Message from @Alphonsus
Discord ID: 444887572049821705
That makes sense
But what I'm not understanding is why this argument is any more convincing than the argument that there is no plane outside of the natural world and there is just an infinite series of causes
From a Thomistic perspective, infinity in the Natural world is implausible.
And not to go down the road of science, but I'd say that is also decently held to be the same in that field.
Can you enlighten me on why infinity is not possible from that perspective?
Wasn't aquinas willing to concede that it is possible that the linear cause of the universe could be infinite just for the sake of argument?
Well let us go back to Aristotle, he posited correctly with regards to his rivals the Pythagoreans, that "objects of sense" (i.e. Nature) cannot be infinite. How can there be an infinite amount of causes in a natural world? How could something naturally exist forever? If this isn't the case, how then could something come from nothing without an extra-natural act by something unnatural?
The Angelic Doctor conceded plenty, however he felt with regard to this that the only way that could be is if God had always and infinitely was with the universe, but he certainly didn't accept that notion, and I don't find it well grounded in Thomism.
True
which is why i said he just did it for the sake of his argument
But my answer to your first message
I hold him in extreme esteem, but in some matters he was repudiated by the magisterium. Example being, the Immaculate Conception.
would be that as far as I know mass/energy can't be created or destroyed
Not naturally.
right
So if it can naturally exist forever
isn't it plausible that it has always existed forever?
Lofi Hip-hop to study and beat minorities to
And I apologize that I'm not very well educated in this field
But I promise I'm arguing out of good faith here
Again infinity has largely been discredited as, for lack of a better word, paradoxical and illogical. Even physicists have deemed it so. Example being Georges Lemaitre, university of Louvain in Belgium.
No need to apologize.
I'm still learning about what Aristotle meant by the difference of potential and actual infinity.
Mathematic theory isn't my strong suit, but I love how he related the two, it shows his general brilliance if anything.
So is this infinity in concern to the passing of time or is it everything?
Infinity, being never ending, not expanding either. So this particular infinity deals with all of creation which is guided and defined by time.
No infinity has not at all been discredited by physicists
I never said all of them.
I simply gave examples where it has been.
Where?
George Lemaitre, one of the theorists behind the theory of the big bang, seen here.
You realize even the most basic calculus relies on infinities
Almost every branch of physics that we even study in undergrad has infinities within the theory
Infinity in theory or infinity in practice? That is, infinity for hypothesis, or infinity with regards to metaphysics?
That question doesn’t really make sense
And I'm not colluding the two, I'm simply saying is infinity being used for theoretical purposes or for actual explanations of the natural world?
Help me understand as you do.
Actual explanations
GR is the best example
It requires no discrete lengths in space or time basically so that you can for any given curvature in space create a locally “flat” thing called a spacetime metric
To do that the world has to be continuous in time and space, so infinitely divisible