| Subject: Less than |
Author:
Damoclese
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Date Posted: 01/18/04 4:13pm
In reply to:
Wade A. Tisthammer
's message, "More math stuff" on 01/18/04 2:54pm
>
>That link doesn't claim that points don't exist in
>reality.
If it be the case that in reality a point can be anything (or math for that matter) then the value of a point is intrinsically nothing. It MUST be nothing, because it can assume ANY value. If it has a value intrinsically, how could it take on another value simultaneously without becoming quickly contradictory definitionally?
The link doesn't strictly claim they aren't real in reality, but then I didn't say it did. I said it was relevant.
>On the contrary, it is quite meaningful in the context
>I am applying it in. What day did he write about last
>year? This wouldn't even be a point in the sense of
>having no "thickness," it has a temporal "thickness"
>of 24 hours. Yesterday is a point in time in that
>sense, to say that yesterday is meaningless will not
>help matters.
You are defining a point in time as something temporal. That's fine, but the point itself has to be meaningless as I said above. (and as that link mentioned. It must be undefined, which leaves it as nothing, but simultaneously leaves room for it to be defined as everything)
The main question here is whether or not mathematical terms hold any water in reality or if mathematics simply stands in symbolically for reality. Mathematics can be made to do things that nature cannot. Mathematics can also predict things that occur in nature but the interpretation of what it means in reality has to be made. It is similar to language in that language doesn't make reality do anything, it simply symbolically represents reality. (often poorly)
Therefore, if you say to me, "Hey, can you imagine a point in time called yesterday?" I can say yes. I can. However, simply because I can imagine it mathematically doesn't mean that it has any reality.
So, until it is shown that the past is something real, and that a point is something real that can occur in the past,(not to mention the assumption that time is linear) I don't see this as a paradox because it may simply be a product of symbolic imagination.
>
>It's perfectly relevant here. Was there something I
>did yesterday or not?
It was something that occured/is occuring/ will occur/ in time.
>
>
>>It's all continuous. Where would you make
>>a distinction on a circle as to what is "past" Wade?
>
>The point at which the future stops and the past
>repeats all over again. Again, it seems self-evident
>that yesterday happened.
Where exactly would that be? How could the future ever "stop" if time is circular? Moreover, what would it mean to say "future" if time were circular? It doesn't seem self-evident to me that there is such a thing as a past, or a yesterday if time is circular. It's all just time.
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