ManWithAPlan

@cellfactor: No need to apologize. It isn't as though you've offended me. I'm simply trying to keep us on track. There are rules in philosophy. You can't try to explain something in terms other than those that everyone accepts. For instance, I may not accept that god is infinitely wise, or I may not know he is, so it's not a good way to try to prove something.

A two dimensional plane does not have a height. You can theoretically position them (theoretically, read: academically) in 3-space such that the origin of each will have a z-coordinate, but they still won't have a height, so you could not stack them.

If you're talking about an infinite amount of pieces of paper or something that is like a 2d plane but has the height of an angstrom, then the height of the stack is infinite.

I don't know what you mean by "going to". I assume you mean "approaching", as in limits, which is also a theoretical concept, and not something observable.

I also don't understand what your equation is trying to show. Of course if you pick three things, set two of them to be inverses, and multiply them, you'll be left with the third. It doesn't seem to show anything at all.

@filtherton - who says only tangible things can be infinite? The way I see it is you have 3 levels of abstraction: tangible, observable, conceivable.

Let us reserve tangibility to our concrete perceptions. We can see and feel a yardstick. It has an innate spatial length.

Let observable be the set of properties which we can observe though are not innate to an entity. Like a cycle, a planet's orbit, a trajectory, the passage of time, a wheel's rotation

Let conceivable be the set of concepts which we can imagine with our minds but not experience directly for one reason or another.

Seeing as how our lives are limited, we cannot experience infinite time. We also cannot experience breathing underwater without the aid of SCUBA gear... we cannot experience being a bird. But that doesn't mean those things don't exist.

As our senses are limited, we cannot experience infinite length or distance. We also cannot see all the way to china from the usa, but that doesn't mean that china doesn't exist.

We can however talk about these things, including infinity, so it must exist. If there is no example of it in the universe, it exists only conceptually. but if there is no experiential example, then it can still exist on one of the other two levels; we just can't see it.

"Why" implies teleology. Can you prove that things have a purpose? If not, then you can't ask that question. Something might be infinite simply by coincidence.

To revive an old challenge - If the universe is not infinite, then what do we call the thing in which the universe sits? Is that infinite? Does a non-infinite universe imply multiple universes? Are they infinite? If so, does that not mean that the thing that contains them has to be infinite? And ultimately, if the universes are not infinite, what acts as a boundary between them that prevents us from saying that they are really just one universe?


edit:

I've also just thought of something that I think pretty much ends this debate:
Infinity exists. Time is infinite.

Time is always measured from a frame of reference.
If the universe is infinite (in time), and has no end, then time within the universe is infinite and infinity exists.
If the universe is finite, there must be another frame of reference which can admit that*, which seems to me has to be infinite**

* Meaning, can see the beginning and end of the universe.

** Unless that thing also comes to an end, in which case there must be something else, etc.

edit 2:

Can you link me to your Tachyon theory? I could try to find it myself but I want to make sure I get the exact one that you mean.

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In the end we are but wisps