| Subject: Ah - apparently we're talking about 2 different things. |
Author:
Duane
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Date Posted: 09/14/04 4:37pm
In reply to:
Wade A. Tisthammer
's message, "I understand my own argument, you evidently do not." on 09/13/04 11:46pm
Wade:
Are you aware that "The Tristam Shandy" paradox was originally a mathematical argument and NOT a philisophical argument?
There are others "paradoxes" that illustrate strange qualities of infinity. They were all invented by mathematicians, and co-opted by philosophers to "disprove" infinity. One other such "paradox" is Hilbert's Grand Hotel.
I was under the impression that you were talking about the actual mathematical argument of the Tristam Shandy Paradox. Now I understand that you are not. (If you're not sure of this, go back and look at all of my other posts, and see if they don't make more sense now...)
In the context of the human mind, or I guess you could say in the context of human existence as a whole, that infinite time is a concept which is, itself, absurd.
We're used to things having a "beginning" and "end" and we seem to intuitively grasp the idea that time is "directional." So the ideas that time had no beginning, or that time is not directional seem intuitively flse to us.
Likewise, the concept of infinite space seems, intuitively, to be strange.
It still seems to me that the test condition for your premises is the concept of "absurd," which has its basis in our intuition. Eventually, we reach a point where we say, "Enough already! OK! This is clearly not true because it's ridiculous!"
So the limits of philosophy are the limits of human intuition.
And given the fact that your "version" of Tristam Shandy is a philosophical argument, I agree that your argument is correct, inasmuch as the concepts of infinity are "weird" to humans.
Duane
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