Results for 'Supertasks'

17 found
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  1. The Collapse of Supertasks.Gustavo E. Romero - 2014 - Foundations of Science 19 (2):209-216.
    A supertask consists in the performance of an infinite number of actions in a finite time. I show that any attempt to carry out a supertask will produce a divergence of the curvature of spacetime, resulting in the formation of a black hole. I maintain that supertaks, contrarily to a popular view among philosophers, are physically impossible. Supertasks, literally, collapse under their own weight.
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  2. Topological Games, Supertasks, and (Un)determined Experiments.Thomas Mormann - manuscript
    The general aim of this paper is to introduce some ideas of the theory of infinite topological games into the philosophical debate on supertasks. First, we discuss the elementary aspects of some infinite topological games, among them the Banach-Mazur game.Then it is shown that the Banach-Mazur game may be conceived as a Newtonian supertask.In section 4 we propose to conceive physical experiments as infinite games. This leads to the distinction between determined and undetermined experiments and the problem of how (...)
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  3. On the Possibilities of Hypercomputing Supertasks.Vincent C. Müller - 2011 - Minds and Machines 21 (1):83-96.
    This paper investigates the view that digital hypercomputing is a good reason for rejection or re-interpretation of the Church-Turing thesis. After suggestion that such re-interpretation is historically problematic and often involves attack on a straw man (the ‘maximality thesis’), it discusses proposals for digital hypercomputing with Zeno-machines , i.e. computing machines that compute an infinite number of computing steps in finite time, thus performing supertasks. It argues that effective computing with Zeno-machines falls into a dilemma: either they are specified (...)
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  4. Argument-Forms which Turn Invalid over Infinite Domains: Physicalism as Supertask?Catherine Legg - 2008 - Contemporary Pragmatism 5 (1):1-11.
    Argument-forms exist which are valid over finite but not infinite domains. Despite understanding of this by formal logicians, philosophers can be observed treating as valid arguments which are in fact invalid over infinite domains. In support of this claim I will first present an argument against the classical pragmatist theory of truth by Mark Johnston. Then, more ambitiously, I will suggest the fallacy lurks in certain arguments for physicalism taken for granted by many philosophers today.
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  5. The Infinity from Nothing paradox and the Immovable Object meets the Irresistible Force.Nicholas Shackel - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (3):417-433.
    In this paper I present a novel supertask in a Newtonian universe that destroys and creates infinite masses and energies, showing thereby that we can have infinite indeterminism. Previous supertasks have managed only to destroy or create finite masses and energies, thereby giving cases of only finite indeterminism. In the Nothing from Infinity paradox we will see an infinitude of finite masses and an infinitude of energy disappear entirely, and do so despite the conservation of energy in all collisions. (...)
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  6.  85
    Achilles' To Do List.Zack Garrett - 2024 - Philosophies 9 (4):104.
    Much of the debate about the mathematical refutation of Zeno’s paradoxes surrounds the logical possibility of completing supertasks—tasks made up of an infinite number of subtasks. Max Black and J.F. Thomson attempt to show that supertasks entail logical contradictions, but their arguments come up short. In this paper, I take a different approach to the mathematical refutations. I argue that even if supertasks are possible, we do not have a non-question-begging reason to think that Achilles’ supertask is (...)
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  7. A Puzzle about Sums.Andrew Y. Lee - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics.
    A famous mathematical theorem says that the sum of an infinite series of numbers can depend on the order in which those numbers occur. Suppose we interpret the numbers in such a series as representing instances of some physical quantity, such as the weights of a collection of items. The mathematics seems to lead to the result that the weight of a collection of items can depend on the order in which those items are weighed. But that is very hard (...)
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  8. Supermachines and superminds.Eric Steinhart - 2003 - Minds and Machines 13 (1):155-186.
    If the computational theory of mind is right, then minds are realized by machines. There is an ordered complexity hierarchy of machines. Some finite machines realize finitely complex minds; some Turing machines realize potentially infinitely complex minds. There are many logically possible machines whose powers exceed the Church–Turing limit (e.g. accelerating Turing machines). Some of these supermachines realize superminds. Superminds perform cognitive supertasks. Their thoughts are formed in infinitary languages. They perceive and manipulate the infinite detail of fractal objects. (...)
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  9. The Staccato Run: A Contemporary Issue in the Zenonian Tradition.Michael B. Burke - 2000 - Modern Schoolman 78 (1):1-8.
    The “staccato run,” in which a runner stops infinitely often while running from one point to another, is a prototypical “superfeat,” that is, a feat involving the completion in a finite time of an infinite sequence of distinct acts. There is no widely accepted demonstration that superfeats are impossible logically, but I argue here, contra Grunbaüm, that they are impossible dynamically. Specifically, I show that the staccato run is excluded by Newton’s three laws of motion, when those laws are supplemented (...)
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  10. The Nothing from Infinity paradox versus Plenitudinous Indeterminism.Nicholas Shackel - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (online early):1-14.
    The Nothing from Infinity paradox arises when the combination of two infinitudes of point particles meet in a supertask and disappear. Corral-Villate claims that my arguments for disappearance fail and concedes that this failure also produces an extreme kind of indeterminism, which I have called plenitudinous. So my supertask at least poses a dilemma of extreme indeterminism within Newtonian point particle mechanics. Plenitudinous indeterminism might be trivial, although easy attempts to prove it so seem to fail in the face of (...)
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  11. A proof of the impossibility of completing infinitely many tasks.Jeremy Gwiazda - 2012 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (1):1-7.
    In this article, I argue that it is impossible to complete infinitely many tasks in a finite time. A key premise in my argument is that the only way to get to 0 tasks remaining is from 1 task remaining, when tasks are done 1-by-1. I suggest that the only way to deny this premise is by begging the question, that is, by assuming that supertasks are possible. I go on to present one reason why this conclusion (that (...) are impossible) is important, namely that it implies a new verdict on a decision puzzle propounded by Jeffrey Barrett and Frank Arntzenius. (shrink)
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  12. Chopping Up Gunk.John Hawthorne & Brian Weatherson - 2004 - The Monist 87 (3):339-50.
    We show that someone who believes in both gunk and the possibility of supertasks has to give up either a plausible principle about where gunk can be located, or plausible conservation principles.
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  13. Infinitely Complex Machines.Eric Steinhart - 2007 - In Intelligent Computing Everywhere. Springer. pp. 25-43.
    Infinite machines (IMs) can do supertasks. A supertask is an infinite series of operations done in some finite time. Whether or not our universe contains any IMs, they are worthy of study as upper bounds on finite machines. We introduce IMs and describe some of their physical and psychological aspects. An accelerating Turing machine (an ATM) is a Turing machine that performs every next operation twice as fast. It can carry out infinitely many operations in finite time. Many ATMs (...)
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  14. Two concepts of completing an infinite number of tasks.Jeremy Gwiazda - 2013 - The Reasoner 7 (6):69-70.
    In this paper, two concepts of completing an infinite number of tasks are considered. After discussing supertasks, equisupertasks are introduced. I suggest that equisupertasks are logically possible.
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  15. A Step-by-Step Argument for Causal Finitism.Joseph C. Schmid - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (5):2097-2122.
    I defend a new argument for causal finitism, the view that nothing can have an infinite causal history. I begin by defending a number of plausible metaphysical principles, after which I explore a host of novel variants of the Littlewood-Ross and Thomson’s Lamp paradoxes that violate such principles. I argue that causal finitism is the best solution to the paradoxes.
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  16. Surreal Time and Ultratasks.Haidar Al-Dhalimy & Charles J. Geyer - 2016 - Review of Symbolic Logic 9 (4):836-847.
    This paper suggests that time could have a much richer mathematical structure than that of the real numbers. Clark & Read (1984) argue that a hypertask (uncountably many tasks done in a finite length of time) cannot be performed. Assuming that time takes values in the real numbers, we give a trivial proof of this. If we instead take the surreal numbers as a model of time, then not only are hypertasks possible but so is an ultratask (a sequence which (...)
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  17. The Cantorian Bubble.Jeremy Gwiazda - manuscript
    The purpose of this paper is to suggest that we are in the midst of a Cantorian bubble, just as, for example, there was a dot com bubble in the late 1990’s.
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