Infinite regression
Good week,
I wanted to ask you why infinite regression seems implausible.
is that if an infinite number of causes must precede each event, then no event will ever occur. For example, if we imagine that you are standing in line to enter a certain door. And there is a limited number of people in line in front of you, and every so often someone enters the door, then after a certain amount of time your turn will come. But if there are countless people in line in front of you, then your turn will never come. And not only your turn, but the turn of the person in front of you will never come, and so on. It turns out that no person can ever pass through the door. And in a similar way – no event can ever occur. But in reality events do occur, and this shows that there is a first cause from which everything begins.
This formulation appears in the chapter on the uniqueness of the duties of the hearts. But in mathematics today it is considered an “illegal” formulation, because you cannot talk about the far end of an infinite chain. Although what you are saying may itself be the reason why it is illegal. I would formulate it differently: there is no place to start (because infinity is not a specific point but a limit in a potential sense). Even on the number line, you cannot be at minus infinity and start moving to the right. This is not mathematically defined. After all, explanatory regression is a backward movement from the later to the earlier, from the circumstantial to the cause/explanation. But when you try to examine whether you have indeed received an explanation, you must follow the causal chain from the beginning and move forward to the circumstantial. This is an undefined process.
1. Thank you! I saw this dogma in Moshe Rat.
2.
I wanted to ask more about the parable of the turtles that you presented in the notebook, and I will use another parable to serve as a reverse dogma in which infinite regression does not lead to failure at all.
As I understand it, the main point of your argument in the parable of the turtles is that each turtle is unstable in the air on its own, for example, turtle 1, if it stands in the air alone, will fall. And so even if we add turtle 2 as standing below it, this does not give priority to turtle 1 because turtle 2 alone is also unstable. What would give turtle 2 stability is standing on something that touches the floor, but as mentioned, this did not happen.
That is, even if we pull the chain to infinity. Infinity does not have the power to do the impossible, as mentioned when every entity in itself has its own defect; it does not touch the floor.
But I think it is possible to give another parable in which this problem is not valid (and this parable can be a parable for the physico-theological view). I will call it the “parable of the train”.
The parable of the train, simulating a long train connected by carriages, when we ask how the final carriage travels at a speed of 50 km”h?
So giving an answer in the form of carriage 2 moving carriage 1 is a completely satisfactory answer. Because each carriage is the one that gives a full explanation for the speed of the next carriage *alone*. And in such a case, even if there are things left that refine the explanation (car 2) finally each carriage is the one that gives a *full explanation* for the next carriage alone.
In such a parable, when each component alone gives a full explanation for the speed of the next carriage, it seems that it does indeed create a full explanation for the movement of the carriages.
In contrast, the parable of the turtles is a little different because turtle 2 does not explain turtle 1, and turtle 2 is standing on a turtle that touches the floor. And so I think that the fish of the physico-theological view is more similar to the fish of the train with the cars than to the fish of the turtles.
And in the parable of the cars, it is not at all clear that an answer that *indirectly* creates an infinite regression is problematic. Because each car provides a full explanation for the car before it.
So it is true that there is finally an infinite regression in it, but it is a product that is created indirectly. The explanation is complete throughout all its parts. In such a case, infinite regression can be accepted.
In contrast, it seems that the cosmological view, according to some of its presentations (such as why there is something and nothing) is actually more related to the example of the turtles than the train.
So I would like to know what the rabbi thinks about this clear difference?
First, I'm not sure I agree with the formulation you suggested for the regression problem. The problem is not that every turtle in itself is unstable, but that there is no initial turtle. It is true that in the background there is an assumption that every turtle in itself is unstable, because if one of them were stable because of itself, there would be no need for the turtles below it, and especially not the first turtle, but this is a side assumption.
Second, I don't see any difference between the two examples. Even in the example of the train, no train gives an explanation without the others, because its own speed is not explained from within itself. Therefore, it also needs its predecessors. In exactly the same way, if each turtle's stability in itself did not require an explanation, then there would be a sufficient explanation in it, but it does not exist (its stability requires the others to explain it).
In other words: in both cases, if there were a stable turtle or a train whose speed is understood from within itself and does not require an explanation, we could stop there. But in both cases there is no such turtle/train, and therefore in both cases there is infinite regression. There is no difference.
And if you return to the formulation I initially proposed for the regression problem, that there is no first link, you will clearly see that the train example offers no explanation and that it is also impossible to accept infinite regression.
Doesn't the same argument apply to God's eternity? After all, if he existed for an infinite amount of time before he decided to create the world, then it would "never happen," as you said.
Regarding God, you can use a potential formulation, that there was no time when He did not exist. You do not need the concrete formulation that He exists for an infinite time. This is in contrast to the chain of explanation that consists of links. Here you need a concrete infinity.
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