Grim Reapers and Endless Futures: A Problem for the Kalam

The Grim Reaper Paradox has been used to support the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Here I mount a grim challenge to this sort of reasoning: implying the impossibility of an endless future.

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OUTLINE

0:00 Intro
2:55 The paper
8:18 The unsatisfiable pair
14:35 B-arguments
17:34 A grim dilemma
20:55 A future-oriented paradox
31:44 First line: Patchwork principles
41:33 Second line: Mysterious forces
50:37 Summary
51:58 Conclusion

CORRECTIONS

At 8:02, I accidentally cut out the last two words of my sentence. I should have said "...equally motivate this new linking premise."

RESOURCES

(1) Free access link to the official article: https://academic.oup.com/mind/advance...

(2) If the link in (1) doesn't work, you can read a pre-print here: https://philpapers.org/rec/SCHTEI-19

(3) Kalam playlist:    • Kalam Cosmological Argument  

(4) My forthcoming Synthese paper, "Benardete paradoxes, patchwork principles, and the infinite past": https://philpapers.org/rec/SCHBPP-3

(5) My 2023 Phil Studies paper with Alex Malpass, "Branching actualism and cosmological arguments": https://philpapers.org/rec/SCHBAA-22

(6) My Springer book: (a) https://www.amazon.com/Existential-In... (b) https://link.springer.com/book/10.100...

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