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Finitism and the Beginning of the Universe
Open accessAbstract
Many philosophers have argued that the past must be finite in duration because otherwise reaching the present moment would have involved something impossible, namely, the sequential occurrence of an actual infinity of events. In reply, some philosophers have objected that there can be nothing amiss in such an occurrence, since actually infinite sequences are ‘traversed’ all the time in nature, for example, whenever an object moves from one location in space to another. This essay focuses on one of the two available replies to this objection, namely, the claim that actual infinities are not traversed in nature because space, time, and other continuous wholes divide into parts only in so far as we divide them in thought, and thus divide into only a finite number of parts. I grant that this reply succeeds in blunting the anti-finitist objection, but I argue that it also subverts the very argument against an eternal past that it was intended to save.
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“As Stephen Puryear noted, the contemporary debate on the argument has somewhat stalled in the reiteration of incompatible intuitions about infinity (Puryear 2014, p. 619).”
From The traversal of the infinite: considering a beginning for an infinite past (2024) · cites this paper as Puryear 2014, p. 619
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Cites
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Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Kant Immanuel, 1787, Critique of Pure Reason
- Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm, 1705, The Leibniz, 325
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Sorted by citations
The traversal of the infinite: considering a beginning for an infinite past
Viglione, F. (2024) · Synthese · doi:10.1007/s11229-024-04735-4 · Cited by 1
Metadata
- Authors
- Puryear, S.
- Affiliations
- North Carolina State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Puryear, Stephen
- ORCID
- Puryear, Stephen
- Venue
- Australasian Journal of Philosophy
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2014-08-18
- Volume
- 92
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 619-629
- ISSN
- 0004-8402 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-6828
- OpenAlex
- W2038471453
- Cited by
- 23
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2024: 1 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 2 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 2
- FWCI
- 10.14
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- philarchive.org
- Locations
- Australasian Journal of Philosophy (publishedVersion)
- PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Logic and Philosophy of Science
- Keywords
- finitism, actual infinity, origin of the universe, philosophy of time, philosophy of mathematics
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