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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2010
Kant offered the following proof for the thesis that the world has a beginning in time:
If we assume that the world has no beginning in time, then up to every given moment an eternity has elapsed, and there has passed away in the world an infinite series of successive states of things. Now the infinity of a series consists in the fact that it can never be completed through successive synthesis. It thus follows that it is impossible for an infinite world-series to have passed away, and that a beginning of the world is therefore a necessary condition of the world's existence.
1 Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Smith, Norman Kemp, trans. (2nd ed., London, 1933), p. 397. (A 427, B 455).Google Scholar
2 Moore, G. E., Some Main Problems of Philosophy (New York, 1953), pp. 164–181. Subsequent references to this volume are given in the text.Google Scholar
3 For the example of the “backwards-counting creature” and also for the stimulus to write this paper I am indebted to Hugh S. Chandler.