Author:
Wade A. Tisthammer
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Date Posted: 03/ 5/04 12:19pm
In reply to:
Damoclese
's message, "Tristram Shot Down" on 03/ 4/04 11:13am
>I suspected all this Tristram baloney had been
>traversed before. Turns out it has.
>
>I'm gonna quote two relevant passages:
>
>"Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) suspects that the
>Tristram Shandy paradox can be solved. For Russell, it
>is the individual who possesses an infinite number of
>days. Of course mortal individuals possess merely
>a finite number of days. According to Russell,
>this is the key in solving the apparent problem."
>
>So, Russell solved this paradox by making Shandy
>Immortal. That's weird.
That's because you're taking it out of context. In this scenario, Shandy was born, and given an (at least potential) infinite future, there would be no day that would not (eventually) be unwritten about. But Shandy never reaches a point where he "finishes" his autobiography, i.e. there is no point where he writes about all the days of his past life.
>"Theist William Lane Craig. Craig, in response to
>Smith, asserts that both Russell and Smith have missed
>the real issue involved in the paradox. Craig responds
>to Russell that the problem with this argument seems
>to be that while an infinite number of years is a
>necessary condition of recording an infinite number of
>days at the rate of one day per year, it is not a
>sufficient condition. What is also needed is that the
>days and years be arranged in a certain way such that
>every day is succeeded by a year in which to record
>it. But then it will be seen that Tristram Shandy's
>task is inherently paradoxical; the absurdity lies not
>in the infinity of the past but in the task
>itself.(7)
And I don't believe that claim is entirely valid. There is nothing inherently paradoxical with writing an autobiography at the rate of one day per year. Why should we get a metaphysical impossibility resulting from the mere length of time in writing an autobiography? Take a look at my argument and try to attack one of the premises instead.
>Craig continues and claims that instead of Shandy
>writing forever and catching up on history, he
>would eventually be infinitely far behind.(8)
>Craig further points out that the picture Russell
>paints entails a beginningless task. That is,
>if one were to ask "Where in the temporal series of
>events are the days recorded by Tristram Shandy at any
>given point?"(9) then, according to Craig, one could
>only answer that the days are infinitely distant from
>the present. It appears that for every day Shandy is
>writing, there is an infinite distance from that day
>to the last recorded day."
I agree, but that only strengthens the argument I gave.
>Here's the link for anyone interested further:
> Tristram Stomped into the ground
I don't really see how that description is accurate. If anything, the web page seems to argue against an infinite past. From the web page:
On the question of an actual infinite, my sympathies are with William Craig. I think both Russell and Smith have failed to convince me otherwise. At this point I will limit my response to Bertrand Russell's view of the Tristram Shandy paradox. My contention is that there seem to be two problems with Russell's view on this matter.
First, if we observe what is really going on in the paradox then it becomes apparent that it is logically unsolvable, not merely epistemologically unsolvable. When we see that for each day there are 365 subsequent days of writing, then I fail to see how Shandy "catches up" on the autobiography. Mere comparisons of infinite sets and subsets bespeak the paradox's lesson. It is precisely because an infinite proper subset equals an infinite set why successive addition fails to obtain.
Also...
CONCLUSION
We have seen Bertrand Russell attempt to prove the possibility of achieving an actual infinite through successive addition. Even though the Tristram Shandy paradox of the slow autobiographer was designed to show why such a successive addition is not possible, Russell believed that the solution required Shandy to have an infinite number of days to complete his task. Quentin Smith agreed with Russell's contention and suggested the notion of sets and proper subsets to prove the point. William Craig suggested that Russell had focused on the wrong issue and that the problem rested not in the necessary time to complete it but, rather, on the sufficiency of consecutive counting. I concluded with two reasons why Russell had failed to solve the puzzle. I had suggested that Russell's solution actually increased the problem and then extended it to successive segments of time.
>Wade is apparently espousing Russell's view, who was
>an adamant atheist. I think this just goes to show
>that Wade is willing to adopt anyone's argument who
>happens (however tangentially) to support the idea
>that God exists.
Damoclese has apparently gotten careless in describing what I think. I think this just goes to show that Damoclese should be a little more careful in his accusations against me.
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