things (whether concrete or abstract), then this might afford a violation of dependence finitism. Similarly, some contemporary philosophers defend metaphysical coherentism as a model of the dependence structure of reality rather than metaphysical foundationalism, and this, too, might afford violations of dependence finitism if there are infinitely many things. So the answer is: it depends!😉 (I should clarify that I’m a foundationalist, btw.)
@@MajestyofReason Well spotted! you got me with the "various eastern philosophies" : I'm a total buddhist geek. Although my interest in Permaculture is also an influence, as a systems or network model of dependencies/causes, rather than a linear one, can cover a lot of ground pretty quick.
I totally disagree that the majority view is that space/time is continuous, in fact I'd say that many physicists and philosophers of physics would describe this view as outdated. Also, it would be interesting to read Pruss' whole response to the argument, not just the "it's a powerful argument" part - surely he wrote more, right?
Thanks for the comment, Dominik! Re: Pruss email He wrote only a couple sentences more; and I addressed each of his points in the video. (Some of the objections addressed in the video were from him.) 🙂 Re: majority view So, note that I wasn’t talking about among physicists or even philosophers of physics; I was simply reporting my experience with philosophers writing on the topic simpliciter, including metaphysicians, philosophers of time, philosophers of religion, philosophers of physics, etc. And iirc (could be wrong, tho!), I think I only said it *might* be the majority view. For more discussion on the discrete vs continuous point, see the discussion underneath GeoMicPri’s comment❤️
@@MajestyofReason Right, you were hedging your statement by saying you are not entirely sure whether it is the majority view and you don't have data... so that's fine. But I still think you made it sound much more popular than it actually is. Given that there's no data on this, there's no point debating this though lol
Great video! Good luck with the applications. I would also think that a circle would be causally dependent on the fact that it has an infinite amount of sides?
I guess "atemporal" just refers to the first state/being existing unchangly. If there is no change, there is no time. If this being acts/changes/chooses/... time is created as a side effect of the first change ever happening. For me a finite past is not counter-intuitive at all. But maybe this depends on the person. You could also just have a foundamental cause that creates the first present state and sucessfully adds past states to it, if you feel that a first moment of time is counter-intuitive. I don't think this is a problem for causal finitism, believing in a finite past, dependence finitism or anything related.
When we get into abstraction...I feel like that implies complete determinism/continuous space and time. If I reduce infinitely or if there is infinite space in my body...where does quantum mechanics or indeterminism come into play?
Past causal finitism may be weird, but I think it's less weird than many people make it. You could simply have the first, necessary cause. Not outside of time - it would already be the first 'timelike' cause, except that it would not be caused itself. (One could argue that if arguments against infinite past work, the impossibility of such state of affairs explains and necessitates such first cause: reality is this way by the impossibility of it to be any other way in that aspect). Such first cause could even simply be the first moment of the universe (it doesn't have to transcend it in any way). Under naturalism this seem to me to work quite smoothly. But if the first cause did transcend time, like some kind of God, or a Platonist realm, then sure, some people may need to modify some of their positions.
One initial explanatory objection-> what if God’s knowledge, reasons, and ideas are non-propositional in nature? How that effect your first two arguments?
I think the arguments for P2 will still work; for even if God knows facts non-propositionally, there are still those facts, and God still knows them in some manner, and there are still infinitely many of them; and so we get DF violated. As for God’s ideas, many of them may already be non-propositional in nature. For instance, God knows infinitely many possible creatures, infinitely many numbers, etc. by being directly acquainted with his ideas thereof. So again, we’ll get DF violations without propositional knowledge🙂
Great video, personally quite reassuring to me. When I was 14 I thought that time could be a part of God, and therefore never created. It seemed perfectly plausible to think that the past is infinite and that God is infinitely old (I have always been a presentist). So I didn't really have any problems with rejecting causal finitism. Being young I was quite troubled by the fact that no one seemed to share my view and everyone would oppose it. Although now that I think about it, most of the opposition was to my presentist and open-theist views rather than on the grounds of causal finitism in itself. Still, it is nice to know that my teenage ideas have yet again withstood the test of time.
How would you differentiate, or perhaps assert the similarity, between metaphysical foundationalism and dependence finitism? You incline towards MF, but argue against DF in this video. I just want to understand the meaning behind the word "depends" in your sort of sentence "God's knowledge/creative act depends on infinite truths/motivations". Is it "depends _metaphysically_ " ? or "depends _explanatorily_ " ? If it depends explanatorily, then that's within the broad dependence circle by definition, of course, but it is not within the smaller metaphysical dependence circle which itself encapsulates the even smaller circle "metaphysical causality". Taking this into account, it would seem possible that God's act explanatorily depends on infinite motivations, in abstract, but is still dependent on one concrete metaphysical entity, God. If it depends metaphysically, then that's another line of reasoning touching on neo-platonism and all sorts of metaphysical notions of reality/sets/maths/truths etc... i.e. do you think motivations/truths/time intervals are concrete ??
I’m guessing he would say that there could be an infinite number of events that are all grounded in one causal node. So take the diagram from 11:36 and flip it so that the arrows are pointing away from the one to the infinitely-many rather than vice-versa.
Great question! So, the MF with which I’m sympathetic says that every grounding chain has at least one minimal element. Notice that none of my reasons against DF require there to be a grounding chain without a minimal element. Most of them involve infinite co-operation, which has a foundational layer. And the linearly ordered cases from transtemporal relations, while having infinitely many members, also have minimal elements: the relations of psychological/physical continuity, for instance, bottom out at my earliest moment of existence, as do the existential relations of dependence connecting my existences-at-a-time or time slices. So MF is preserved in my reasons against DF🙂 As for the notion of dependence at play, again, I mean any sort of explanatory dependence relation. This includes what you’ve termed metaphysical dependence, but it also includes any other explanatory dependence relation, whether among concreta or abstracta.
@@MajestyofReason In your examples, you have illustrated foundational layer for psychological/physical continuity, yes. But in God's knowledge/act ( reasons 1 and 2, infinite co-operation reasons) or in sets (reason 4), you may have no MF. You are somewhat denying it on those reasons, or at least, sliding towards MI (metaphysical infinitism). To endorse metaphysical infinitism is to reject MF, unless your MF understanding does not require accepting strong, set-theoretic well-foundedness, and hence it could be compatible with at least some types of infinite descent. There is room of interpretation, I must say :) But great video :D my main real concern was to see if your argument against causal finitism is sweeping away MF as well.
@@AShaif thank you! So in those cases, there *is* a foundational layer: namely, the foundational, infinitely many dependence bases. So there’s no violation of MF🙂
Couldn't the omniscience rejoinder be dismantled by reversing the causality? Ie. Things are true because god knows them. It turns reality into a thought experiment by god, but keeps god as the singular cause.
That would lead to some kind of theistic nihilism. Like, we are just a casual thought of an infinite being, there is no point in doing anything, life is meaningless.
@gabri41200 I think that's only a consequence if: 1. You think free will is necessary for fulfilment in life. I don't, I think watching the movie of my life is just as fulfilling as if I had control. 🙂 Besides which, I dont think free will is compatible with any worldview. Not one which I've encountered, anyway. OR 2. You think only material reality matters. I don’t think it matters what reality is made of, matter, thought, information, some kind of mathematical object, or some unthought of thing. What matters is our experience of it, including our memories, relationships, thoughts, emotions, etc. Even in a theists world view, their relationship to God and others is what matters, not the material make-up of the experience. Thoughts?
@@YLLPal I agree that what really matters is our experience of reality and illusion of free-will. I dont think that the hypothesis of the existence of god is necessary to explain any phenomena that we observe, so i don't believe in it. The thing is, many people believe in god because they feel like it gives them a greater purpose, like to spread the word of the gospels or whatever. So this idea of the world just being some casual thought would be hard to accept for most theists. As god is infinite, he would also have the time to think of an infinite number of other universes, as well think again of past universes an infinite number of times. This whole thing we are doing would happen infinitely many times. There would be no purpose to anyone.
I don't hold to causal finitism but I think P1 can be rejected. As an example, there are certain axiological truths that God's *motivations* depend on. But that doesn't mean that God himself metaphysically depends on them. God is metaphysically speaking the foundation of reality, however there can be certain aspects of himself that he depends on, his motivation to create depends on some axiological truths that he knows, God's knowledge of events depends on events actually occurring etc. There may be *infinitely many* things that God depends on that are not metaphysical in nature but are rather axiological. However, none of those things have any sort of *causal* relationship. God doesn't causally depend on the axiological truths, only his motivations do. So on causal finitism Causal relations are themselves finite even if they depend on some higher order infinite axiological reasoning. The reasons that God has to create while infinite doesn't necessarily imply that God would create a world with infinite causal chains. So maybe the objection to P1 could be that we have no reason to think that infinite truths would entail infinite *causal* truths.
Thanks for the comment, Kyle! You say: “I don't hold to causal finitism but I think P1 can be rejected. As an example, there are certain axiological truths that God's motivations depend on. But that doesn't mean that God himself metaphysically depends on them.” So, there are two important points to make here. First, P1 doesn’t turn on whether God depends on anything; premise (1) simply says that if CF is true, then DF is true. This is entirely compatible with God being totally independent and being the foundation of reality. So what you said doesn’t address P1. Second, none of my examples require God to be dependent on anything. In fact, my theistic reasons for P2 (Reasons #1 and #2) only said, respectively, that (i) God’s *knowledge* partly explanatorily depends on the facts known (since, as is relatively uncontroversial in philosophy, knowledge that p is partly explained by the fact that p - in fact, several prominent analyses of knowledge simply identify knowledge with believing something because it’s true - see Tomas Bogardus’ work), and (ii) God’s *choice* to create is explained, in part, by reasons. Neither of these are particularly controversial, and both are exceedingly plausible. In fact, granting that’s God’s motivations depend on axiological truths only *helps* my case, since there are infinitely many possible goods and hence infinitely many axiological truths upon which God’s motivation depends, and this, in turn, shows that P2 of my argument is true. So I think you’ve actually strengthened the argument. But the main thing to see is that nowhere in my argument did I ever say anything requiring God to be dependent. You also say: “However, none of those things have any sort of causal relationship. God doesn't causally depend on the axiological truths, only his motivations do. So on causal finitism Causal relations are themselves finite even if they depend on some higher order infinite axiological reasoning. The reasons that God has to create while infinite doesn't necessarily imply that God would create a world with infinite causal chains.” But my argument didn’t assert anything to the contrary; I grant the legitimacy (for the sake of the argument, anyway) that the dependence of God’s choice, or God’s motivation for creating, on infinitely many reasons is not causal in nature. This doesn’t challenge premise (1), since premise (1) neither assumes nor asserts that its causal in nature. In fact, premise (1) is compatible with there being no infinite causal chains of any kind. Premise (1) is simply stating a parity or symmetry between CF and DF such that they stand or fall together.
@@MajestyofReason thanks for the response. First I do think that theist should accept P2. The axiological landscape is infinite and that would imply that there are infinitely many truths or reasons for God to create. My concern is primarily with P1. My second paragraph in my first comment was simply pointed out that there is not a clear connection between causal finitism and dependent finitism. I guess I don't see much justification for causal finitism entailing dependence finitism. I myself have good reasons to reject dependence finitism but I don't see how that entails a rejection of causal finitism. You can have infinitely many truths and yet still a subset of those be finite causal truths. Regardless I would need to think more on P1 and why DF & CF are mutually entailing
@@kylealandercivilianname2954 thanks again! In that case, my response to your recent comment would mainly come by way of the sections of the video on justifying premise (1) and then the general response #1 where I discuss a similar response 🙂
@@MajestyofReason let me give an example, Calvin Molina and Armenius (open theist) all have systematic theologies and all have goedel statements and each can identify the others but not their own, so they are all debating unknown axioms and hidden variables which is a bit bizarre and there is no solution other than to say each is valid but incomplete and must rely on God who created the actual system in which for him all axioms and variables are known (now, see the problem with my statement? Are there variables and if so how does that effect the axioms?)
@@MajestyofReason think about GOEDELS THEOREM in relation to Paul's definition of faith in Hebrews 11, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, meaning we can trust our inferences.
16:30 Reason #3 Space/Time are continuous. No! Did we learn nothing from the Zeno paradoxes? Reality is “pixelated” in all four dimensions; Planck length & time. In between two Planck lengths or times is literally nothing, they cannot be divided. Why do philosophers act like QP doesn’t exist? Am I missing something?
As far as I know, the science on the structure of time/space isn’t settled (though it is true that some of our best confirmed non-quantum-mechanical theories treat it as continuous). While elements of quantum mechanics might treat it as discrete, elements of non-quantum-mechanical theories (relativity, etc.) treat it as continuous. And as is well known, we don’t have a marriage between quantum mechanics and relativity. Note, though, that reason #3, as explained in the video, only needs the *possibility* of continuous space/time. EDIT: also see the great points below 👇
I think that the Planck length/time argument is weaker in conversations about metaphysics. The fact that our universe seems to have a minimum unit of space and time does not mean that there must be a minimum unit of space and time in all possible worlds. So, in a possible world where time and/or space is continuous, this argument against causal finitism holds. If one can imagine a world where time and/or space is continuous, then in that world, dependence finitism is false and if the companions in guilt argument works, then causal finitism is also false. You could probably also work off of the intuition that causality works the same in all possible worlds (though I don't know how common this intuition is), so if there is one possible world where causal finitism is false then it is false in all possible worlds. In that case, the following argument would be true: if there is some possible world where time and/or space is continuous then causal finitism is false in this world.
@@jacerockman1031 I don’t think one CAN actually imagine a truly continuous reality. We think we can because we think it’s part of our everyday experience, but in truth we have no idea what a continuous universe would look or act like or how it could even be possible.
It's also worth noting that the Planck length isn't settled science. From my understanding, the Planck length is the distance at which it becomes physically impossible to measure anything smaller. Again, in a conversation about metaphysics, just because we aren't capable of measuring that distance doesn't mean that it is truly discrete, just that our measurements of time and space are necessarily discrete.
I know! And it’s unreasonably expensive - anywhere from $50-150 per school. But the good news is that almost all schools will waive tuition and give you stipends etc.
Try being a musician, we usually have to take a plane ticket to the school for an in person audition just for a chance at getting accepted to grad school. Some schools make exceptions if you're not from the continent.
did you just fat shame my mother? I think this seems like an interesting way to get unwary theists to reject finitism without them realising it, so while it might not be a 'dead cert', as it were, it would expose the biases of the believer as they struggle to find a logical reason to disagree with the argument.
Join the Majesty of Reason Discord! Link:
dsc.gg/majestyofreason
ALSO: At 27:10, the conclusion should say “So, infinite causal DEPENDENCE among…”, NOT “So, infinite causal regresses among…”
21:00 Small annotation (I am not sure if this affects ur argument) Q the set of all rational numbers does not include infinity as it is not an integer. The problem that I have is that with most religious arguments use infinity as a countable conclusion to their regression. If u count a series of rational numbers u will never reach infinity even if u count an infinite numbers. Infinite is much more of a mathematical concept and i feel like people skip due diligence when they use it colloquially. Very often because its convenient or to dazzle people with how hard it is to grasp.
Great argument. Let me try some rebuttals:
-- Premise (2) reason #1:
We could respond by simply stating that omiscience does not require knowing all truths simultaneously, but only the ability to know any particular truth at any time. This way, not all knowledge is actual in God's mind/consciousness simultaneously and therefore, there don't exist infinitely many things in God's mind/consciousness. On this view, God is also not required to have knowledge about every future state already in his mind, but he is still able to have knowledge about any future state which he chooses to think about. So, not all possible knowledge of all future states is actual at the same moment in God's mind and this seems to be not in violation of dependence finitism. The same argument goes for infinitely many ideas. You might think: "Oh but then there are things God has never thought of." And you were right. But I don't see how this would be problematic for most types of theism. Since God will think of these things, if he chooses to.
I would also deny that knowing something depends on all possible truths that can make you know that thing, but only on any amount of sufficient truths.
For example: I know that I am in Germany right now. It is true, that I am in Germany. It is also true, that I am currently in Remscheid (town in Germany). It is additionally true, I am currently in North-Rhine Westphalia (state in Germany). Me knowing that I am in Germany does not depend on all these truths. It just depends on any truth that makes my belief true. So, my knowledge only depended on any sufficient truth or amount of truths (and not all possible truths), that could give that knowledge.
-- Premise (2) reason #2:
My objections will be very similar as my objections were to reason #1. God is perfectly rational given the knowledge he holds in his mind. Hence he does not hold all knowledge at the same time, but only sufficiently enough knowledge. He makes zero logical or rational errors during his decision processes. I also see here no violation of dependence finitsm. "But doesn't this imply that God has not thought every possible thought about which world to bring about before bringing it about." Yes, that is implied. But again. I think most types of theism do not imply or require this.
-- Premise (2) reason #3:
It seems to me that I only need to reject the idea of infinitely small units. Obviously, you can always think of a smaller unit. But you can never think of an infinitely small unit. And therefore, there is never dependence on time or space steps indefinitely for any particular movement or change. If you think that the fact that we can always think of a smaller units proves that there is an infinitely small unit, then we could simply reject that and argue for an extremely small base unit. The unit is way smaller than any device could ever possibly measure and it is so small that all our math and physics work perfectly fine. Also, computer simulations have base units, too and we can see this as analogous to the real world.
Additionally, we could propose an observer related smallest base unit. Meaning, the closer we look, the smaller the base unit gets. This also avoids any kind of infinity. This is also how any possible virtual world could ever do it. It is in principle impossible to have a virtual world with infinitely small base units that can be calculated by any computer that is physically possible. Which might be a hint that the real world is similar.
-- Premise (2) reason #4:
As you said, you can go with nominalism. Or you could simply state that only a finite amount of numbers exists and all the other numbers are just variations/combinations of these base numbers. But I am not confident about that idea. But if it is true that e.g. all numbers are just combinations of the numbers "-1" and "1" (or something along those lines) then you only need to believe that these two numbers are real and all other numbers are just different applications of these "base numbers" by minds. So some base numbers would be real and the rest would be contingent on minds. But this is just some idea that comes from the top of my hat and might be completely bogus.
Hope these thoughts are helpful.
Appreciate your great work.
Keep on going!
Hey bro, i know it has been 3 months since you commented this and that i am not Joe and that i dont have 1% of his knowledge, but i would like to give my thoughts on your comment. I will try to make sense and i hope you tell me if i don't :D.
I want to talk about your first rebuttal, because i tried to think of something in the other two but i couldn't, lmao.
First, i would like to say that that idea of "God only knows what he chooses to know" is really smart and i have never heard of that, i dont know if you thought of this first but even tho you don't, props to you! But the problem i thought of it its basically that i still think that idea would violate dependence finitism. For example, God don't know every single mathematical truth at once, He only knows a fact when He wants to. But still for the omniscience be there, that would still imply that God needs to be able to know every single mathematical truth. If God is able to know 1+1=2 at any moment He wants, but He is not able to know what some other mathematical fact is, then i think we have a problem with His omniscience. There are infinitely many mathematical truths, thus, for knowing them all and being omniscient, God would have to be able to know any mathematical truth at any moment He wants, because if He is not able to know some mathematical truth even tho He chooses to, He would be not omniscient. Here, at least by my lights, we have a violation of the dependence finitism, because it would mean God would have to be able to know infinitely many truths at any time He wants. Or maybe i am just dumb, lmao.
Hope you see it and if you do, i would love if you could give your thoughts on that!
"Philosophy and Reason - I hardly knew thee" ought to be engraved on my headstone when I go.
Lost count of how many times I backed up the video to clarify my muddled mind, still I enjoyed the video (masochist?)
And to think that I once thought that my basic Philosophy classes were some of my favorites.
Hi Joe. Interesting argument. A few concerns include:
1) the omniscience case using dependence of knowledge on infinitely many truths might be objected to as the following:
Any mathematical or logical truth appears to be dependent on a finite fundamental set of axioms. For example, I know that "there exists a prime p greater than natural number n" for all (countably infinitely many) n in natural numbers N. That is based on the truth of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic and the proof of infinitely many primes, which are dependent on the finitely many axioms of our number system (Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory for example). Logic would likely boil down to finitely many axioms or laws, and if you can get to the existence of finitely many things to which logic can be applied you might be able to avoid infinite dependency.
I think you could argue this for non-arbitrarily generated sets, as we typically use in mathematics. But you could argue that maybe an omniscient being must actively know the greatest common divisor of all subsets S of the natural numbers, which would require its knowledge to be dependent on infinitely many facts. A temporal being can process a set to determine this (at least for some subsets), but one that is not temporal may not be able to use more fundamental ideas to process dependent ideas since processing seems to require some kind of sequence of events - and therefore may need to know all truths without using fundamental ideas to come to know them.
2) I think this is solid, although it seems weird to accept that God has infinite foreknowledge. You could argue that heaven is timeless so everyone is frozen in a moment, but that may be heretical. A theist may also believe that the physical world will end when Jesus's returns, but I'm not a Christian so I don't know that well.
3) I don’t know for sure, but many continuous theories are successful because they deal with approximations much larger than the discreteness of the system. So if GR and QFT haven't been tested close enough to Planck scales, we won't know whether they support space-time continuity. Like if we approximate sand pouring through an hourglass as a fluid, it works pretty well at predicting how long the sand will take, but is insufficient at modelling exactly how they move
4) I think we could attempt to use something like 0 and 1 exist, and the successor function exists, then you get infinitely many natural numbers from 3 things and finitely many fundamental relations. Same criticism to this as in 1.
Good work though. Hope this gives something to consider
This is amazing work!
Also, ya the grad school app. fees can be staggering. But that juicy NYU or Rutgers (Princeton and ND too I assume) stipend will make all of those fees look like chump change... I'm excited to hear about your application successes. Good luck!
You nailed 4 of the schools I’m applying to… there are more tho🙂
And THANK YOU! Always nice to see you in the comments❤️
I can tell you how that video came in such a right time, dude. I was asking myself this TODAY, lmao
Listening to someone laying out philosophy well (like you do) makes me want to listen at a slower speed because you talk quite fast. But it also makes me want to listen at a higher speed, because every little detail is twisted and turned in so many ways that I risk getting bored if it's not moving forward. The fact that you do it well enough that I enjoy the compromise of 1x is some sort of compliment, hopefully!
❤️
Every time I think I have the Kalam’s soundness figured out, Joe comes back! Based :)
What a kalamity.
You tend to think the Kalam is a knock down argument or something?
Thanks for this video! It’s plausible that a bit of knowledge wouldn’t depend on anything that wasn’t explanatorily prior to it. (Even if that knowledge was about a fact not explanatorily prior to that knowledge.) One’s knowledge of the endless future (and even the beginningless past) could be deduced from knowledge of only two facts. As soon as this person knew a fact X and also knew the only possible timeline given X, he would know the endless future (and the beginningless past). That way he could know the endless future without the future being explanatorily prior to his knowledge. Then it would be plausible that his knowledge of those infinitely many facts would not depend on infinitely many facts. And so, even granting dependence finitism, he could know the endless future.
Btw, moral realism is true 😁
Btw, nah
@@justus4684 Just to clear things up.
Perhaps!
False.
Your image depicting dependence could be thought of as a partial order (look up partially ordered sets on Wikipedia). Then we would call the diagram you drew a Hasse Diagram. The proposition of linear causal finitism could then be phrased as: There exists a finite set of elements called "least causes" {L} which is a subset of all causes {C}. It must satisfy the following property: For all l in L and all c in C\L (read as C without L), l ≤ c.
"Companions in guilt"
I haven't heard this term before, but in basic logic, if A implies B, and we know (or discover) that B is false, then we automatically know that A is false. And where there are chains (A implies B, B implies C, C implies D, D implies E - and we know that E is false, this disproves the entire chain - but only backwards from the point at which we learn that the point is false (i.e., if E also implies F, knowing that E is false doesn't say anything about F). In parallel, this doesn't work: If A implies B, and A implies H, and A implies L, if we know that B is false, this proves that A is false, but doesn't tell us anything about H or L.
And then there's this one: If A and B taken together implies M, then if we know that M is false, then A might be false (but not necessarily), or B might be false (but not necessarily), both could be false. In other words, they can't both be true.
I also like "proof by the opposite implying a logical contradiction." In other words, we have some proposition A. We then explore the implications of "not-A," and discover some chain of logical implications of "not A" that imply a logical contradiction, which disproves "not A," thus implying that A is true.
I'd had Euclidean and Non-Euclidean geometry prior to this, but Number Theory was where I truly came to see the beauty of logical reasoning. And Abstract Algebra after that was just icing on the cake.
Observe the asymptotic structure of the graph y = 1/x. Time could have an "origin" (the asymptote) while simultaneously having infinite (infinitesimal) causality.
Really enjoy your videos....good job :)
@MajestyofReason, I have to know your thoughts on this:
Cause and Effect are inherently temporal
-To be the cause of an effect you must be a part of time
-For what caused the effect of causing the universe?
-If a causer was uncaused, then its thoughts / actions must have causes, ad infinitum
To be outside of time is to be void of cause and effect
-in a timeless state of no change, no thoughts, no desires
-for thoughts and desires are based on cause and effect, i.e. temporal
The universe and the cause of the universe couldn't have began simultaneously
-Something can't come from nothing
-Both are caused by something that had to be caused
An uncaused causer falls into the same logical paradoxes as an infinite causal chain
problem with infinite regression paradoxes = relativity / human POV? There's some assumption or missing piece that I can't figure out.
infinity must be possible for a universe to exist
either universe has causal chain, or God has causal chain
Hey Joe! Interesting argument.
I wonder if one of the distinctions between causal finitism and dependence finitism is that dependence finitism can be false for cases of actual infinites (non-diverging, bound infinities. E.g. real numbers between 0-1), but causal finitism wouldn’t generally interact with bound infinities, since the the bound-infinity may still require grounding outside the bounds. If there can be realized bound-infinities, but not realized unbound-infinities (numbers above 0), perhaps this is a key distinction that breaks symmetry.
If time is emergent and doesn’t exist fundamentally. Even if causal finitism is true, the universe can be eternal, if we define it as the totality of what exist. Because causation is a relationship between spatio-temporal events (See the metaphysics of causation from standford online encyclopedia of philosophy). There is existence independent of time, because from this existence time emerges. And that existence wouldn’t entail causal infinitism.
The reason I've never understood this line of thinking is because I can't understand how emergence can exist (occur) if there is no time. To me they seem fundamentally linked. No time, no emergence.
I didn't realize I was copying a type of argument.
I always thought it was weird how many Christians were very against infinites while supporting a position that contained them.
I understand many of them don't see their position as one that contains infinite.
But it's kind of clear that's what the position is when a being is dealing with infinite quantities of things.
I can't understand why they can't see it. I mean I can. We are all blind in this way.
But the reason it baffles me is because this further pushes the narrative that Christianity is just a propositional position.
You have to accept lots of arbitrary positions for Christianity to become "obvious "
How do we avoid the problem of evil in reason 2 of the argument against finite causation and dependence?
Haven’t watched the video yet, but I had to comment on how much Joe in the thumbnail looks like Tom Holland and Ed Sheeran had a kid 🤣
When you call premises 1 star, 2 star, 3 star.... I feel like I'm listening to a hotel review channel :D :D
Great
Good video! Here are some thoughts:
1.) The theological arguments.
-God's knowledge: God's knowledge of the infinite future does not depends on those infinite future events, but simply on his knowledge of himself. The creation, as you know, is argued to be a communication of the excellencies of God in a material modality. Creation is the beam as God is the sun; thus created history beams forth God's perfections. God knows created reality and history as the way in which his own excellencies and nature are (or can be) refracted in a material mode. Second, God knows the infinite future as having a beginning terminus, and so every point that God gazes upon exists in a finite dependence chain.
-God's knowledge of number. Math, s some philosophers have argued, is derivable from the number one, the concept of multiplicity, and the concept of division. From the threeness-in-oneness of God, God derives all numbers from the knowledge of himself (having multiplicity and divisibility in the number of the persons), and that derivation involves seeing all numbers in their relation.
Set arguments:
-Sets do not depend on their members, but are conceptual collections. As such, they are ways of organizing numbers, just as an arrangement of shells is an organization of those shells.
-For math arguments, see above in which God derives all numbers from his inherent oneness-in-threeness
3.) Non-discreteness of time and space.
I think here, we can distinguish between conceptual and metaphysical infinites. Time isn't infinitely divisible if we use the same unit of time throughout, nor is space. Dividing spatial extension into an infinite number of things is a conceptual imposition, not the metaphysical reality. From this, we might refine the cosmological argument as such: an infinite *dependence* chain is impossible given the entire and total state of affairs of the world.
Here's what I mean. Consider S1, which is a frozen slice of all things that exist. S2 happens when there's even just one change in that totality. If the current moment depended on an unending number of prior changes, then this moment would have never happened. We would have never gotten here. And it's not clear to me that "change" can even be conceptually infinitely divided up (e.g. if there is even one change, whatever it might be, in S1, then S1 becomes S2).
B theory of time doesn't fix this problem. If B theory is true, and suppose my wife is waiting for me to come home, then if there's an unending space of change between my wife waiting and me coming home, I never come home.
Thanks for your comment!
You say: “God's knowledge: God's knowledge of the infinite future does not depends on those infinite future events, but simply on his knowledge of himself. The creation, as you know, is argued to be a communication of the excellencies of God in a material modality. Creation is the beam as God is the sun; thus created history beams forth God's perfections. God knows created reality and history as the way in which his own excellencies and nature are (or can be) refracted in a material mode.”
I don’t think this avoids a violation of dependence finitism, however. There are infinitely many facts reporting what happens on each day of the endless future. Even if God knows these facts by knowing himself in some manner, it remains the case that there are infinitely many such facts, and that God knows them *because they are true*. Again, even if this knowledge is gleaned either from his own essence or his creative act, what matters is that the knowledge is still responsive to and partly explained by the relevant facts. And since there are infinitely many such facts, ~DF follows.
You say: “Second, God knows the infinite future as having a beginning terminus, and so every point that God gazes upon exists in a finite dependence chain.”
This is true, but it doesn’t engage reason #1, since reason #1 didn’t say that any point God gazes upon exists in an infinite dependence chain. The relevant dependence chain in reason #1 is God’s knowledge partly being explained by the facts known. :)
You say: “God's knowledge of number. Math, some philosophers have argued, is derivable from the number one, the concept of multiplicity, and the concept of division. From the threeness-in-oneness of God, God derives all numbers from the knowledge of himself (having multiplicity and divisibility in the number of the persons), and that derivation involves seeing all numbers in their relation.”
To be sure, this is a fascinating view. However, again, it doesn’t seem to address the reason I gave. So be it if all the numbers, and all God’s knowledge of numbers, ultimately derives from knowledge of himself. This will simply involve adding another node beneath the infinitely many nodes of the numbers corresponding to God’s knowledge of himself. This doesn’t change the facts that (i) there are still infinitely many such nodes, and (ii) those nodes still explanatorily contribute to another node above them corresponding to God’s knowledge of all the numbers, since God’s knowing that there are numbers partly depends on there being such numbers there to be known in the first place. So again, even if all this ultimately derives from God’s knowledge of himself, we still have a node at the top being explained by infinitely many nodes beneath it, which violates DF.
You say: “I think here, we can distinguish between conceptual and metaphysical infinites. Time isn't infinitely divisible if we use the same unit of time throughout, nor is space.”
Well, first, a ‘unit’ is simply a way of conceptually carving up some reality into intervals so that we can more readily measure things. The fact that such intervals, when equal, don’t infinitely divine the relevant reality doesn’t entail that the relevant reality isn’t continuous; it simply implies that the concept we’re applying to the reality doesn’t allow us to get that fine-grained. Second, the relevant ‘units’, if space and time are continuous, are instants and points, and these *do*, indeed, infinitely divide time and space.
You say: “Dividing spatial extension into an infinite number of things is a conceptual imposition, not the metaphysical reality.”
But this is the very thing that reason #3 is denying. Granted, you can reject continuous views of space/time if you wish; that’s fine. As I said in the video, I was setting this rejection aside. (And I also gave brief reasons for accepting accepting continuity. I don’t know whether space/time are continuous, but those are still reasons favoring continuity. Also note that reason #3 only needs the *possibility* of continuous space/time.)
You say: “Here's what I mean. Consider S1, which is a frozen slice of all things that exist. S2 happens when there's even just one change in that totality. If the current moment depended on an unending number of prior changes, then this moment would have never happened. We would have never gotten here.”
I don’t think this is right, and I’ve never seen anyone - including philosophers like Craig - justify this. They just assert (but do not justify the claim that) if there were infinitely many prior events, the current event would never have been able to be reached. I also address this with philosopher Wes Morriston in our video not he successive addition argument. :)
@@MajestyofReason //I don’t think this avoids a violation of dependence finitism, however. There are infinitely many facts reporting what happens on each day of the endless future. Even if God knows these facts by knowing himself in some manner, it remains the case that there are infinitely many such facts, and that God knows them *because they are true*. Again, even if this knowledge is gleaned either from his own essence or his creative act, what matters is that the knowledge is still responsive to and partly explained by the relevant facts. And since there are infinitely many such facts, ~DF follows.//
What follows is the falsity of the claim that there can be no actual infinites (which I agree--I think that claim is false), not of dependence finitism, since every fact that God knows--even if infinite--has a finite chain of explanation leading back to him. Thus, even if we say that God's knowledge is explained by the facts known (even if these facts are about himself), the facts known have a finite chain of explanation. I think that addresses the second comment as well!
//To be sure, this is a fascinating view. However, again, it doesn’t seem to address the reason I gave. So be it if all the numbers, and all God’s knowledge of numbers, ultimately derives from knowledge of himself. This will simply involve adding another node beneath the infinitely many nodes of the numbers corresponding to God’s knowledge of himself. This doesn’t change the facts that (i) there are still infinitely many such nodes, and (ii) those nodes still explanatorily contribute to another node above them corresponding to God’s knowledge of all the numbers, since God’s knowing that there are numbers partly depends on there being such numbers there to be known in the first place. So again, even if all this ultimately derives from God’s knowledge of himself, we still have a node at the top being explained by infinitely many nodes beneath it, which violates DF.//
I don't think the violation of DF obtains. Each node has a finite chain of dependence leading back to God at the top of such nodes. So each node, insofar as those nodes are derivations of God's knowledge of himself, has a finite chain of dependence. Even if each numerical node explanatory contributes to a logically prior node, it goes back to God. More precisely, since "there being such numbers to be known" derives from God's knowledge of himself (so number itself is derivative from God's threeness-in-oneness), the being of such numbers--which grounds God's knowledge of them--itself depends on God's being, and thus goes back to God in a finite chain of dependence.
//Well, first, a ‘unit’ is simply a way of conceptually carving up some reality into intervals so that we can more readily measure things. The fact that such intervals, when equal, don’t infinitely divine the relevant reality doesn’t entail that the relevant reality isn’t continuous; it simply implies that the concept we’re applying to the reality doesn’t allow us to get that fine-grained. Second, the relevant ‘units’, if space and time are continuous, are instants and points, and these *do*, indeed, infinitely divide time and space.//
Ah--I do agree that reality and time are continuous, but finitude really specifies *limit*. That is, something is finite if it has some bound or limit to it. So yes, space and time are continuous, but they are metaphysically finite insofar as (and only if) they have some end, or bound. Thus, the reason any unit we use consistently to carve up reality has a finite end is rooted in a metaphysics of the finite: a unit can reach the "end" of something insofar as it can transgress the bounds of that something's being. I think that addresses the other comment.
"I don’t think this is right, and I’ve never seen anyone - including philosophers like Craig - justify this. They just assert (but do not justify the claim that) if there were infinitely many prior events, the current event would never have been able to be reached. I also address this with philosopher Wes Morriston in our video not he successive addition argument. "
I'm not quite raising a successive addition argument, but more specifying the conditions it takes for change to "elapse" and working from there. Thus, the assertion can be justified by pressing into what it means for a given amount of changes, or time, to elapse. If there is an infinite distance of time between my wife getting home and me getting home, it can never "elapse" because for time to "elapse" is just for that time to *finish* becoming. In other words, the elapsing of time (say the elapsing of 5 minutes) is just for 5 minutes to finish--for the limit to be reached. But infinitude is the negation of limit. Therefore, infinite time can never elapse.
@@MajestyofReason Oh, one more thing on that last point. Time very well might be continuous; I'm perfectly happy conceding that. But change doesn't seem to be. If S1 and S2 are different even by *one* difference (discrete), then they're distinguishable by at least one thing (whatever it may be). In order for S2 to finish becoming, its preceding events must finish becoming, or it it will never be (or finish becoming). Put differently, if I depend on a chain of events to receive my being from that chain, but that chain of events never finishes getting to me (and it can't finish because the number of changes needed to pass never finishes), then I never come to be. If it takes me an infinite sequence of changes to write a paper, then I never finish writing because the sequence never finishes--and it never finishes, because it doesn't have a limit (hence is not-finite, or infinite). We can rephrase that in terms of "elapsing" and I think it amounts to the same sort of argument.
hi, how would you respond to someone claiming that the knowledge of God an infinite number of events in the future? If we accept actual infinite doesn't exist but a traditional view of the future. Btw I am muslim.
I am confused with your response.
Also, can you expand on the knowledge of God being non propositional.
God thinks in one thought and not infinitely many thoughts.
Assumption 1: if every part of the wall is green then necessarily the whole wall is green
Assumption 2: Circular explanation is not possible
Imagine there is an wall with infinite height and breadth 1 meter and there is being that paints the wall from past eternity
He just finished painting the last portion (one Closer to ground ),he is a humanoid robot programmed in such a way that he paints every portion (1 meter square)of wall one after other from top to bottom and chooses the colour of the previous portion
The last portion of wall is painted green bcz the second last portion was green and so on ….
Now we have entailing contrastive explanation for why the every portion of the wall is green
Which implies x :we have entailing contrastive explanation for why the whole wall is green( from assumption 1)
But x is false bcz there is no external explanation and explanation cannot be found in its parts (assumption 2)
Contradiction!
you bring up very interesting points Joe. However, I'm not sure that causal finitism is the same as Dependence finitism.
For example you can form infinite words with just 24 letters. While you cannot have contingent things that do not ultimately end up on a neseceray cause or a foundation.
So you should be able to have infinite complex processes but not causes because it leads to an impossible situation where nothing can come forth.
I think that we have no reason to think that out intuition about infinite are wrong because we have not seen infinity yet.
Theists can just claim that God has maximal knowledge rather than infinite and cannot have a mind out of illogical things ( if DF is true) like they do with the Omnipotence paradox by claiming God is limited to only logical actions.
Is dependence finitism partially motivated by foundationalism being the most plausible form of justification? And would any justification for dependence finitism have bearing on this debate?
Could it be argued that everything necessarily depends on infinitely many things? - if for example one could argue that any one thing depends on the existence of everything else. ie an infinite universe. (commenting just 2:52 minutes into the video here, sorry - this might be addressed later 😅)
This is interesting. It’s something that might be argued, yes. Various Eastern philosophies adopt (something like) the interdependence of all things; and if there are infinitely many things (whether concrete or abstract), then this might afford a violation of dependence finitism. Similarly, some contemporary philosophers defend metaphysical coherentism as a model of the dependence structure of reality rather than metaphysical foundationalism, and this, too, might afford violations of dependence finitism if there are infinitely many things. So the answer is: it depends!😉
(I should clarify that I’m a foundationalist, btw.)
@@MajestyofReason Well spotted! you got me with the "various eastern philosophies" : I'm a total buddhist geek. Although my interest in Permaculture is also an influence, as a systems or network model of dependencies/causes, rather than a linear one, can cover a lot of ground pretty quick.
I totally disagree that the majority view is that space/time is continuous, in fact I'd say that many physicists and philosophers of physics would describe this view as outdated.
Also, it would be interesting to read Pruss' whole response to the argument, not just the "it's a powerful argument" part - surely he wrote more, right?
Thanks for the comment, Dominik!
Re: Pruss email
He wrote only a couple sentences more; and I addressed each of his points in the video. (Some of the objections addressed in the video were from him.) 🙂
Re: majority view
So, note that I wasn’t talking about among physicists or even philosophers of physics; I was simply reporting my experience with philosophers writing on the topic simpliciter, including metaphysicians, philosophers of time, philosophers of religion, philosophers of physics, etc. And iirc (could be wrong, tho!), I think I only said it *might* be the majority view.
For more discussion on the discrete vs continuous point, see the discussion underneath GeoMicPri’s comment❤️
@@MajestyofReason Right, you were hedging your statement by saying you are not entirely sure whether it is the majority view and you don't have data... so that's fine. But I still think you made it sound much more popular than it actually is. Given that there's no data on this, there's no point debating this though lol
@@dominiks5068 yeah, personal experience doesn’t amount to much!😆
Hae joe! please make a refutation vedio about necessitarianism
Great video! Good luck with the applications. I would also think that a circle would be causally dependent on the fact that it has an infinite amount of sides?
Is there a patron level that gets access to an early pdf of the classical theism book? I'd pay a bit for that
There's a pre-print PDF available for all patrons :)
@@MajestyofReason the amount of information on this Patreon is insane. Was not expecting it.
I guess "atemporal" just refers to the first state/being existing unchangly. If there is no change, there is no time. If this being acts/changes/chooses/... time is created as a side effect of the first change ever happening. For me a finite past is not counter-intuitive at all. But maybe this depends on the person. You could also just have a foundamental cause that creates the first present state and sucessfully adds past states to it, if you feel that a first moment of time is counter-intuitive. I don't think this is a problem for causal finitism, believing in a finite past, dependence finitism or anything related.
How would the first being develop the first thought without time? In order to act, you need motivation.
When we get into abstraction...I feel like that implies complete determinism/continuous space and time. If I reduce infinitely or if there is infinite space in my body...where does quantum mechanics or indeterminism come into play?
Based
Past causal finitism may be weird, but I think it's less weird than many people make it.
You could simply have the first, necessary cause. Not outside of time - it would already be the first 'timelike' cause, except that it would not be caused itself.
(One could argue that if arguments against infinite past work, the impossibility of such state of affairs explains and necessitates such first cause: reality is this way by the impossibility of it to be any other way in that aspect).
Such first cause could even simply be the first moment of the universe (it doesn't have to transcend it in any way). Under naturalism this seem to me to work quite smoothly.
But if the first cause did transcend time, like some kind of God, or a Platonist realm, then sure, some people may need to modify some of their positions.
I think this argument would be more compelling if the difference between Causal Finitism and Dependence Finitism were delineated.
One initial explanatory objection-> what if God’s knowledge, reasons, and ideas are non-propositional in nature? How that effect your first two arguments?
I think the arguments for P2 will still work; for even if God knows facts non-propositionally, there are still those facts, and God still knows them in some manner, and there are still infinitely many of them; and so we get DF violated. As for God’s ideas, many of them may already be non-propositional in nature. For instance, God knows infinitely many possible creatures, infinitely many numbers, etc. by being directly acquainted with his ideas thereof. So again, we’ll get DF violations without propositional knowledge🙂
Great video, personally quite reassuring to me. When I was 14 I thought that time could be a part of God, and therefore never created. It seemed perfectly plausible to think that the past is infinite and that God is infinitely old (I have always been a presentist). So I didn't really have any problems with rejecting causal finitism. Being young I was quite troubled by the fact that no one seemed to share my view and everyone would oppose it. Although now that I think about it, most of the opposition was to my presentist and open-theist views rather than on the grounds of causal finitism in itself. Still, it is nice to know that my teenage ideas have yet again withstood the test of time.
How would you differentiate, or perhaps assert the similarity, between metaphysical foundationalism and dependence finitism?
You incline towards MF, but argue against DF in this video.
I just want to understand the meaning behind the word "depends" in your sort of sentence "God's knowledge/creative act depends on infinite truths/motivations". Is it "depends _metaphysically_ " ? or "depends _explanatorily_ " ?
If it depends explanatorily, then that's within the broad dependence circle by definition, of course, but it is not within the smaller metaphysical dependence circle which itself encapsulates the even smaller circle "metaphysical causality". Taking this into account, it would seem possible that God's act explanatorily depends on infinite motivations, in abstract, but is still dependent on one concrete metaphysical entity, God.
If it depends metaphysically, then that's another line of reasoning touching on neo-platonism and all sorts of metaphysical notions of reality/sets/maths/truths etc... i.e. do you think motivations/truths/time intervals are concrete ??
I’m guessing he would say that there could be an infinite number of events that are all grounded in one causal node. So take the diagram from 11:36 and flip it so that the arrows are pointing away from the one to the infinitely-many rather than vice-versa.
Great question! So, the MF with which I’m sympathetic says that every grounding chain has at least one minimal element. Notice that none of my reasons against DF require there to be a grounding chain without a minimal element. Most of them involve infinite co-operation, which has a foundational layer. And the linearly ordered cases from transtemporal relations, while having infinitely many members, also have minimal elements: the relations of psychological/physical continuity, for instance, bottom out at my earliest moment of existence, as do the existential relations of dependence connecting my existences-at-a-time or time slices. So MF is preserved in my reasons against DF🙂
As for the notion of dependence at play, again, I mean any sort of explanatory dependence relation. This includes what you’ve termed metaphysical dependence, but it also includes any other explanatory dependence relation, whether among concreta or abstracta.
@@MajestyofReason Apologies if I didn’t represent your view correctly in the above comment.
@@MajestyofReason
In your examples, you have illustrated foundational layer for psychological/physical continuity, yes. But in God's knowledge/act ( reasons 1 and 2, infinite co-operation reasons) or in sets (reason 4), you may have no MF.
You are somewhat denying it on those reasons, or at least, sliding towards MI (metaphysical infinitism).
To endorse metaphysical infinitism is to reject MF, unless your MF understanding does not require accepting strong, set-theoretic well-foundedness, and hence it could be compatible with at least some types of infinite descent.
There is room of interpretation, I must say :) But great video :D
my main real concern was to see if your argument against causal finitism is sweeping away MF as well.
@@AShaif thank you! So in those cases, there *is* a foundational layer: namely, the foundational, infinitely many dependence bases. So there’s no violation of MF🙂
I feel like if we are being honest we don't have a dog's chance of showing casual finitism or infinity true at this point in time.
True. But I think infinity can be plausibly learned towards.
doom radio + majesty of reason = perfect combo
,\--/
Alex Pruss : Kalam Cosmological argument IS inevitable ( Snap his fingers and Tom Holland fade out )
My Kalam playlist is inevitable *snaps fingers*
Couldn't the omniscience rejoinder be dismantled by reversing the causality?
Ie. Things are true because god knows them. It turns reality into a thought experiment by god, but keeps god as the singular cause.
That would lead to some kind of theistic nihilism. Like, we are just a casual thought of an infinite being, there is no point in doing anything, life is meaningless.
@gabri41200 I think that's only a consequence if:
1. You think free will is necessary for fulfilment in life.
I don't, I think watching the movie of my life is just as fulfilling as if I had control. 🙂
Besides which, I dont think free will is compatible with any worldview. Not one which I've encountered, anyway.
OR
2. You think only material reality matters. I don’t think it matters what reality is made of, matter, thought, information, some kind of mathematical object, or some unthought of thing. What matters is our experience of it, including our memories, relationships, thoughts, emotions, etc.
Even in a theists world view, their relationship to God and others is what matters, not the material make-up of the experience.
Thoughts?
@@YLLPal I agree that what really matters is our experience of reality and illusion of free-will. I dont think that the hypothesis of the existence of god is necessary to explain any phenomena that we observe, so i don't believe in it. The thing is, many people believe in god because they feel like it gives them a greater purpose, like to spread the word of the gospels or whatever. So this idea of the world just being some casual thought would be hard to accept for most theists. As god is infinite, he would also have the time to think of an infinite number of other universes, as well think again of past universes an infinite number of times. This whole thing we are doing would happen infinitely many times. There would be no purpose to anyone.
@gabri41200 ahh, I see what you mean, a person who is likely to want to use this argument is also the kind who would find nihilism in it.
I don't hold to causal finitism but I think P1 can be rejected. As an example, there are certain axiological truths that God's *motivations* depend on. But that doesn't mean that God himself metaphysically depends on them.
God is metaphysically speaking the foundation of reality, however there can be certain aspects of himself that he depends on, his motivation to create depends on some axiological truths that he knows, God's knowledge of events depends on events actually occurring etc. There may be *infinitely many* things that God depends on that are not metaphysical in nature but are rather axiological. However, none of those things have any sort of *causal* relationship. God doesn't causally depend on the axiological truths, only his motivations do. So on causal finitism Causal relations are themselves finite even if they depend on some higher order infinite axiological reasoning. The reasons that God has to create while infinite doesn't necessarily imply that God would create a world with infinite causal chains.
So maybe the objection to P1 could be that we have no reason to think that infinite truths would entail infinite *causal* truths.
Thanks for the comment, Kyle!
You say: “I don't hold to causal finitism but I think P1 can be rejected. As an example, there are certain axiological truths that God's motivations depend on. But that doesn't mean that God himself metaphysically depends on them.”
So, there are two important points to make here. First, P1 doesn’t turn on whether God depends on anything; premise (1) simply says that if CF is true, then DF is true. This is entirely compatible with God being totally independent and being the foundation of reality. So what you said doesn’t address P1.
Second, none of my examples require God to be dependent on anything. In fact, my theistic reasons for P2 (Reasons #1 and #2) only said, respectively, that (i) God’s *knowledge* partly explanatorily depends on the facts known (since, as is relatively uncontroversial in philosophy, knowledge that p is partly explained by the fact that p - in fact, several prominent analyses of knowledge simply identify knowledge with believing something because it’s true - see Tomas Bogardus’ work), and (ii) God’s *choice* to create is explained, in part, by reasons. Neither of these are particularly controversial, and both are exceedingly plausible.
In fact, granting that’s God’s motivations depend on axiological truths only *helps* my case, since there are infinitely many possible goods and hence infinitely many axiological truths upon which God’s motivation depends, and this, in turn, shows that P2 of my argument is true. So I think you’ve actually strengthened the argument.
But the main thing to see is that nowhere in my argument did I ever say anything requiring God to be dependent.
You also say: “However, none of those things have any sort of causal relationship. God doesn't causally depend on the axiological truths, only his motivations do. So on causal finitism Causal relations are themselves finite even if they depend on some higher order infinite axiological reasoning. The reasons that God has to create while infinite doesn't necessarily imply that God would create a world with infinite causal chains.”
But my argument didn’t assert anything to the contrary; I grant the legitimacy (for the sake of the argument, anyway) that the dependence of God’s choice, or God’s motivation for creating, on infinitely many reasons is not causal in nature. This doesn’t challenge premise (1), since premise (1) neither assumes nor asserts that its causal in nature. In fact, premise (1) is compatible with there being no infinite causal chains of any kind. Premise (1) is simply stating a parity or symmetry between CF and DF such that they stand or fall together.
@@MajestyofReason thanks for the response. First I do think that theist should accept P2. The axiological landscape is infinite and that would imply that there are infinitely many truths or reasons for God to create.
My concern is primarily with P1. My second paragraph in my first comment was simply pointed out that there is not a clear connection between causal finitism and dependent finitism. I guess I don't see much justification for causal finitism entailing dependence finitism. I myself have good reasons to reject dependence finitism but I don't see how that entails a rejection of causal finitism. You can have infinitely many truths and yet still a subset of those be finite causal truths.
Regardless I would need to think more on P1 and why DF & CF are mutually entailing
@@kylealandercivilianname2954 thanks again!
In that case, my response to your recent comment would mainly come by way of the sections of the video on justifying premise (1) and then the general response #1 where I discuss a similar response 🙂
@@MajestyofReason let me give an example, Calvin Molina and Armenius (open theist) all have systematic theologies and all have goedel statements and each can identify the others but not their own, so they are all debating unknown axioms and hidden variables which is a bit bizarre and there is no solution other than to say each is valid but incomplete and must rely on God who created the actual system in which for him all axioms and variables are known (now, see the problem with my statement? Are there variables and if so how does that effect the axioms?)
@@MajestyofReason think about GOEDELS THEOREM in relation to Paul's definition of faith in Hebrews 11, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, meaning we can trust our inferences.
I hope the cause of your headaches is nothing serious.
It’s the thomists, dude.
@@jakek.403 Hahaha Good one (although I would like to think Joe causes headaches on them--especially on Feser).
16:30 Reason #3 Space/Time are continuous.
No! Did we learn nothing from the Zeno paradoxes? Reality is “pixelated” in all four dimensions; Planck length & time. In between two Planck lengths or times is literally nothing, they cannot be divided.
Why do philosophers act like QP doesn’t exist? Am I missing something?
As far as I know, the science on the structure of time/space isn’t settled (though it is true that some of our best confirmed non-quantum-mechanical theories treat it as continuous). While elements of quantum mechanics might treat it as discrete, elements of non-quantum-mechanical theories (relativity, etc.) treat it as continuous. And as is well known, we don’t have a marriage between quantum mechanics and relativity. Note, though, that reason #3, as explained in the video, only needs the *possibility* of continuous space/time.
EDIT: also see the great points below 👇
I think that the Planck length/time argument is weaker in conversations about metaphysics. The fact that our universe seems to have a minimum unit of space and time does not mean that there must be a minimum unit of space and time in all possible worlds. So, in a possible world where time and/or space is continuous, this argument against causal finitism holds. If one can imagine a world where time and/or space is continuous, then in that world, dependence finitism is false and if the companions in guilt argument works, then causal finitism is also false. You could probably also work off of the intuition that causality works the same in all possible worlds (though I don't know how common this intuition is), so if there is one possible world where causal finitism is false then it is false in all possible worlds. In that case, the following argument would be true: if there is some possible world where time and/or space is continuous then causal finitism is false in this world.
@@jacerockman1031 I don’t think one CAN actually imagine a truly continuous reality. We think we can because we think it’s part of our everyday experience, but in truth we have no idea what a continuous universe would look or act like or how it could even be possible.
It's also worth noting that the Planck length isn't settled science. From my understanding, the Planck length is the distance at which it becomes physically impossible to measure anything smaller. Again, in a conversation about metaphysics, just because we aren't capable of measuring that distance doesn't mean that it is truly discrete, just that our measurements of time and space are necessarily discrete.
@@jacerockman1031 great points🙂
you have to pay to even apply to grad school in America? That's outrageous!
I know! And it’s unreasonably expensive - anywhere from $50-150 per school. But the good news is that almost all schools will waive tuition and give you stipends etc.
Try being a musician, we usually have to take a plane ticket to the school for an in person audition just for a chance at getting accepted to grad school. Some schools make exceptions if you're not from the continent.
did you just fat shame my mother?
I think this seems like an interesting way to get unwary theists to reject finitism without them realising it, so while it might not be a 'dead cert', as it were, it would expose the biases of the believer as they struggle to find a logical reason to disagree with the argument.