On Finitism and the Beginning of the Universe: A Reply to Stephen Puryear

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (3):591-595 (2016)
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Abstract

ABSTRACTStephen Puryear argues that William Lane Craig's view, that time as duration is logically prior to the potentially infinite divisions that we make of it, involves the idea that time is prior to any parts we conceive within it. He objects that PWT entails the Priority of the Whole with respect to Events, and that it subverts the argument, used by proponents of the Kalam Cosmological Argument such as Craig, against an eternal past based on the impossibility of traversing an actual infinite sequence of events. I argue that proponents of KCA can affirm that time is not discrete, nor is it continuous with actual infinite number of parts or points, but rather that it is a continuum with various parts yet without an actual infinite number of parts or points. I defend this view, and I reply to Puryear's other objections.

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Andrew Loke
Hong Kong Baptist University

References found in this work

The Infinite.Adrian W. Moore - 1990 - New York: Routledge.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument.William Lane Craig & James D. Sinclair - 2009 - In William Lane Craig & J. P. Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Oxford, UK: Wiley‐Blackwell. pp. 101–201.
Finitism and the Beginning of the Universe.Stephen Puryear - 2014 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (4):619-629.

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