Here is something interesting to think about, due, as is often the case, to David Lewis. This is in footnote 6 of his paper "Tensed Quantifiers" which is in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, vol. 1.
Assume there is a first sunrise, and that every sunrise forevermore is followed by another, and that time isn't circular.
Is it true that there will have been infinitely many sunrises?
(Just to be clear, "will have been" is used like this: On January 2nd, 2009, there will have been a celebration for New Years 2009.)
My first intuition is that no, there will not have been infinitely many sunrises. I'll think about it a little more though.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
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1 comments:
I think I would disagree with you here. Even if time isn't circular, it can still go on to infinity, like the natural numbers. Although it is true that after any finite period of time, t, there will have been only finitely many sunrises. But does "will have been" need to be connected with a time, t? It seems to me that one could just as easily say, "after an infinite amount of time, there will have been infinitely many sunrises."
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