Nothing or Nothing?

Observed_Observer · January 31, 2009, 9:57pm

A play of logic as nothing becomes something…

A is greater than nothing
Nothing is greater than B
A is greater than B

No thing is obviously impossible and incomprehensible. Nothing does not exist anywhere in itself in the universe(even in a vacuum).
The word nothing like the word need I would only use in a sentence which the word is a dependent requirement of something else. Such as in order to survive I need water or Nothing was different about her.

I’ll focus on the latter of that example…

Nothing was different about her only can imply everything was the same. Nothing cannot be a noun. Not one thing appeared that usually does not appear. It is a negative to describe a positive(the only way we perceive anything). The negative is used to say what the positive is not, the negative does not become the positive. ‘Nothing was there’ makes no sense, for nothing has to imply a negative to a stated positive(noting blue was there).

I bring this up to see the inverse argued. I’m sure there are plenty whom disagree…Perhaps I am an analytical philosopher? Although I’m not exactly sure what that implies.

Wonderer · January 31, 2009, 10:38pm

just to let you know this is an example of “equivocation”

To say A is greater than nothing can mean two things. It can either mean A is not greater than anything, or it can mean A is larger or greater than “nothing” or “the absense of something”. it can mean A is something. It’s an ambiguous premise.

“Nothing is rgeater than B” is also an ambiguous premise.

it can mean That B is less than nothing, or it can mean that nothing is greater than B.

nothing can be a pronoun: “there was nothing inside the house”

It can be a quantity “the score was two to nothing”

it can be a noun “the funky car resembled nothing”

im not sure i fully understand what you meant to say in the latter half of the thread, perhaps you can reiterate your points?

Observed_Observer · February 1, 2009, 8:37pm

Nothing is a false concept used to describe the absence of everything.
The absence of everything is not something. A can only be greater than the absence of everything when A is not a thing itself.

The absence of everything = nothing. The absence of Nothing = everything.

Its only ambiguous because people confuse nothing as a thing. Nothing is the absence of all things and therefor cannot be measured against anything.

How can the absence of everything exist inside a house? It couldn’t because it does not exist!

Nothing cannot be a score, it cannot be anything!

A Noun is a person, place, thing, In the magical land of nothingness or the absence of everything a thing cannot exist. A thing cannot resemble the absence of all things!

Wonderer · February 1, 2009, 9:35pm

gramatically it is more versatile, what i was saying is that the opening sequence of premises and conclusion is aclassic example of equivocation.

for example.
[i]
only man is rational

no woman is a man

therefore no woman is rational[/i]

the error in logic is that tehe word “man” is used to describe the human race in the first premise, and then refers to gender in the second.

here’s another.

you are a bad writer

if you’re a bad writer, then you are a bad boy

therefore youare a bad boy.

the second premise uses bad twice, but in a different way.

one means bad as in incompetent, the other refers to a moral aspect.

here is yous arguement

A is greater than nothing
Nothing is greater than B
A is greater than B

the first uses nothing in the sense that it is an absence of size or matter. A is greater than something without size.

the second premise uses nothing in the sense that “no-thing” qualifies as being greater than B

but the first premisesaid that A is greater than nothing. you measured A against nothing.

and yet my sentence makes perfect grammatical sense. just like your first premise, you just interpret it fallaciously, which is why your conclusion is unwarranted.

sure it can.

it can be a way to describe the contents of a box, or a score.

nothing can mean something that does not exist…

If you can explain why your initial logic is not an equivocation, i will concede all these points.

Oughtist · February 1, 2009, 9:45pm

Does space exist anywhere in itself? Is space a thing? Empty space? Emptiness?

Emptiness was different about her. She was a flamboyant Buddhist.
Emptiness was indifferent about her. Enlightenment doesn’t care how you get there.

I was fulfilled. I was emptemptied.

Is there no difference between “there being no thing there” and “it being empty there”?

Three_Times_Great · February 2, 2009, 1:39am

yes, there is a difference. “there being” designates an existent. however, “emptiness” is just a word, a mental abstraction, used to denote the lack of existents. so these two phrasings are fundamentally at odds.

this linguistic/semantic misunderstanding is the cause of so much confusion and false philosophy, it amazes me. the concepts of “existence” and “nonexistence” are ONLY HUMAN MENTAL ABSTRACTIONS: they are ideas that do not and cannot exist outside the mental conceptual world of the human mind. existence-itself is a mental construct, nothing more. things “exist”, because they are real. thats it; no mystery.

likewise, you cannot use existence or nonexistence as an “X” in an argument, nor can you view them as concretes to be rationalized or treated as existents themselves. it is a crucial error that has caused philosophy so much hardship over the centuries.

Oughtist · February 2, 2009, 1:52am

Three Times Great:

Is there no difference between “there being no thing there” and “it being empty there”?

yes, there is a difference. “there being” designates an existent. however, “emptiness” is just a word, a mental abstraction, used to denote the lack of existents. so these two phrasings are fundamentally at odds.

this linguistic/semantic misunderstanding is the cause of so much confusion and false philosophy, it amazes me. the concepts of “existence” and “nonexistence” are ONLY HUMAN MENTAL ABSTRACTIONS: they are ideas that do not and cannot exist outside the mental conceptual world of the human mind. existence-itself is a mental construct, nothing more. things “exist”, because they are real. thats it; no mystery.

likewise, you cannot use existence or nonexistence as an “X” in an argument, nor can you view them as concretes to be rationalized or treated as existents themselves. it is a crucial error that has caused philosophy so much hardship over the centuries.

I agree with you that there is a difference, though I think for a different reason. I would say, rather, that unlike nothing, emptiness implies space, and therefore something. But that emptiness is not noticed is what makes it something like nothing. Just as the space between things allows them their independence, so too emptiness must appear to be nothing, as not to distract us from the things it separates. Perhaps the question defers back to the status of space as a noun. When space is separated, is it the same space. Being/being thing?

Three_Times_Great · February 2, 2009, 2:09am

i think this aspect of the discussion delves into physics. yes, there is “space” out there, on every level of reality. there is space between stars, planets, people, atoms, quarks. my own personal research lends me to believe that this “space” is an illusion, the result of the holographic nature of our reality… but this is a topic for a different thread.

if we are to take the space which admittedly exists in reality as “emptiness” (i.e. a lack of existents), then it certainly SEEMS to present an ontological problem, at least on the surface. however, physics identifies that NO SPACE is completely ABSENT of “things”; there always exists something everywhere, even in the vaccuum. this something manifests as wavefunctions of subatomic particles, which “exist” as spread-out energy fields over extended areas of space and time. while these particles are “singular” (point-like) in nature (at least in theory), their probabilistic, quantum nature allows them to “exist” across vast areas of space, even though they may not directly mainfest at every instant. furthermore, the possibility of particles appearing into the vaccuum cannot be discounted in quantum physics; in this sense, there is always “something”, even if it is just a probability of something.

this may seem like splitting hairs (im not necessarily saying that it isnt), but if you read about or talk to a scientist about quantum theory, you will get that answer: that space is never empty, and that any amount of vaccuum, on any level, has something in it, even if its a potentiality (which is treated as an “existent” in quantum physics – yes, i do not fully understand it, but its hard to discredit quantum theory when it is so successful in its predictions and accomplishments).

gib · February 2, 2009, 2:17am

‘nothing’ means the absence of something; not the absence of everything.

“There is nothing in the box” is a perfectly meaningful sentence.

‘nothing’ is unambiguously a noun. That’s just a fact of language. That doesn’t make it literally a thing in the real world - just like ‘humor’ is a noun even though there’s no tangible thing called ‘humor’ in the real world. But the confusion that because these words are nouns means that we can treat them as literal tangible things is the source of the error being discussed here. Nouns tend to be thought of as things and some people fail to realize not all of them can be taken literally. Thus ‘nothing’ is sometimes treated as something.

PavlovianModel146 · February 2, 2009, 2:31am

Nothing can be an idea,

An idea can be a noun;

Therefore, nothing can be a noun.

Not only does it imply that everything was the same, it means that everything was the same. Obviously, since people are constantly undergoing change it is an incorrect statement, but one can perceive that, “Nothing,” has changed in any given situation.

Oughtist · February 2, 2009, 2:36am

Three Times Great:

i think this aspect of the discussion delves into physics. yes, there is “space” out there, on every level of reality. there is space between stars, planets, people, atoms, quarks. my own personal research lends me to believe that this “space” is an illusion, the result of the holographic nature of our reality… but this is a topic for a different thread.

if we are to take the space which admittedly exists in reality as “emptiness” (i.e. a lack of existents), then it certainly SEEMS to present an ontological problem, at least on the surface. however, physics identifies that NO SPACE is completely ABSENT of “things”; there always exists something everywhere, even in the vaccuum. this something manifests as wavefunctions of subatomic particles, which “exist” as spread-out energy fields over extended areas of space and time. while these particles are “singular” (point-like) in nature (at least in theory), their probabilistic, quantum nature allows them to “exist” across vast areas of space, even though they may not directly mainfest at every instant. furthermore, the possibility of particles appearing into the vaccuum cannot be discounted in quantum physics; in this sense, there is always “something”, even if it is just a probability of something.

this may seem like splitting hairs (im not necessarily saying that it isnt), but if you read about or talk to a scientist about quantum theory, you will get that answer: that space is never empty, and that any amount of vaccuum, on any level, has something in it, even if its a potentiality (which is treated as an “existent” in quantum physics – yes, i do not fully understand it, but its hard to discredit quantum theory when it is so successful in its predictions and accomplishments).

In the otherwise empty spaces that quantum particles probabilistically exist, does “nothing” become part of their descriptor to account for the nature of their presence when they are absent?

Three_Times_Great · February 2, 2009, 2:50am

Oughtist:

Three Times Great:

i think this aspect of the discussion delves into physics. yes, there is “space” out there, on every level of reality. there is space between stars, planets, people, atoms, quarks. my own personal research lends me to believe that this “space” is an illusion, the result of the holographic nature of our reality… but this is a topic for a different thread.

if we are to take the space which admittedly exists in reality as “emptiness” (i.e. a lack of existents), then it certainly SEEMS to present an ontological problem, at least on the surface. however, physics identifies that NO SPACE is completely ABSENT of “things”; there always exists something everywhere, even in the vaccuum. this something manifests as wavefunctions of subatomic particles, which “exist” as spread-out energy fields over extended areas of space and time. while these particles are “singular” (point-like) in nature (at least in theory), their probabilistic, quantum nature allows them to “exist” across vast areas of space, even though they may not directly mainfest at every instant. furthermore, the possibility of particles appearing into the vaccuum cannot be discounted in quantum physics; in this sense, there is always “something”, even if it is just a probability of something.

this may seem like splitting hairs (im not necessarily saying that it isnt), but if you read about or talk to a scientist about quantum theory, you will get that answer: that space is never empty, and that any amount of vaccuum, on any level, has something in it, even if its a potentiality (which is treated as an “existent” in quantum physics – yes, i do not fully understand it, but its hard to discredit quantum theory when it is so successful in its predictions and accomplishments).

In the otherwise empty spaces that quantum particles probabilistically exist, does “nothing” become part of their descriptor to account for the nature of their presence when they are absent?

in the sense that THEIR “nothing” does, yes. with regard to the specific descriptor of a certain X particle/existent, the lack of its entailment is included in the understanding of the wave-functional existence of that X. however, this does not say anything about a TOTALITY of “nonexistence”; the descriptor for X, while including facts about that X’s non-entailment, says nothing about the possible non-entailment of any other non-X entities (excluding those which would have a necessary effect on X itself).

Faust · February 2, 2009, 3:40am

Whaddup?

A > 0
0 > B
A > B

Example - A = 1 and B = -1.

Whazzamattah?

If you don’t use consistent senses, it’s just a meaningless wordgame, but not a logic problem. In the senses you use, “greater” doesn’t mean anything to begin with.

Wonderer · February 2, 2009, 3:55am

Hmmm

Maybe i just could not interpret the OP soundly, but in that case how does nothing become something?

Oughtist · February 2, 2009, 3:59am

Faust, you’re a party pooper.

Three Times Great:

Oughtist:

Three Times Great:

i think this aspect of the discussion delves into physics. yes, there is “space” out there, on every level of reality. there is space between stars, planets, people, atoms, quarks. my own personal research lends me to believe that this “space” is an illusion, the result of the holographic nature of our reality… but this is a topic for a different thread.

if we are to take the space which admittedly exists in reality as “emptiness” (i.e. a lack of existents), then it certainly SEEMS to present an ontological problem, at least on the surface. however, physics identifies that NO SPACE is completely ABSENT of “things”; there always exists something everywhere, even in the vaccuum. this something manifests as wavefunctions of subatomic particles, which “exist” as spread-out energy fields over extended areas of space and time. while these particles are “singular” (point-like) in nature (at least in theory), their probabilistic, quantum nature allows them to “exist” across vast areas of space, even though they may not directly mainfest at every instant. furthermore, the possibility of particles appearing into the vaccuum cannot be discounted in quantum physics; in this sense, there is always “something”, even if it is just a probability of something.

this may seem like splitting hairs (im not necessarily saying that it isnt), but if you read about or talk to a scientist about quantum theory, you will get that answer: that space is never empty, and that any amount of vaccuum, on any level, has something in it, even if its a potentiality (which is treated as an “existent” in quantum physics – yes, i do not fully understand it, but its hard to discredit quantum theory when it is so successful in its predictions and accomplishments).

In the otherwise empty spaces that quantum particles probabilistically exist, does “nothing” become part of their descriptor to account for the nature of their presence when they are absent?

in the sense that THEIR “nothing” does, yes. with regard to the specific descriptor of a certain X particle/existent, the lack of its entailment is included in the understanding of the wave-functional existence of that X. however, this does not say anything about a TOTALITY of “nonexistence”; the descriptor for X, while including facts about that X’s non-entailment, says nothing about the possible non-entailment of any other non-X entities (excluding those which would have a necessary effect on X itself).

Nonetheless, it’s pretty cool to think that the state of emptiness in discrete space is precluded, in part, by the presence of nothing. Mustn’t the universe in some multidimensional temporal sense (okay, don’t have a clue what I mean by that) pulsate with impressions of emptiness?

Faust · February 2, 2009, 4:13am

I’m glad to see that I’m not holding you back, oughtie.

Oughtist · February 2, 2009, 5:09am

No worries Faust, nothing holds me back! Me front, too. I stand for nothing! It never lets me down…

spyderjoe · February 2, 2009, 5:18am

No-thing is a part of existance and not separate from it.
If you accept “No-things” as a definition of emptyness then emptyness is the perception of no-things.
The world is not made of things, it is made out of processes
The Universe is not made of matter, its made out of music.
At certain levels of peception there are no things.
I think the thread subject should read Nothing or No thing.

The mind is no-thing. Yet it exists. Because it is not empty. The mental world exists with concepts like empty and full, ratios and probabilities.
No thing is a part of existance and not separate from it.

Observed_Observer · February 2, 2009, 7:02am

Example: Nothing is inside the box.
How can Nothing be in a box? How can it be anywhere? Nothing is not an IS and it cannot BE. It is the absence of all that IS and all that can BE.
Nothing simply just cannot be.

Unless you specify what the negative is.( I could see nothing blue inside the box. ) Nothing by itself cannot exist anywhere, you must point out what is not there.

A > 0
0 > B
A > B

The problem is too me anyways, that 0 cannot be greater than B.

Aufbau87 · February 2, 2009, 9:56am

Is this supposed to be a valid argument?

From a logical point of view, it isn’t. (In the following, “~” is “it is not the case that”; “($x)(…x…)” is “there is a thing x such that …x…”; “(x)(…x…)” is “for all things x, …x…”; “>” is “is greater than”; “<” is “is less than”; “=” is “is equal to”):

~($x)(A > x) interpreted
~($x)(x > B) interpreted
(x)~(A > x) From 1, Quantification Negation
(x)~(x > B) From 2, Quantification Negation
~(A > C) From 3, Universal Instantiation
~(x > B) From 4, Universal Instantiation
A < C or A = C From 5
C < B or C = B From 6

From this, how can we infer that A > B? Given the last two premises, A may be equal to B. Your inference is deductively invalid. This is because, as Wonderer pointed out, you equivocate or, at any rate, use a meaning of “nothing” which NOT logical. You’re using it either as a name (which designates a thing) or a proposition.