From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 12:08 PM
To: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: finite number of sentences

"Paul Holbach" <heir-of-holbach@freenet.de> wrote:

> > > "complete" means "entire", "lacking nothing".
> >
> > Then I don't see how "complete" implies finite.
>
> how can [..] non-completable, ie potentially
> infinite, be possibly regarded as a complete whole
> when no attempt of definite completion can ever succeed...?!

You've amended your definition of "complete" to now
include completability -- being subject to "definite
completion", i.e. some process of accretion that has
an end. So you're again begging the question by defining
"actual" as "complete" and "complete" as finished/
finalized/finite.  (Or, you've begged it by assuming
that a completion process cannot be infinitely parallel,
as Paul described.)

> > all events are equally "existent", and that past/present/
> > future have meaning only with respect to particular events.
>
> When the event itself has ceased to exist, ie has
> become past, what remains is a historic fact [..]
> which has "shifted" from present to past tense

"Becomes past" by what clock?  Consider a (boring) movie of
some clocks keeping time.  What frame in the movie is "the present"
in the movie?  We can watch the movie, and use our
own distinct time dimension (which has its own clocks independent
of the movie's clocks) to say that the frame we're watching
in our "now" is the distinguished "present frame" for the
movie. But that requires two kinds of clocks -- the ones in
the movie, and the ones on the wall of the people watching
the movie.

By contrast, the universe has only one kind of clock -- those
in the universe's time dimension. There is no reason to speak
of a clock outside the universe that tells which frame
or instant or time-slice of the universe is a distinghished
"now". Every instant is a "now" to the events that are
temporally close enough to it.

> > The notion of a "universal now" effectively (and unparsimoniously)
> > assumes some second and separate dimension of time.
>
> You´re generally right. [..] I should have [defined] actual set =
> def a set whose elements/individual terms are explicitly
> co-existing.

Yes, "co-existing" avoids the mistake of assuming that
there is a privileged point in spacetime.  Note that
neither criterion helps establish that an infinitude cannot
co-exist (or be "here and now").

> > Since by "incompletable" you obviously mean "not having a last
> > member", you are (once again) simply defining that you are
> > right instead of demonstrating it.
>
> I mean that "being incompletable" is equivalent to "not being capable
> of forming a definite whole".

Right, and "definite" either includes "finite" in its definition,
or doesn't.  If it does then you've again begged
the question, and if it doesn't then your argument hasn't made
any progress.
--
brian@holtz.org
http://humanknowledge.net