Infinte regress7/1/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() We wouldn't have to traverse an infinite amount of time to find ourselves living in the present: the past is finite, the future is potentially infinite. So if the universe has a beginning point, it's possible for it to carry on existing for an infinite amount of time "into the future". A potential infinity exists when something can be added to indefinitely, without end. ![]() ![]() The fix for that is the axiom schema of separation. Russells paradox is about the fact that unrestricted set formation (defining a set by a predicate) leads to a contradiction. William Lane Craig admits that there could be things that are potentially (not actually) infinite. An infinite regress of sets is outlawed by the axiom of foundation but legal in the (obscure) field of non-well founded set theory. In the same way, if the past is actually infinite, the present would never have happened, because an infinite amount of time must have passed - this is traversing an actual infinity, which is impossible. If you tried to count to infinity, you would never get there. For example, if you set of on an infinite journey, you would never get to your destination. Most of the time, judges seem to understand their task pretty well, so long as they don't overthink it.Another argument tries to show that actual infinities are paradoxical by showing that actual infinity cannot be traversed (crossed). There are two ways in which a theory’s resulting in an infinite regress can form an objection to that. Usually such arguments take the form of objections to a theory, with the fact that the theory implies an infinite regress being taken to be objectionable. Third, even if it's true that there remain some unprovided-for cases under the Law of Interpretation, we don't see that as a fatal flaw so much as some fraying around the edges. An infinite regress argument is an argument that makes appeal to an infinite regress. When courts encounter two potentially conflicting federal statutes, they don't simply throw up their hands and say "dueling statutes!" So, too, it should be with conflicting canons. When the canons are understood as maxims, proverbs or pieces of advice, it's easy to see them as vaguely conflicting, like the sayings that "haste makes waste" and that "he who hesitates is lost." But how different legal rules interact with one another is itself a question to be settled by law. Second, understanding the canons as law also helps us to see how seemingly contradictory canons can fit together. In the paper, we argue:įirst, the law of interpretation has devices for resolving residual indeterminacy-that's what closure rules do, as well as the more practical "authority rules" like the rules that courts resolve disputed cases as best they can. And so on.Īs a specific matter, I'm not convinced that there's an infinite regress problem in the law of interpretation. Folks who dispute the validity of the judgment can agree on the jurisdictional statute. Folks who dispute the validity of the debt can agree on the judgment. We often have a thick nesting of legal rules-a debt obligation that comes from a judgment that comes from a court's judicial power that comes from a jurisdictional statute that comes from Congress that comes from an election that comes from the Constitution that comes from some kind of popular will, to take a simple example.īut the regress isn't infinite. (Indeed, here's a short essay laying out the criticism.) As I understand it, the argument is that the law of interpretation will itself need to be interpreted, and so we will have new interpretive disputes, which will need new laws of interpretation, and so on.Īs a general matter, I think it's important to distinguish regress from infinite regress. Several readers have suggested that The Law of Interpretation is vulnerable to a problem of infinite regress. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |