Michael

The sensors are two dimensional with a width and height but no length. If spacetime is continuous and infinitely divisible, as is assumed, then an inf...

Then what is the answer?

Do you not understand what thought experiments are or how they're used?

For the sake of the argument the sensors just exist at their locations. We don't have to place them. The thought experiment is only to examine the int...

There's also Thomson's paper if you haven't read it yet.

2-dimensional sensors are placed after 100m, 150m, 175m, and so on. These sensors approach the 200m finish line but importantly no sensor is placed on...

See countable sets.

You should look up “refutation by contradiction”.

You claimed that the supertask described in Thomson’s lamp does not entail a contradiction. It does, as shown by that previous post. This contradictio...

No. I’m trying to prove that they are impossible, as clearly shown in this post.

Thomson’s lamp is a thought experiment designed by Thomson to prove that supertasks are impossible, with Thomson being the person who coined the term ...

Supertasks are the topic of this discussion. They are what the rest of us have been arguing about for 26 pages. You could perhaps start with the SEP a...

Is this a joke?

There is according to those who claim that supertasks are possible. They claim that within two minutes I can finish pushing a button an infinite numbe...

I'm not redefining the premises. Before we even consider when the button is pushed, it is implicit in the thought experiment that the lamp both existe...

No I don't. I mean exactly what I said.

Yes they do. These are our background premises: P1. Between 00:00 and 23:59, nothing happens to the lamp except what is caused to happen to it by push...

Not only is no state deducible from the premises, no state is consistent with the premises. The lamp is turned on if and only if the button is pushed ...

I understand how infinity works. The problem is that fishfry doesn't appear to understand how a lamp works.

I addressed his paper a month ago. See also here for a more formal argument. As for the screen, it can only ever display the time that the button was ...

I have always accepted this; it's the reason that the supertask is proven impossible. A lamp being off must always precede it being on, and so the seq...

If the Supreme Button Pusher turns the lamp on at midnight then it must have been off before He turned it on, because that's what "turning on" means. ...

I’m not claiming otherwise. I’m only claiming that I cannot have an imaginary number of apples in my fridge. That some number is sensible isn’t that i...

I didn't say that imaginary numbers don't have a use. I said that I cannot have an imaginary number of apples in my fridge. No. Yes, and this premise ...

Others do, like Zeno's and Bernadete's.

There's no miracle. Motion isn't continuous; it's discrete.

0, 1, 0, ..., 1\\0, 1, 0, ..., 0 Such sequences may make sense in the context of abstract mathematics but they do not make sense in the context of a l...

I understand that it has no end. That is why I am arguing that it is metaphysically impossible for an infinite succession of button pushes to end afte...

It does present itself because the lamp must be either on or off after two minutes as per the law of excluded middle. We want to know what would happe...

Because it's a lamp. If it exists at 12:02 then it's either on or off, and it exists at 12:02. And that's precisely why supertasks are impossible. We ...

I don't know what you mean by this. Given that the lamp must be either on or off after two minutes we must ask the question. If you cannot provide a c...

That's also true about the first two scenarios – neither switches after 1 minute and 30 seconds – and yet we can still answer the question about the l...

The lamp is off. It turns on and off only as described: Scenario 1 The lamp turns on after 1 minute. Is the lamp on or off after 2 minutes? It's on. S...

The lamp is off. After one minute the lamp turns on. Is the lamp on or off after two minutes? It's on because it was turned on after one minute and th...

I don't know what you mean by "arrive" at the two minute mark. Two minutes just pass. That's how the world works. Imagine I am facing a clock with my ...

That's not true, as I explained here, and as I alluded to above. It is not just the case that whether the lamp is on or off after two minutes is undef...

I have always agreed that the sequence "0, 1, 0, 1, ..." does not converge. I disagree with your claim that with respect to Thomson's lamp we can simp...

It's more than that; the lamp can't be on and can't be off, even though it must be one or the other. This is a contradiction, and so therefore the sup...

If it's on at t1 then either it was left on before t1 or it was left off before t1 and then turned on at t1. This is a straightforward logical point t...

A supertask is not simply an infinite sequence of numbers. In our hypothetical scenario with hypothetical physical laws we are still dealing with the ...

The lamp is on only if the button was pushed to turn it on, prior to which the lamp was off. Even if you want to introduce magic it is on only if magi...

We stop at the single issue being discussed: performing some action at arbitrarily small intervals of time. So taking the code here we assume that eac...

Thomson does that himself in his paper. I am defending his paper and explaining why Benacerraf's response to it fails. See here where I first brought ...

I’m using Thomson’s lamp to show that continuous motion entails contradictions. It’s not baseless. I’ve explained it quite clearly here and here and i...

The problem is that if motion is continuous and if the sensors are set up as stated then the lamp can neither be on nor off after the run is completed...

Continuous motion suffers from the same problem. We can imagine sensors at each successive half way point that when passed turn a lamp on or off. Is t...

A supertask is not simply an infinite sequence. With a supertask we are given some activity to perform and we assume that it is physically possible to...

The lamp is either on or off at t1. The fact that it makes no sense for it to be on and no sense for it to be off if the button has been pushed an inf...

It's a New York crime so was always going to be tried in New York. If it makes you feel better, his Florida trial will be in an area that heavily favo...

There are plenty of good reasons, supported by science, to believe indirect realism over direct realism, as I discussed at length here. But I don't un...