Re: Eternity


"michaeld" <michaeld@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:565e35a4-af0c-474c-912e-bb63a2b61064@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On May 11, 11:04 am, "Thomas" <some...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



The fact that people's bodies decay follows not from just chemistry
but also the environment we find ourselves in - in particular the lack
of a source of replacement parts to the body. In principle such a
source could exist, even in our universe. It probably couldn't keep
the body going eternally - eventually you'd run up against problems
with the second law of thermodynamics, at least if our cosmology is as
we currently understand it to be. However if the laws of physics were
altered a bit it's by no means clear this would be a problem.

The major laws of thermodynamics were formulated by Boltzman before the true
nature of the atom were understood. They are based on statistical
observations not physical ones - in particular the principle of
equi-partition. Even if god could invent a better circle (ie change the
laws of chemistry) then there is no reason to suppose that the laws of
thermodynamics would no longer apply. And any attempt to tinker with the
statistics (a la Maxwell's Deamon is also doomed to failure).


(Think
of steady state cosmology for example - utterly ruled out by
observations yes, as far as our universe goes, but quite internally
valid as a model.)

I thought these were more or less ruled out by the Penrose-Hawking
singularity hypotheses, could you cite a peer reviewed paper which presents
an internally valid model of a steady state universe?


Besides, I never imagined that heaven would run according to laws of
physics - at least ones that are at all similar to what we're used to.
Heaven might be a purely spiritual realm.

People keep hiding behind this word spiritual, maybe you could explain what
it means.

I mean, we have the material world that we observe, the mental world that we
experience and the platonic world that we scratch the surface of. Surely
there's enough mystery in the way those known worlds operate and interact to
produce the human condition without throwing in another world for which
there seems to be absolutley no evidence and no need. Sounds very much like
the luminferous aether to me.


<...>


Eternality is most easily modelled by letting the time co-ordinate
range over the real number line. (Or perhaps the positive real number
line, if time is meant to have a beginning.) In fact all of the
purported paradoxes you mentioned would, if they actually were
paradoxes, prove that the real number line does not exist.

No they would only rule out the real number line as a physical object if it
were proposed that that line contained more than one infinity of
non-infinitessimals - which it doesn't.

<..>


I am using the word paradox in the sense of a derivation of an actual
contradiction rather than just a conclusion that seems counter-
intuitive, since the former notion is what is relevant if one wants to
argue that something is logically unsound.

No, a paradox is a series of statements that leads to a contradiction. The
paradox is resolved by identifying the statement or statements which are
invalid or do not follow necessarilly. Most paradoxes have a resolution,
they can provide useful and entertaining exercises.


I do not know of anything that even purports to being a paradox, in
this sense, when it comes to Hilbert's Hotel. AFAIK, HH is a nice
illustration of a particular way in which infinite sets are counter-
intuitive, at least by naive everyday standards. But counter-intuitive
is not the same as logically contradictory.

The paradox of the HH is that the Hotel is full and yet manages to
accommodate further guests - I'd describe those statements as contradictory
and hence paradoxical.

<..>


Yes, the paradox is that on the one hand the cardinality of the days
spent
working is the same as the cardinality of the days spent playing and on
the
other hand, on any particular day N the elect will have spent millions of
more days partying than working.

Those two statements are not negations of each other and don't appear
to contradict each other in any way that I can see. If you think they
do then you need to explain why. If you manage then in addition to
having disproved eternal life you will also have shown that the set of
natural numbers does not exist.

Let the number of days of work = W and the number of days of play =P.
On the one hand we show that W == P and otoh we show that P = 10^6W
That sounds contradictory (aka paradoxical) to me.

<...>

The elect studies the list and to his horror he sees that
cauliflower-cheese
appears on the menu every so often - and he really really hates
cauliflower
cheese. "Hmmm he says, do you think it might be possible to move the
entries
for the days with cauliflower-cheese back to the end of the schedule, by
that time I should have acquired sufficient wisdom to see the beauty of
even
cauliflowr cheese?" God frowns.

There is no such thing as the "end of the schedule" if the schedule is
eternal so what you're talking about would be not rejigging but
elimination. This is no more contradictory than if, in a finite
schedule, I try to "move" some task I don't like to the sqrt(-1)th day
or to the 30th of February.

It's not at all like referencing the sqrt(-1)th day - that would be a
straight category error.

Nor is it like referencing the 30th Feb since such a day does not exist -
all of the days in the schedule exist and a mechanism is available to
display the schedule for an arbitrary day N.


So, will the elect ever have to sample the delights of heavenly
cauliflower-cheese?

Now, the list is a real list and the days to which each entry relates are
real days (supposedly). We can exhibt the entry for any day and there are
mechanisms for generating an inexhaustable supply of entries. So why
should
it not be possible to rearrange the entries, and if it is possible to
rearrange the days then will our elect get to eat the c-c and if not then
what is the ontological status of those days in which he is scheduled to
eact the c-c?

Ok, it's just off the top of my head and maybe it's not the cleverest
example, but I think it helps to illustrate the problems that arise when
you
make the category error of trying to move a concept from the platonic
realm
into the physical realm.

Actually, purported paradoxes can never do that, as any object or
concept that lives in the Platonic realm must be just as free from
contradictions as one that exists physically.


Unsound systems can perfectly well exist and be examined in the Platonic
realm - they simply lead to contradictions. Physically unsound systems
cannot exist to be examined - in other words the nature of existence is very
different within the physical and platonic realms.

Now, we can conceive of as many infinities sitting alongside each other in
the platonic realm as we like, but we can only propose a single temporal
infinity in which to exist. So whilst the platonic realm provides a way of
resolving our paradox (by providing a home for multiple sets of infinite
cardinality) the temporal realm does not. In this regard I also refer you
back to the difference between a physical real number line containing
multiple infinities of infinitiessimals and a platonic real number line
containing multiple infinities of indexes of equal order.

But if you push me, I would reluctantly have to admit that I'm probably
going to have to work much harder to exhibit a water-tight formal proof that
the existence of a temporal eternity is logically unsound.


Thanks
Thomas







.

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