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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: A virtue of Vacuum Genesis
Message-ID: <2240@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Jul-87 22:11:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.2240
Posted: Wed Jul  1 22:11:40 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jul-87 13:23:52 EDT
References: <4080@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <8706261209.AA04305@brahms.Berkeley.EDU> <22236@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT.
Lines: 19

In article <22236@sun.uucp> rdh@sun.UUCP (Robert Hartman) writes:
>In an ultimate sense, I doubt that any cosmological explanation can avoid
>infinite regress.  And so, I can either accept them all as equally plausible,
>or reject them all as equally meaningless.  -bob.

Well, there is the alternative of saying "that's all there is, there is no
explanation for this, it's just there" at some point.  This leaves you in
much the same state you started in, of course.

There is also the possibility of a *potentially* infinite regress.  At each
step, you can find a deeper explanation; but there is no way to tie it all
up in ball and generalize (you can't say: "each level is based on the
preceding level in the following way: ...").  This possiblity is called job
security for cosmologists.  It seems more likely to me than some more fully
explicatable regress.
-- 

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate          52 Oakland Ave North         E. Hartford, CT 06108