Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Mon Nov 03, 2025 2:25 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Nov 01, 2025 7:21 pmYou can't really "disagree" with maths. You can understand it, or you can fail to understand it; but you can't change it. There is no infinitely-regressive sequence of prerequisites or causes. That's just a mathematical fact.
Your argument boils down to:
There is an infinite sequence of numbers
Therefore there isn't an infinite sequence of events
You're not understanding it. The numbers are just symbolic placeholders, representing reality. But they're very telling about reality.
Let's try again: just write down a number -- I'll let you pick it...let it be 1, or 1,000, or 1,000,000. That stands for the point at which something is caused to happen as a result of a causal chain. But before you write that number, you have to have already written the sequence of numbers that precedes it...not just back to 3, 2, 1, 0, but back to -1, -2, -3...and so on, to infinity. That represents, numerically, the infinite sequence of previous events that would have to have already happened so that your number-event could take place.
Now, when will you get to write your number?
Just so, no causal sequence can be infinite. QED.
Not only is that not a sound argument, it isn't even valid.
That's only because you've mistaken and been unable to represent the argument I'm making. Of course it's invalid. You left out the connecting premises.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Nov 01, 2025 2:17 pm... Idealism is much less common than, say, Materialism, or Common Sense Realism, or regular Realism, or Empiricism, or Mysticism, or quite a number of other schools. So again, what makes Idealism "probable"?
Ah, you take plausible to mean probable; not my intention.
Then show that it's "tenable," if that's what you meant. It's still not at all clear to me why you think it's a better option for us to default to than any of the alternatives. And if it's not, then it's not to be a preferred hypothesis at all.