Infinity is paradoxical in many ways. Some paradoxes involve deterministic supertasks, such as Thomson's Lamp, where a switch is toggled an infinite number of times over a finite period of time, or the Grim Reaper, where it seems that infinitely many reapers can produce a result without doing anything. Others involve infinite lotteries. If you get two tickets from an infinite fair lottery where…
Anyone who has spent some time around children or philosophers will be famil-iar with the following situation: The child or philosopher will ask a why-questionand demand an explanation for the fact or phenomenon at hand. If lucky, onewill be able to produce an answer, albeit just to be confronted with a furtherwhy-question concerning that answer. Then, at some point of this game of why-question…
The book presents a theory of what the basic building blocks of the world are and argues that they can be reduced to three: a field, a set of values, and an actualizer. The theory is used to answer philosophical questions like: What are truth, existence, laws of nature, mind, free will, time, mathematical entities, and ethical values? The book is for people who like to ponder the big existentia…
We begin with four tales of ancient philosophers. First, the time When Thales Fell in the Well. Thales was from a prominent Milesian family, and had dedicated himself to the contemplation of nature. Of particular interest was the nature of the heavens: he learned to determine when the sun would be eclipsed and the dates of the solstices. One night, as he was intently examining the st…
The preceding volumes in this series--devoted respectively to Person and Nature, Person and Society and Person and God1 --progressively delineated the basic issues of human and, indeed, of all existence. They took work on these issues beyond the horizon of the physical and social sciences, as well as beyond such philosophical methods as those of pragmatism and positivism. In this process the qu…