Nothing is a thought of something not conceived or something that will never be conceived.
Essentially, nothing is nothing, and can only be nothing. (although it is not ever being, because it never existed to begin with)
Only thoughts and possibilities that currently exist exist.
Because we can never think of nothing (ie. we will always think of something), nothing is impossible. There is no possibility for the existence of nothing.
Nothing is impossible.
Nothing does not exist.
The best understanding I can give about nothing is sleeping, before birth, or after death. We will never experience it. We know nothing about it. And we will never have an understanding of it. We think of a void as nothing, but that is the best mental analogy/metaphor we have. A void is something. Only nothing is nothing.
Nothing is not a thing, its an absence of something
So realy if we were to get perdantic about it, you cannot refer to something and call it nothing. Like you said a void is a thing because we can identify it, it becomes a thing even if it is an imaterial thing, so a void is not nothing. Saying nothing and something can happen at the same time is a contradiction in terms
Because we cannot name nothing without naming it does not mean the theoretical nothing does not exist. It must, for all must be balanced in one way or another. To truly name it nothing then we have quantified it so it must not be it. so it must exist since we know we cannot name it.
Nothingness and existence seem to be antithesises (antitheses?) of each other. Dialectically, you cannot ‘have’ one without the other. But since we define existence by its opposite nothingness, nothingness cannot exist. Nothingness is an absence of existence; not just a void among or in existence, but the complete opposite of everything existential.
Like I said your contradicting terms. Saying nothing exists is like saying black is white it doesnt work. In fact look at that phraze again
Nothing exists
We know this to be false because we exist, the only argument I have ever heard in which nothing can exist is when we view the universe as a whole the summation of the parts adds up to 0
Ie 1+1-1-1=0
But this only works in theory and if the universe is in complete ballence.
It is true that nothing is impossible because nothing cannot exist. If nothing cannot exist then nothing is impossible. If nothing were possible then nothing could exist, but the definition of nothing is the lack of existence, so nothing can’t exist and therefore is not possible.
The only “nothing” that can exist is the “idea” of nothing, but nothing itself does not exist, so therefore nothing only exists as an idea created by thought. If there was no thought, then nothing does not exist. As of right now nothing exists as an idea and not in nature. Once there are no ideas, there will no longer be nothing.
If ‘nonexist is’ then it exists and therefore cannot be used as the dialectic for existence. I don’t encourage circular logic.
I may have missed it, but I don’t think any of us said nothing isn’t a useful word…
Whether or not children have a complete picture of what ‘nothing’ means, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth discussing. There are plenty of good, straight-forward concepts that were made better by thinking about them. Maybe people won’t understand it in the interim but oh well
And also, words have to denote concepts, yes? Some people might take it too far but it’s hard to say “It’s only a word” because you could say that to a lot of arguments.
For instance, good is a concept that a child can understand. But as an adult you need a more complete picture. No one passes off ‘good’ as just a word.
‘Nothing’ exists quite definitively as a concept. You are using the word ‘nothing’ in the mode of ‘nothingness’, which one would suppose to be a kind of metaphysical substance - you use the word this way, and say that this ‘nothingness’ substance does not exist. But you are guilty of a category mistake. You are taking the word ‘nothing’ and the word ‘exist’ and applying them to each other outside of the language game in which it makes sense to use them. Here is how: we can unproblematically use these words together in this sort of way “nothing exists in this room” - and in this case we are playing the right sort of language game. But when you apply ‘existence’ to the word ‘nothing’ in the same way you apply ‘existence’ to words that denote actual objects, then you are making a mistake. This is exactly the sort of false philosophical problem that Wittgenstein thought emerged only from a misunderstanding and misapplication of language. It doesn’t even make sense to ask the question whether or not ‘nothing’ exists or does not exist as a metaphysical substance. The question is void of meaning because it commits a category mistake.
Anthem - “Nothing” simply denotes the absence of anything that matters within a given context. No purpose is served by taking any word entirely out of context, which is largely what is happening on this thread.
If nothing does not exist, then neither does everything. For to be truly everything, it must necessarily include the absence of itself. Otherwise it is missing something.
If nothing does not exist, then only some things can exist. And if only some things exist, then what is not?
P.S. I hate the word “thing” because it is too limiting when attached to “every” or “no.” Thus, when I say “All” I mean everything and every non-thing (i.e. infinity).
See This conversation could be so complimented with a few good shots of Mescal and a round table in a cheap saloon. In fact if I dust off a bit of memory this might be DeJa Vue.
