Q&A: Rejecting infinity because it is vague, versus accepting other vague concepts
Rejecting infinity because it is vague, versus accepting other vague concepts
Question
Hello!
The discussion here this week about the possibility of a "something" that is its own reason raised a question for me. I saw in the thread on the site about the notebooks that regarding the question of why an infinite regress is impossible, you wrote among other things in the comments:
"I felt it was enough for me to point out that the concept is not well defined and therefore cannot serve as a philosophical alternative. In other words, the burden of proof is on the one who proposes the regress. You cannot use a vague concept and by virtue of it reject another proposal. As long as the concept is not clear to us, it cannot be used, even if theoretically it could exist in some other sense."
"Infinity is perhaps something not fully defined (that is the problem with infinity in general), but in an infinite regress of explanations (a chain) there is an additional problem beyond the definitional issue of infinity, namely that there is no presentation of an explanation here, but only a declaration that there is an explanation."
"In Cantor's theory, infinities are treated as concrete entities, and this drew criticism. It seems to me that he does not define infinities but deals with the relations between them and assumes that they exist. But when one tries to define them, one runs into contradictions or at least an unclear meaning. On the philosophical plane, it is enough for us that the meaning is vague in order to claim that an assertion containing infinity does not offer a real alternative."
Why do we reject an infinite regress because it is an undefined concept (and therefore an illegitimate answer), while on the other hand we do not reject "its own reason" for the same reason when faced with the question of who created the Creator? Why is this different here? "Its own reason" too, even if it sounds plausible, is a vague concept that we do not really know how to describe, and yet we bring it as an answer to the difficulty of stopping the regress of "who created the Creator." According to that same logic, it too should have been rejected.
I know there are other difficulties with an infinite regress, but this is precisely the main flaw that most philosophers would agree with. That is, in order to avoid one vague concept, we brought in another undefined concept. What am I missing?
And while I'm at it,
happy and kosher holiday to the Rabbi and all his family!
Answer
The problem with an infinite regress is not vagueness but contradiction or emptiness of content. Something we do not understand is not the same as something contradictory, that is, something we understand to be false. The claim that something is its own reason or its own cause involves no problem other than that I am not familiar with such entities. So what? There is no contradiction in it.
There is another misunderstanding in the question itself that is worth noticing.
If there are 2 equivalent possibilities:
infinite regress or a first cause –
we reject the first possibility because it is empty of content, and a vague concept cannot reject another alternative. (Not to mention that infinite regress also involves contradictions.)
By contrast, between 2 non-equivalent possibilities:
at the head of the regress there is the lucky case, or something that is its own reason –
we reject the first possibility only because it is not plausible (its odds are low), and even if the alternative were not fully defined and somewhat vague (and it itself is not such a case; we simply are not familiar with such a thing), we must accept it, simply because the first possibility is not logical.
That is, the first case is different, where the 2 possibilities are equivalent and one of them is undefined and therefore must be rejected (and that is even if we ignore the additional problems there…), as opposed to the second case, where the 2 possibilities are not equivalent, because one is simply not plausible.