Take, for example, the loathsome infinite regress of telephone customer service.
The 21st century's version of the hall of mirrors is the infinite regress of embedded recording devices.
There is an endless regress of Gods which beget one another, but which do not beget the universe.
A man can either court these disqualifications directly or he can disqualify himself by tumbling into the regress of these reasonable thoughts, and appearing lame that way.
If regress of any kind was happening, it would appear as a temporary pause in the forward march of the species.
This immediately leads to an "I-think-you-think-they-think" type of regress a regress of a particularly nasty sort.
Any purported criterion, however, would have to be based either on another criterion thus leading to an infinite regress of criteria or on itself, which would be circular.
Devoid of uncertainty, emotion, confusion -- of the paralyzing regress of second guessing yourself and then second-guessing the second-guessing -- the machine would have automatically passed its fail-safe point, countermanding its superior and saving the day.
It takes very little for me to swap out the porcini mushrooms for the duck foie gras, but it takes something, and trying to nail down that something plunges us into an infinite regress of reasons and reasons for reasons.
11th century: since an infinite regress of causes is impossible, Avicenna argues, things that depend on a cause for their existence must have something that exists through itself as their first cause.
But, then, the regress of reasons has continued.
