Anon01/21/26, 19:12No.16896178
I kinda regret getting needlessly aggressive with the Kant guy. Most of the other posters here are much worse. Guess brainlet fatigue has made me a bit trigger-happy. Maybe I should have explained more patiently what I meant: it's true that Zeno's infinite sequence of events is only potential; you can conceptualize dividing forever in principle, but that doesn't make motion infinitely divided. On the other hand, if I'm watching Achilles run and I take note of when he crosses the half-way point, are you gonna tell me that was only a "potential" event and didn't really happen? I just saw it with my own eyes. As far as I'm concerned, that's a real, discrete event and it happened. But what if I hadn't taken note? What if no one had? Does that mean it didn't happen? If you say it did happen, you're right back at Zeno's starting point. But if you say it didn't happen, you're denying its actuality only on the basis that there wasn't anybody for whom it was an actual event. Now take this logic and apply it in this thread's context. If the timeline of the universe stretches infinitely in both directions, then anyone thinking Kant's thought can conceive of an infinite number of potential events that must have preceded that thought, but for whom are they actual? Not for any being that has a beginning. And for all I know, maybe that's just another way to get at Kant's point.