Is there a defeater for this philosophical argument?

[tim314]

@Cisco

Having no beginning and no end.

Not to be dense, but what precisely constitutes a beginning? Is it a point in time before which something does not exist, but after which it does? If so, then what happens if time itself began at a certain point, a finite number of years ago (as in my example above). Something might have existed since the start of time, say 15 billion years ago. So the thing in question has a finite age. But there was no time in the past at which it didn’t exist, because it is as old as time. So does it have a beginning or not?

(Digression: Maybe this is why I like math better than philosophy. There, everything is spelled out in a why that isn’t open to interpretation. Although, I suppose that’s mostly because in math one is permitted to express things symbolically, rather than using English words, which often have multiple meanings.)

At any rate, I think that depending on what is meant by a beginning (and thus what is meant by eternal, since you use one to define the other) it seems possible that all the argument really proves is that something must have existed since the start of the universe, since I don’t believe there is any reason (physically speaking) to assume that there was such a thing as time before the universe existed. In fact, the phrase “before the universe existed” doesn’t really have any meaning. Someone with greater knowledge of physics than me (I have a B.S.) may come here and correct me, but my understanding is that in physics time is viewed as another dimension of the universe, much like the spatial dimensions. It is meaningless to talk about distances between objects before the big bang, when the entire universe was a single point. Likewise, it is meaningless to talk about the passage of time prior to the big bang.

I also think that you are correct to question the statement that you can’t have being from non-being. In physics, there is such a thing as a vacuum fluctuation, which is literally a particle and its antiparticle appearing out of nothing and then anihilating and returning to nothing after a very short time. Supposedly, such fluctuations are occuring constantly throughout the universe. However, the restriction on them (as I understand) is that the particles can only exist for such a small amount of time that they cannot be observed. So whether this really counts as something from nothing I’m not sure. There are occasions where they can become permanent and be observed, but in this case they must get energy from somewhere (a nearby black hole, for example), so perhaps it’s not really something from nothing.

I once read a book by a physicist (written for non-scientists) in which he suggests the whole universe may be a vacuum fluctuation, but it is unclear to me how this could be consistent with the requirement that the particles not be observed. Maybe since we’re part of the fluctuation, our observation of it doesn’t count. (At any rate, currently most physicists believe the Big Crunch won’t happen – as far as I know – due to an a still unexplained Dark Energy causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. If the universe never collapses, it probably isn’t a vacuum fluctuation, but it was an interesting thought.)

[tim314]

I mentioned above the possibility that time is finite (or at least is finite in one direction, having perhaps a beginning but no end). Another possibility is that time is circular. (I think that at one point there were some physicists that believed this. The evidence against a Big Crunch is a strike against this idea, because without a Crunch there would be no way to reset the universe for another Big Bang.) In this case, it is possible that your instructor’s argument would show that something has been around for all of time, but this wouldn’t prove that it had existed “before the universe”, since in fact there was never any time before the universe.

In any case, if your teacher is trying to show that there must have been something that existed before the universe, I think she has to make some assumptions about the nature of time that aren’t necessarily justified. If time is an infinite line, and the Universe occupies some segment on that line, then perhaps it is true that something must have existed before the universe (ignoring the fact that the claim “something can’t come from nothing” is unconvincing). But if there was no time before the universe, then the phrase “before the universe” has no meaning, and at best someone can show that something existed since the start of the universe, which is not a particularly profound statement.

[tim314]

Originally Posted by ** Cisco**
There must be something eternal

i. Contradictory statements cannot both be true and both be false at the same time and in the same respect.
ii. A self-contradictory statement cannot be true (there are no square-circles)
iii. The contradiction of ‘some is eternal’ is ‘none is eternal’
iv. ‘None is eternal’ implies a contradiction since it implies:
a. all is temporal, which implies
b. all had a beginning, which implies
c. all came into being, which implies
d. all came into being from non-being
v. Being from non-being cannot be true, so d, c, b, and a, and the original iv ‘none is eternal’ cannot be true, since they all mean the same thing.
vi. So the contradictory of iv, ‘some is eternal’, must be true.

I’ve just realized there is a point where your instructor’s argument seems to fail. The implication from c. to d. is unproven. Just because everything came into being does not mean that it must have come from nothing. If time does extend infinitely far back, then there is no reason to believe there is a “first thing”, any more than there is a highest integer on the real numberline. They just go on forever. So perhaps there’s one thing that created another thing that created another thing, etc., with nothing ever coming from nothing. To say otherwise presupposes that there is some starting point.

[rkts]

So perhaps there’s one thing that created another thing that created another thing, etc., with nothing ever coming from nothing.

But if that were the case, then the whole of stuff itself, which is a thing, if only conceptually, would have to be eternal.

A weak argument, yes. But I think that’s the reasoning she used.

[erislover]

@tim314

I’ve just realized there is a point where your instructor’s argument seems to fail. The implication from c. to d. is unproven. Just because everything came into being does not mean that it must have come from nothing. If time does extend infinitely far back, then there is no reason to believe there is a “first thing”, any more than there is a highest integer on the real numberline. They just go on forever. So perhaps there’s one thing that created another thing that created another thing, etc., with nothing ever coming from nothing. To say otherwise presupposes that there is some starting point.

Which supports the contention that everything came from nothing; which is to say, there was nothing, then there was everything. If you follow the regression, eventually you must admit that something came from nothing.

[Gadarene]

The King of Soup:

If it turns out, for example, that disposable diapers and that orange dye they put in Chee-tos are eternal, and nothing else is, what does that say about the existence of God? That he looks like a traffic cone filled with baby poop?

I’ve got nothing to add; I just wanted to applaud those two sentences. Sublime.

[tim314]

@erislover

Which supports the contention that everything came from nothing; which is to say, there was nothing, then there was everything. If you follow the regression, eventually you must admit that something came from nothing.

I don’t have to admit that at all. You’re assuming that at the very beginning of time there was nothing, and then after that there was something. I’m saying that if time extends back infinitely, then there’s no such thing as “the beginning of time”, so there’s no reason to think that at any point there was nothing. Just something, and a previous something, and a previous something, and so on extending back forever.

This sort of infinity is common in math. Zero is preceded by negative one, negative one is preceded by negative two, etc. So for every integer, there is an integer that comes before it. But there is no “first integer”, that precedes all the others. The sequence just goes on forever.

[tim314]

@rkts

But if that were the case, then the whole of stuff itself, which is a thing, if only conceptually, would have to be eternal.

A weak argument, yes. But I think that’s the reasoning she used.

Well, yes, the set of all things that existed throughout time would be eternal in this case. Which really doesn’t prove much, especially when I was assuming that time extends back infinitely in this case. So at least time itself is assumed to be eternal.

As I mentioned in my earlier posts, I don’t think we really should be assuming that time extends back infinitely. I think it is more in line with the current thinking in physics to think that time is a property of the universe, and thus it began with the Big Bang like everything else in the universe. So, while she could certainly argue that everything had to come from something, and thus there had to be something in existence at the time of the Big Bang, she couldn’t argue that something existed before the Big Bang, because if time begins at the Big Bang, then “before the Big Bang” is a meaningless statement.

Likewise, she couldn’t object that something existing at the time of the Big Bang had “come from nothing”, because that assumes that there was some earlier time when nothing existed. But if time began at the Big Bang, then there was no earlier time.

So if I’m right about time having begun a finite number of years ago, then all her argument proves is that something existed at the very instant time began, which I don’t think is that profound a conclusion. I don’t think it can be use to prove that there was something before the universe, because there may not even have been any time before the universe.

[erislover]

@tim314

I don’t have to admit that at all. You’re assuming that at the very beginning of time there was nothing, and then after that there was something. I’m saying that if time extends back infinitely, then there’s no such thing as “the beginning of time”, so there’s no reason to think that at any point there was nothing. Just something, and a previous something, and a previous something, and so on extending back forever.

Seems like you have your answer about something being eternal, then. In the affirmative.

[tim314]

@erislover

Seems like you have your answer about something being eternal, then. In the affirmative.

If we assume time extends back forever, then yes, something is eternal, namely time itself. But that isn’t a proof, that’s an assumption. Everything else can still be temporal – only the set off all things must be eternal. But yes, technically something must be eternal in the case where time extends forever, even though the only thing which must be eternal is somthing that encompases everything.

However, as I’ve said, there is no reason that I can see to assume that time extends back forever – so far as I know, the standard thinking is that time begins with the origin of the universe, a finite number of years ago.

So, if time is finite, does there still need to be something eternal? Well, it depends what is meant by eternal. I accept the argument that something has been around since the start of the universe, sometime in the last 20 billion years. However, nothing could have been around longer than that, because it is meaningless to say something had existed before time.

So, is the thing that’s been around since the dawn of time eternal? Here are three possible definitions of eternal:
(A) There is no time at which the thing did not (or will not) exist.
(B) It exists for an infinite amount of time. (More specifically, this means that I can pick any number, and the amount of time that this thing has been around in the past and the amount of time it will be around in the future will both exceed that number of years.)
(C) It has no beginning and no end.

If we choose definition (A), then something can be eternal even if time started a finite number of years ago. All that is required is that at all times the thing existed.

If we choose definition (B), then if time only extends back a finite number of years then nothing can be eternal. All we would need to do is choose a number greater than the number of years the universe has existed to demonstrate that everything violates definition (B), since nothing can be older than the age of time.

Definition (C) is the definition the original poster gave for eternal. However, it depends on the meaning of “beginning” and “end.” If a beginning is a point in time at which a thing exists, immediately proceeded by a point in time at which a thing does not exist (and if end is similarly defined), then definitions (C) and (A) are equivalent, since something that had been around since the start of time has no beginning in this case, as there was never a time when it didn’t exist. If, on the other hand, a beginning is just the first point in time at which a thing exists, then definition (C) is equivalent to (B). Under this definition, nothing is eternal, because even something that had been around since the start of time would have had a beginning, namely the first point in time.

In conclusion:
If we assume time is infinite, then yes, something would have to be eternal, namely time itself, or, alternatively, the set of all things that existed throughout time. This is not profound, because we assumed time to be eternal in this case.

If we assume time started at a point a finite number of years in the past, then whether something has to be eternal depends on our precise choice of a definition for eternal. But regardless of how we define eternal, all we can really say is that something existed since the start of time. If time has only been around since the beginning of the universe, then all this proves is that there is something as old as the universe. This is not profound, because there is obviously something as old as the universe, namely the universe itself.

So, while the original poster’s instructor may technically be correct (depending on the precise meaning of eternal), I don’t think she’s really proven anything significant. If her intent was to prove that something existed before the universe, then I don’t think her argument is sufficient to do this (without making unjustified assumptions about the nature of time.) As I’ve said, there’s no reason to think that the statement “before the universe” even has any meaning.

[tim314]

SHORT VERSION
The argument made by the original poster’s instructor is sufficient to show that something has been around since the start of time. But we knew this already, since time itself has been around since the start of time.

It is not sufficient to show that anything that exists has been around since the start of time, other than (A) time itself and (B) the set of all things that have existed at all points in time.

It is not sufficient to show that anything has been around for longer than the universe, because time itself did not necessarily exist before the universe.

Whether the argument is sufficient to show that something is “eternal” or that something “has no beginning” depends on the precise meaning of “eternal” and “beginning.” If you chose these definitions so that time itself is “eternal” and “without beginning”, then the argument does suffice to show that something is eternal, but in that case time itself is eternal.

Ultimately, all it really shows is that something is as old as time, which is trivial because time itself is as old as time.

[rkts]

@tim314

The argument made by the original poster’s instructor is sufficient to show that something has been around since the start of time.

Your observations have been delightful, tim, but I think you’re wandering a bit from the original argument. I don’t think it “shows” this anywhere.

Remember, she is assuming that time does extend back infinitely, because of point v, “being from non-being cannot be true”, which implies an infinite, recursive movement backward. As I said, I think the only things her argument proves are that

the notion that something must always come from something else, and not from nothing, implies an infinite regression into the past

and that

it is illogical to hold both that something cannot come from nothing, and that the universe had a beginning in which it came from nothing

which are basically self-evident. In both of them, point v is an assumption. If you do not accept it (which is not unreasonable, as Lamia has observed) then the entire argument is meaningless.

So, while your observations are all true, I don’t think they are really shown (or questioned) by the argument.

[erislover]

Let’s recap, shall we? I begin by suggesting that you don’t escape the “from nothing” by suggesting that most of existents came from other existents, as I quoted in my first response, because the first existent was still “from nothing”, and so it was a rather short causal chain to suggest that existents came “from nothing.”

We then get to your response, which was that you didn’t have to admit that at all because I was assuming that “at the beginning of time” there was nothing, and then after that, there was something. (Usually what would be meant by the beginning of anything, but we’ll move on.) You then proceed to “correct” me by saying, “if time extends back infinitely, then there’s no such thing as “the beginning of time”, so there’s no reason to think that at any point there was nothing.” To which my response was the rather terse notion that you had your answer in the affirmative.

Now we come to this most recent response. “If we assume time extends back forever, then yes, something is eternal, namely time itself. But that isn’t a proof, that’s an assumption.”

It was your assumption. You’re walking yourself in circles (a square circle, in this case).

However, as I’ve said, there is no reason that I can see to assume that time extends back forever – so far as I know, the standard thinking is that time begins with the origin of the universe, a finite number of years ago.

Which means… : drumroll : … that something came from nothing. Hey, whaddya know, we’re back to my first comment!

f we assume time started at a point a finite number of years in the past, then whether something has to be eternal depends on our precise choice of a definition for eternal.

If you’ll look at the square, the implicit definition of “eternal” would be “non-temporal”, which I would suggest means simply that it has always existed, which I would further suggest that denying anything is eternal means that time must have a beginning, which leads us right back to stuff coming from nothing.

As I’ve said, there’s no reason to think that the statement “before the universe” even has any meaning.

Then I guess you feel that all is temporal and came from nothing.

If we need to go around again, you’ll have to bum me some quarters as I’m fresh out.

[BrainGlutton]

It’s this kind of nonsense that makes me wonder why anybody even bothers to study Aristotle any more. In logic and in political theory, he made some contributions that are still relevant today. But what else of value does he have to offer us?

[rkts]

@BrainGlutton

It’s this kind of nonsense that makes me wonder why anybody even bothers to study Aristotle any more. In logic and in political theory, he made some contributions that are still relevant today. But what else of value does he have to offer us?

First of all, in case there is a misunderstanding, Aristotle did not make this argument, especially not the first half. He did believe that all motion had to be caused by some other motion, and that, therefore, there had to be some eternal thing with which it all began, which he called the prime mover. That was his theory of how the universe worked, not something he touted as an essential conclusion on which all reason and meaning in life depends, as this woman does.

Second, as to why people read him, has it not occurred to you that some of us are interested not just in ideas, but also the history of ideas? The Greeks were the first to ask the most fundamental questions (including those of methodology, by the way), and even if they were wrong in their answers, knowing those questions helps us understand the significance of modern beliefs. Aristotle may not have any new ideas to offer readers today, but reading him, along with other famous philosophers, teaches us about the history of thought – not to mention ancient culture, the way people of the past saw the world, and quite a bit of human nature.

Plus, the Greek philosophers were just interesting people. Aristotle’s Rhetoric was a blast to read, for me, especially the second book, where he analyzes the human emotions. Look at what he said, for example, about anger, which he saw as a natural result of our inherent conceit and selfishness, and you’ll see he could have more insight into the human mind than Freud ever hoped for.

I have never enjoyed taking someone else’s word on a writer or thinker; I prefer to read their works and make those judgements myself. Your approach may be different, and that’s fine (it probably is more practical). But I hope you can appreciate why I take the approach I do.

[rkts]

@rkts

First of all, in case there is a misunderstanding, Aristotle did not make this argument, especially not the first half. He did believe that all motion had to be caused by some other motion, and that, therefore, there had to be some eternal thing with which it all began, which he called the prime mover.

And I should add, this almost certainly has nothing to do with the argument we are discussing. The term “square of Aristotle” is probably just a reference to his identification of contradictions, contraries, etc.

[BrainGlutton]

@rkts

First of all, in case there is a misunderstanding, Aristotle did not make this argument, especially not the first half.

And what exactly is “this argument”? The only proposition the OP submits for debate is: “some is eternal.” That is, some things are eternal. Now, if you want to know if any physical phenomena are eternal, ask a physicist, preferably one specializing in cosmology. Otherwise, the only meaningful answer is that ideas are eternal – e.g., the laws of mathematics – but unless you buy Plato’s pure-D bullshit, ideas and forms and mathematical abstractions are not really real in the sense that physical phenomena are real. What exactly is the question here?

[rkts]

@BrainGlutton

And what exactly is “this argument”?

Well, you read it, didn’t you?

The only proposition the OP submits for debate is: “some is eternal.”

. . . and that it isn’t matter. Along with a line of reasoning in support of both statements.

Now, if you want to know if any physical phenomena are eternal, ask a physicist, preferably one specializing in cosmology.

Why are you telling me this? I agree completely and never said any differently. That’s one reason I think this argument is ridiculous.

Otherwise, the only meaningful answer is that ideas are eternal – e.g., the laws of mathematics –

This is a very questionable assumption.

What exactly is the question here?

What exactly is your question? I told you why some of us enjoy reading the works of ancient philosophers, since you asked. Or am I misinterpreting your question?

[BrainGlutton]

Maybe I’m misinterpreting the OP’s question. I can’t understand why this teacher of philosophy regards the proposition “some is eternal” as a matter of personal importance to herself or to anyone, let alone that one’s life is meaningless if one rejects it.

[rkts]

I don’t understand that part either. I think she is saying that since the argument is so obviously correct (to her), to deny it is to be irrational, i.e., to give up reason, and because reason is so important, that means your life has no meaning. Which is absurd, of course. But if I’m interpreting the OP correctly then she’s only saying that to bully her audience into believing her.