Thursday, September 10, 2015

New book started

Yesterday I started working on a new book (or possibly a very big paper, but probably a book). Title: Infinity, Causation and Paradox. Thesis: Nothing can be causally effected by infinitely many things.

10 comments:

Miloš said...

Good luck!

Alexander R Pruss said...

Thanks! It's a fun project, though I'm still working on the preliminaries.

Anonymous said...

I would get this book the second I saw it was out. This could be tremendously useful for thinking through how B-theorists might be able to appropriate a Kalam Cosmological Argument.

Alexander R Pruss said...

And indeed one of the two applications in Chapter 8 is planned to be to the Kalaam argument. (The other is an argument for an Aristotelian discrete time.)

Alexander R Pruss said...

Progress report:

$ wc -w chapter?.tex
4497 chapter1.tex
14 chapter2.tex
1582 chapter3.tex
17 chapter4.tex
6 chapter5.tex
11 chapter6.tex
27 chapter7.tex
11 chapter8.tex
6165 total

Dante said...

Dear Prof. Pruss,

What are your thoughts on Aquinas' theses that [1] an infinite series of accidentally-ordered efficient causes is possible and that [2] infinite days could have preceded this present day? Have you ever written something about it? Thank you very much and I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask it.

Alexander R Pruss said...

Dante: I deny [2], but I think [1] can probably be supported independently of the denial of [2].

Alexander R Pruss said...

Progress:

$ wc -w chapter?.tex
4740 chapter1.tex
2342 chapter2.tex
8863 chapter3.tex
8726 chapter4.tex
6 chapter5.tex
11 chapter6.tex
1745 chapter7.tex
19 chapter8.tex
26452 total

Alexander R Pruss said...

Progress:

$ wc -w chapter?.tex
74 chapter0.tex
4740 chapter1.tex
2342 chapter2.tex
9425 chapter3.tex
11155 chapter4.tex
4744 chapter5.tex
8626 chapter6.tex
1757 chapter7.tex
28 chapter8.tex
42891 total

Alexander R Pruss said...

I split chapter 8 into 8 and 9. Progress report:
$ wc -w chapter?.te
74 chapter0.tex
6388 chapter1.tex
3769 chapter2.tex
9693 chapter3.tex
11434 chapter4.tex
10844 chapter5.tex
9315 chapter6.tex
3711 chapter7.tex
3068 chapter8.tex
3983 chapter9.tex
62279 total