Sunday, June 2, 2013

A Few Thoughts On 'Nothing'


If you define 'nothing' as the total and complete non-existence of anything, then how could something that doesn't exist, exist? In other words, how can non-existence exist? If nothing somehow could exist, wouldn't it actually be something?

What properties does nothing have? Well, presumably it has no properties at all. What limitations does nothing have? Well, since it has no properties it might have no limitations. But having no limitations seems like a property to me, as does having limitations.

Get rid of all the matter in the universe, all the energy, all the space, and finally eliminate time itself, and what do you got left? Nothing? The moment you eliminate time itself there isn't technically any time for that nothing to exist. It's like hitting an impenetrable brick wall where 'nothing' is on the other side and the only way to get through it is to somehow extend time, but you'd thereby be extending something into that realm of nothing, changing nothing into something. Nothing is thus, something we could never get to because to get there would require time, which itself is something.

From Victor Hugo's Les Miserables we get some additional thoughts on nothing:

All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word ‘no.’ To ‘no’ there is only one answer and that is ‘yes.’ Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Man lives more by affirmation than by bread. (1862, pt. 2, bk. 7, ch. 6).

Philosophically, I feel a bit more inclined towards the persuasion that true nothingness may in fact be impossible. As such, the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" may be construed as a deliberate red herring by the faithful in order to take us on a detour fishing for answers to explain this 'something' that we all take for granted because it ought to be presumed that nothing is the default. Now I'm not saying we ought not to try explaining physical reality, we certainly should, but let's also entertain these ideas from all possible angles instead of presuming that nothing exists by default.

3 comments:

  1. What properties does nothing have? Well, presumably it has no properties at all. What limitations does nothing have? Well, since it has no properties it might have no limitations. But having no limitations seems like a property to me, as does having limitations.

    This exactly!
    How can you constrain Nothing when the constraint is a property that Nothing cannot have?
    It seems to me that you're probably more correct, that such a Nothing could not ever have been - it's quite possibly an incoherent concept, and perhaps even the fact that it is a concept indicates that we're not talking about Nothing

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    Replies
    1. Agreed. From nothing is like from eternity: It can be put into words, but is most likely baseless in reality.

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    2. Not sure if you've stumbled upon it, but Richard Carrier does good job of spelling this out in Ex Nihilo Onus Merdae Fit

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