Thread: Metaphysical Paradoxes

I can address the first problem with a little more confidence than the second, as morality is a very complex issue and I don't think absolutist ethics needs to share the same plate as metaphysical concepts.

Consider the number 0. This is the end result of every equation, perfect balance. This doesn't mean nothing exists in 0, rather it contains an infinite potential. The same can be said of the universe or omniverse or whatever. Everything other than 0 is a temporary phenomenon being experienced with an illusory sense of time making it appear as if a succession of events are happening when in reality it's all just an equation going back to 0.

So 0, therefore, is the only immortal. It's the only thing which always existed and always will exist. Everything else is just one of the potential imaginations or equations. "Gods" are not immortal. They came from something and will return to something. Only that whole is immortal. When people refer to the supreme being, that is typically what they are talking about. Which is why when people begin adding qualities to the supreme being, they're wrong. Qualities are impermanent potential.

My quick reaction to the first problem: You seem to pose two perspectives, an outside-in and an inside-out one. The outside-in part asks how an object could have an infinite history or future, and what would be the implications (could such an object even reach our point in time). Such questions are tied to the history and fate of the universe... I have encountered rocks (and people even) who's particles have a history as old as the universe. Any questions about the history of those particles before the birth of the universe (approaching infinity) is captured by questions of the birth of the universe itself.

The inside-out perspective asks why one is intuitive and the other is not. If you're actually talking about biological lifespans, then both are absurd. So rather than asking why an infinite history is not intuitive, you should ask why an infinite future is intuitive. I think the answer to this is that the intuition of an infinite future is one of the evolutionary carrots we are programmed to chase. The logic of survival doesn't include any target duration. Reproduction is experienced as a surrogate for immortality. There are lots of non-functioning (in a biological fitness sense) by-products of the immortality drive. I think the quest for fame is such a by-product. The epic heroes never did anything without making sure a bard was around to write a song about it (or nothing we know about today... which is precisely the point).

The belief in and striving for immortality is the proximate mechanism that drives the ultimate evolutionary mandates of both survival and reproduction. Striving for fame and remembrance after death is a behavioral by-product. So while there are good evolutionary reasons for why the absurdity of immortality should seem intuitive, there is no evolutionary reason why the absurdity of reverse-immortality should seem intuitive.

Well, that's an interesting perspective, but I very much doubt that it would have such an explicit biological basis. Evolution and fitness explain many aspects of human behaviour but the idea that it explains everything is a common fallacy; adaptations (in this case the human mind) often come with necessary but undesirable or neutral side effects (case in point, try to explain the modern human behaviour of looking at pornography in terms of fitness and natural selection). This is an issue of conceptualising things outside our experience. Your explanation would make sense if we could only conceptualise things that we have evolved over tens of thousands of years to be able to conceptualise, but that just isn't true, our brains don't work like that at all. We have evolved conceptualisation because on the whole it gives us an extremely potent edge over other species, but the adaptation is a general one, and we can use it to do all sorts of things that didn't drive its evolution. We can use our imagination to conjure up a virtual infinitude of things, most of which are patently not for biological fitness; unicorns, floating castles, non-Euclidean geometries, infinite towers... hell, we can even conceptualise self-emasculation; and we can also rationalise about all of these things. To be honest I think your explanation is pretty unambiguously blown out of the water by an abundance of counter examples from reality.

Of course, all mental activity has a neural basis, and so the answer will in some sense be physical. But it won't be in such an obvious manner; the paradox will arise as an epiphenomenon of the way our rationality functions.

By the way, I think I could make clearer what the actual paradox is. It isn't just that it's hard to build an intuitive picture for; it seems counter to our rational expectations. An argument would go something like this: the immortal must be experiencing a specific moment. But it would have had to experience an infinitude of moments before that, and so it would never reach that moment (by definition of infinity) and cannot be experiencing it; which is a contradiction.

Originally Posted by Xei

We can use our imagination to conjure up a virtual infinitude of things, most of which are patently not for biological fitness; unicorns, floating castles, non-Euclidean geometries, infinite towers... hell, we can even conceptualise self-emasculation; and we can also rationalise about all of these things. To be honest I think your explanation is pretty unambiguously blown out of the water by an abundance of counter examples from reality.

Yeah but just because you can conceptualize something doesn't mean it's intuitive. Non-Euclidean geometry and elf-emasculation aren't particularly intuitive. I think evolutionary reasoning can be at least a solid foundation for explaining our more pervasive and intuitive inclinations, allowance for flexability after than foundation notwithstanding. You said in the OP: "Intuitively it seems like it's 'impossible for [an infinitely-old] consciousness to ever reach this point in time'. Why is this so different from the classic conception of an immortal?"... what is the classical conception of self-emasculation? Don't fucking do it! That's the intuitive version. I'm just playing with the idea that some sort of foreward-facing immortality drive is this category.

Maybe this doesn't get at the paradoxical part of your question, though. As you said it's not really an intuitive issue, it's a ratonal one.

Which suggests the question: what is the boundary between reason and intuition?

Unfortunately one often gets mistaken for the other as people have the abhorrent tendency to react dismissively to concepts which are counter-intuitive without first applying proper reasoning.

I would define intuition as the result of the unconscious conditioning of our neurons while reason is a cognitive assessment through our neural patterns which enables us to change these neural pathways when we realize we are not being reasonable.

One requires conscious thought, the other is automatic.

Extended substance is likely constituded by the unextended substance ultimately.

Unfortunately I'm not into French poetry and stuff so that will definitely require some explication.

There is no logical problem I can see with something having existed infinitely in the past. The argument has been brought up that it would have to have 'experienced' an infinite number of moments, and therefore never could have reached the current moment. But isn't that paradox analogous to an argument like "you can never reach the number 0 because if you start counting forward from -∞ you never get to 0", which is obviously false? Of course you can't start counting at -∞. That would be the wrong way to go about it. You just know that there are an infinite amount of numbers before 0, as you know there would be an infinite number of moments before the previous moment in which the immortal object exists.

What it would be like to experience being something immortal is a bit different, hard to imagine, but again I don't see much of a problem with it. How it would feel would depend on how the being's memory was handled. If it were like us, I'd guess that it would forget most of its experiences. If its memory had limited capacity, it would probably forget everything up until a certain number of years back, and so the being itself wouldn't feel immortal. Having an infinite number of memories might produce logical problems though.

For some reason thinking about a clock made me a bit more uncertain than a rock, but I suppose it shouldn't pose any problems either. Inquiring about the state of the clock at a given time would be like inquiring about the y-component of a sine graph at any negative x-value. If it's 12:00 now, exactly 6*10^9999 years and 1 hour ago it was 11:00.

The answer to the morality question would depend entirely upon the reason that killing life is immoral. If God said it's immoral, then yes, it would still be immoral. If it's immoral because destroying life produces a lack of life, then it would no longer be immoral. If it's immoral because the individual life itself has some inherent value, based on whoever's judgment, then it would probably still be immoral.

Originally Posted by Dianeva

There is no logical problem I can see with something having existed infinitely in the past. The argument has been brought up that it would have to have 'experienced' an infinite number of moments, and therefore never could have reached the current moment. But isn't that paradox analogous to an argument like "you can never reach the number 0 because if you start counting forward from -∞ you never get to 0", which is obviously false? Of course you can't start counting at -∞. That would be the wrong way to go about it. You just know that there are an infinite amount of numbers before 0, as you know there would be an infinite number of moments before the previous moment in which the immortal object exists.

I don't really get what is meant by 'being able to reach' a number? Could you explain it? And in any case, numbers are just conceptual entities; you aren't inhibited by physical reality, which tends to be a lot more restrictive.

What it would be like to experience being something immortal is a bit different, hard to imagine, but again I don't see much of a problem with it. How it would feel would depend on how the being's memory was handled. If it were like us, I'd guess that it would forget most of its experiences. If its memory had limited capacity, it would probably forget everything up until a certain number of years back, and so the being itself wouldn't feel immortal. Having an infinite number of memories might produce logical problems though.

That's what I meant about meeting an immortal; I considered elaborating. Given a certain point, it seems like you can conceptualise what it would be like to be the immortal at that point. You would be in the present moment, and your memories would recede into some vanishing point.

The issue is whether the concept of meeting such an immortal at some point is well-defined to start with.

The definition of something having a measure of infinity is essentially, given any point, you can find a point greater than it. In the context of the standard conception of immortals as existing for infinity, once they are born, given any point in their life, you understand that given an interval of time after that, they'll still be alive.

I think this is the crucial point: something existing for infinitely long does not mean it encounters the point '∞'; it's a local concept.

We don't have any problem with the idea that something will go on to keep experiencing moments infinitely, because by definition, all this means is that at any point you encounter it, it has only had a finite life span, and has not had to experience an infinitude of moments to reach you. It never actually becomes an infinitely old being.

The other case is totally different; at any point you meet it, you can name a point in the distant past, and the being will be older than that. In other words, at any point you meet it, it has had to experience an infinitude of moments to reach you; it actually has 'reached' ∞, which we take to be impossible.

So the first being always has a finite age, and the second being always has an infinite age.

So in effect, this paradox is just a corollary of a simpler, more general problem: can something be infinitely old?

(All of the above applies in the obvious way to the questions about objects, too).

The answer to the morality question would depend entirely upon the reason that killing life is immoral. If God said it's immoral, then yes, it would still be immoral. If it's immoral because destroying life produces a lack of life, then it would no longer be immoral. If it's immoral because the individual life itself has some inherent value, based on whoever's judgment, then it would probably still be immoral.

What do you think?

Originally Posted by Xei

what is the boundary between reason and intuition?

Uncertainty?

Originally Posted by Xei

I don't really get what is meant by 'being able to reach' a number? Could you explain it?

Counting forwards from -∞, one will never encounter the number 0 (nor any finite number) because it doesn't make sense to count forwards from -∞. This is because, as you've said, ∞ is just a concept, not a real number. An argument brought up against immortal beings that have always existed, is that they would have to have experienced an infinite number of moments in the past, and therefore could never have gotten to the current moment. Essentially, this argument is assuming that the being would have to have started somewhere (at some -∞ time) and so could never have reached 0. But this is flawed thinking, because the being would start at some -∞ time, it just always existed. (Unless I'm misunderstanding the point of the argument completely).

Originally Posted by Xei

And in any case, numbers are just conceptual entities; you aren't inhibited by physical reality, which tends to be a lot more restrictive.

But we're talking about conceptually, right? Ignoring the fact that time did have a beginning (if that's true), in the scenario being considered, some universe would have to have always existed.

Originally Posted by Xei

I think this is the crucial point: something existing for infinitely long does not mean it encounters the point '∞'; it's a local concept.

We don't have any problem with the idea that something will go on to keep experiencing moments infinitely, because by definition, all this means is that at any point you encounter it, it has only had a finite life span, and has not had to experience an infinitude of moments to reach you. It never actually becomes an infinitely old being.

The other case is totally different; at any point you meet it, you can name a point in the distant past, and the being will be older than that. In other words, at any point you meet it, it has had to experience an infinitude of moments to reach you; it actually has 'reached' ∞, which we take to be impossible.

So in effect, this paradox is just a corollary of a simpler, more general problem: can something be infinitely old?

I get your point now, and I don't see why it couldn't be. Why do we consider it to be impossible for something to be infinitely old? ∞ is a concept, not a number, but there are still no logical problems with saying that something has existed infinitely into the past. And it might even be said that that thing has existed for an infinite amount of time, but that way of saying it might be misleading, since it isn't any concrete 'amount of time'. It could just be said that, at any point in the past, the being existed before that.

It's probably impossible to conceptualize, so it's probably best to seek logical inconsistencies. And if there are none, maybe it would be possible (conceptually, assuming some alternate reality).

Originally Posted by Xei

What do you think?

A while ago I probably would have leaned toward the last one, that I place value on the life itself, and so it's immoral to destroy it, even if some other identical life came to replace it. Saying otherwise would be like saying I have no problem with killing myself as long as an identical copy of me could replace me.

Now I really don't know. Would it be immoral to destroy a planet far away, thriving with life, which we'll never actually interact with personally? Even ignoring the infinite copies situation, I'm not sure how I'd answer that. Why place value on anything? It all comes down to emotion, what we personally feel should be valued. Nothing has any objective value, apart from us deciding that we're going to behave as though it does because that makes us feel better in some way. But this is a different topic.

Originally Posted by Xei

Add your own

I find my precognitive dreams to be the most baffling metaphysical paradox I have experienced.

Originally Posted by Phion

Uncertainty?

You don't seem very certain?

Could you give an example of each?

Nice to see you again by the way.

Originally Posted by Dianeva

I get your point now, and I don't see why it couldn't be. Why do we consider it to be impossible for something to be infinitely old? ∞ is a concept, not a number, but there are still no logical problems with saying that something has existed infinitely into the past. And it might even be said that that thing has existed for an infinite amount of time, but that way of saying it might be misleading, since it isn't any concrete 'amount of time'. It could just be said that, at any point in the past, the being existed before that.

It's probably impossible to conceptualize, so it's probably best to seek logical inconsistencies. And if there are none, maybe it would be possible (conceptually, assuming some alternate reality).

I think you're basically right. I never really believed in the paradox; in fact it's a classic example of what I would call questions beyond the scope of human cogency. But I always find it fun to pinpoint the source of our inadequacy, and in fact I think these things can give important insights into how the mind works.

Here's a very similar issue: you're sat at a train station in space. In situation A, there is a train there. The space train soon departs, travelling at a speed of 88mph in an infinite straight line, for the infinite future. In situation B, a train arrives, having travelled at 88mph for the infinite past.

Do you think there's any difference in the intuitive plausibility of these scenarios? If so that's very interesting, because they are literally exactly the same scenario as far as physics is concerned. I think A is fine and B seems absurd... the biological source of this symmetry breaking is rather intriguing.

A while ago I probably would have leaned toward the last one, that I place value on the life itself, and so it's immoral to destroy it, even if some other identical life came to replace it. Saying otherwise would be like saying I have no problem with killing myself as long as an identical copy of me could replace me.

This comes back to my tangential question of identity. When it comes to consciousness it becomes unbearably paradoxical. There are watertight reasons to think that you shouldn't be afraid of ceasing to exist if that event occurred; there are also watertight reasons to think the opposite.

Now I really don't know. Would it be immoral to destroy a planet far away, thriving with life, which we'll never actually interact with personally? Even ignoring the infinite copies situation, I'm not sure how I'd answer that. Why place value on anything? It all comes down to emotion, what we personally feel should be valued. Nothing has any objective value, apart from us deciding that we're going to behave as though it does because that makes us feel better in some way. But this is a different topic.

I guess I would simply appeal to induction, which I see as the source of all knowledge. We feel that we shouldn't kill or cause pain to the life that we see, so by induction alone, we apply the same principle to all life. What if you had to make such a judgement about somebody on Earth who you haven't met so far (and, maybe, happen never to meet)? You perform the same step.

Infinity is difficult to conceptualize vividly, but it can still make sense logically. Imagine floating in space and looking ahead. You are looking at infinite distance. Now imagine the infinite distance behind your head. Ininite time works, or would work, the same way.

Was it ever the case that 2 + 2 =/= 4? The truth of it is timeless/eternal. It never began.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

Infinity is difficult to conceptualize vividly, but it can still make sense logically. Imagine floating in space and looking ahead. You are looking at infinite distance. Now imagine the infinite distance behind your head. Ininite time works, or would work, the same way.

Was it ever the case that 2 + 2 =/= 4? The truth of it is timeless/eternal. It never began.

It makes sense logically but the examples you gave aren't good. Floating in space, you don't see infinitely ahead. Even if you could see every object from which you could draw a straight line to your eyes with no interference, eventually there would come a distance at which you couldn't see, because other objects would block any objects past that point. So you wouldn't be seeing an infinite distance.

2 + 2 = 4 is true outside of time, and if you say that fact is infinite you're using some other definition of infinity.

Originally Posted by Xei

Here's a very similar issue: you're sat at a train station in space. In situation A, there is a train there. The space train soon departs, travelling at a speed of 88mph in an infinite straight line, for the infinite future. In situation B, a train arrives, having travelled at 88mph for the infinite past.

Do you think there's any difference in the intuitive plausibility of these scenarios? If so that's very interesting, because they are literally exactly the same scenario as far as physics is concerned. I think A is fine and B seems absurd... the biological source of this symmetry breaking is rather intriguing.

I agree that intuitively the situations seem different. Perhaps we aren't properly imagining the future extending infinitely, and instead we just think "in 1000 years the train will still be traveling, in 10000000 years it will still be," etc. It's easy to imagine that the train is here right now, at a concrete point in time, and to ignore whatever 'infinitely into the future' means because that will happen later and we don't really need to think about it, so situation A is easier to imagine. But while considering the train already having traveled infinitely in the past, we're forced to imagine that the train has already undergone all of that traveling. The ∞ part seems more real since the train has already experienced it before the present moment.

Originally Posted by Xei

This comes back to my tangential question of identity. When it comes to consciousness it becomes unbearably paradoxical. There are watertight reasons to think that you shouldn't be afraid of ceasing to exist if that event occurred; there are also watertight reasons to think the opposite.

What are those reasons?
To me it just seems that I don't want to die because I don't want to die. That's hardwired into my brain. The 'I' is the instance of the brain itself, not 'me or any identical copy of me', the survival instinct just doesn't work like that.

Originally Posted by Dianeva

Why do we consider it to be impossible for something to be infinitely old? ∞ is a concept, not a number, but there are still no logical problems with saying that something has existed infinitely into the past. And it might even be said that that thing has existed for an infinite amount of time, but that way of saying it might be misleading, since it isn't any concrete 'amount of time'. It could just be said that, at any point in the past, the being existed before that.

One problem with this is that assuming that the being remembered enough of its experiences causes it to have an infinite amount of information. We can try to solve this by stipulating that it has only a finite amount of memories. However information disappearing would seem to be very bad for causality.

This isn't a problem going forward.

Originally Posted by Xei

You don't seem very certain?
Here's a very similar issue: you're sat at a train station in space. In situation A, there is a train there. The space train soon departs, travelling at a speed of 88mph in an infinite straight line, for the infinite future. In situation B, a train arrives, having travelled at 88mph for the infinite past.

Do you think there's any difference in the intuitive plausibility of these scenarios? If so that's very interesting, because they are literally exactly the same scenario as far as physics is concerned. I think A is fine and B seems absurd... the biological source of this symmetry breaking is rather intriguing.

Specifically, if some recording device starts at t=0 then at any t going forward, it's only recorded t amount of time. Coming from the past, it has an infinite recording.

So for these things to make sense, it seems necessary to assume that there can be an infinite amount of information about the universe.

Originally Posted by Xei

You don't seem very certain?

Making a distinction, or attempting to describe some transitory process between our agency for reason and intuition is outside the scope I'm willing to flesh out anytime soon I'm afraid.

Originally Posted by Xei

Could you give an example of each?

By each, I'm assuming you mean examples of situations where this distinction or process is evident. I'm sure there are quite a few; opening a parachute without an altimeter, flying a jet during a dog fight, formula one racing, etc.

Originally Posted by Xei

Nice to see you again by the way.

Feel good to be back!

Originally Posted by Dianeva

It makes sense logically but the examples you gave aren't good. Floating in space, you don't see infinitely ahead. Even if you could see every object from which you could draw a straight line to your eyes with no interference, eventually there would come a distance at which you couldn't see, because other objects would block any objects past that point. So you wouldn't be seeing an infinite distance.

It involves looking at something that is infinite. No object marks the end of what you are looking at. You are thus looking infinitely ahead. You don't have to have objects going forever to do that. The point of this is conceptualization any way. My examples illustrate the concept of infinity in a way that some people can understand it.

Originally Posted by Dianeva

2 + 2 = 4 is true outside of time, and if you say that fact is infinite you're using some other definition of infinity.

2 + 2 = 4 is true within time and external to time, and time is not the final dimension any way. 2 + 2 = 4 is a reality, and it never began as a reality. It has no beginning, and it exists now. That makes it eternal, not merely in a this fourth dimension sense. That makes it infinite.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

2 + 2 = 4 is true within time and external to time, and time is not the final dimension any way. 2 + 2 = 4 is a reality, and it never began as a reality. It has no beginning, and it exists now. That makes it eternal, not merely in a this fourth dimension sense. That makes it infinite.

Until you show me a 2 and you show me a + and you show me a =, I have to maintain that these things are all in your head.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

That makes it eternal, not merely in a this fourth dimension sense. That makes it infinite.

I believe the word you're looking for is atemporal. However, to coin the concept of eternity and infinity is to reference time itself, or an interval, bedding our relationship between something countable (like a set of ideas) and something intangible (like immortality). Where either facet can exist independently of time, but also relies on time to form the concept in the first place.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

Until you show me a 2 and you show me a + and you show me a =, I have to maintain that these things are all in your head.

They are not objects, but 2 is this many. * *
Two more is this many **.

Together they form (symoblized by +) this many * * * *.

However, I cannot show you i of them or of anything else.

Originally Posted by Phion

I believe the word you're looking for is atemporal. However, to coin the concept of eternity and infinity is to reference time itself, or an interval, bedding our relationship between something countable (like a set of ideas) and something intangible (like immortality). Where either facet can exist independently of time, but also relies on time to form the concept in the first place.

It would perhaps involve another dimension or dimensions, but something existing without a beginning or end is eternal/infinite. Something existing the entirety of an infinite time line would be eternal, but I do not think that is a requirement.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

They are not objects, but 2 is this many. * *
Two more is this many **.

Together they form (symoblized by +) this many * * * *.

However, I cannot show you i of them or of anything else.

So to paraphrase, two doesn't actually exist in any sense that has meaning within the rational materialist model?

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

So to paraphrase, two doesn't actually exist in any sense that has meaning within the rational materialist model?

That is not true. Two is not a material object, but it is an amount that pertains to material objects and often is an amount of material objects. I know you are trying to make an imaginary numbers issue comeback, so I will tell you that what I said about two does not applyl to i.