Krauss argues that nothing has properties. This is probably just semantics, but nothing doesn’t exist.
Nothing is the lack of existence. Therefore, in existence, nothing can’t reside.
The application of nothing can also describe the absence of relevance or interest. The problem here is that the description must be applied to something. (There’s no relevance in attributing nothing to nothing and this would also be a confusing endeavour.) Nothing, itself, is relative due to this. To apply nothing to anything, is to inaccurately portray something. To dismiss it’s properties and values. If we describe Y as nothing, Y isn’t truly nothing, we’re just saying it is for the sake of X.
Nothing doesn’t exist and can’t be accurately applied to anything that does exist. Conceptual or tangible.
You got it all wrong man. Are you trying to understand language or reality? There is another thread with the same title here. You need a universal to make your sentences and what not make sense. Existence is a pretty good one to assume. Then you just gotta figure out what you mean when you say something exists and there ya go. Pretty simple really. Have a nice day.
I’m ‘trying’ to understand reality. I already took existence as the universal, and I’m saying in existence, nothing can’t be found. It isn’t located within reality. When I say existence, I was referencing material reality, but I also went on to say how in conceptual existence, problems arise with nothing.
I think the way Krauss speaks about nothing isn’t in accordance with reality. He speaks in a poetic way, but what he describes as nothing, isn’t truly nothing. Nothing doesn’t exist.
I already did what you suggested…
This thread is me on one hand saying - I like Krauss’ presentation and with the other hand - voicing that I disagree with the way he presents nothing.
I didn’t know that scientists fumble around with this kind of thing. I suppose they do sometimes, though. It’s philosophers that usually fumble around with these kinds of questions, AND FUMBLE THEY DO!
I want to distance myself from Stoic and the religious implications he makes. I agree with what Krauss’ says, I just disagree with his representation of nothing.
(I kind of took it that you, Stoic, were saying that God is the reasonable answer and this is why Scientists are ‘fumbling’. But, you could have meant that Scientists are fumbling because they’re so eager to destroy ‘God’)
FJ, We all fumble, especially when we try to present things as absolute truths. Because we often don’t have the objective evidence for it, perhap we can’t.
Well, I haven’t watched the video so I may be misunderstanding what the question actual is, but questions like “Does nothingness exist?” aren’t usually the kind of question a clear-headed thinker gets involved in. They’re most often taken up by people who have smoked too much weed. They’re most often taken up by the kind of people who say, “Dude, everything’s connected. That’s so deep man.”
But, I do recognize that, not having watched the video, I may be mischaracterizing what’s actually being talked about. If so, apologies.
You should definitely watch the video. It’s an awesome talk. It was this video that spawned his recent book.
Furthermore, it IS Krauss’s job to think about nothingness. He’s a theoretical physicist.
Joe, you are epistemologicallly correct. Krauss and that other putz, Dawkins, misuse the term “nothing” so as to make a point.
The “vacuum” of space, although once thought to be truly empty, isn’t true nothingness at all. As laid out in Rational Metaphysics, the state of nothingness is a logical impossibility. In order to have space with dimensions and time, there absolutely must be affectance within that space, thus “space isn’t empty”.
What they are calling “mass” is actually formed from that stuff that is causing space to exist, “affectance”. Noisy waves of affectance produce those particles that QM likes to claim come randomly out of nothingness. Rather than “nothingness”, it is actually affectance noise.
The primary property of existence is having affect (hence the term “affectance”). if something has any affect upon anything whatsoever, then that something exists. If not, it doesn’t.
So as far as technical correctness of the term “nothing”, you are accurate in saying that nothing doesn’t exist and frankly it is provable that it can’t and hasn’t ever existed or been the state of the universe.
And this issue is currently being discussed over here in more exact detail.
I’ve actually seen this before. I didn’t recognize it from the title or the guy doing the talk, but many of the things said jumped out at me as things I’d heard before – things from Dawkins’ introduction, as well as when Krauss said “forget Jesus, Stars died so you could be here today.” he’s a pretty brilliant guy.
Man you’ve got a duty as a critical observer of the world to employ sets and compartmentalize information, leading to an abstraction by which you can categorize all your stimuli. When you talk about a set of marbles, and you draw a circle around them in the dirt, then some kid asks about some specks in the dirt, “whats that?” , you say, “thats nothing”. Even though its actually not nothing, its specks of dirt, its lack of relevance to what you’re considering makes it nothing in effect.
Nothingness is the potential for order. So nothingness is utter chaos, there is no thing to point to and no thing to do the pointing, but there is the potential to become ordered. Simple .
There must be nothingness, otherwise existence lasts forever and never began.
Or
There must be nothingness, otherwise existence is everywhere in all time every when.
I think such notions are far harder to realise than there being a no-thing-ness. Just because nothingness has no object, no edges, form or constitution, that doesn’t mean it isn’t ‘something’, its just something which is not a thingness in usual terms.
We shouldn’t be limited by language here.
reality is the nothingness, you cannot describe reality by any thingness/existence, because there would always be something else other than that.
really if philosophy and science could come to terms with nothingness, it would resolve a great many holes. maybe think black hole, then stretch it into infinity to get nothingness?
Smears that thread was how many years back? At least 08 I think. The best of the best minds here were on that very lengthy thread. I dunno if this one can come close.
For something to be said to exist, it must have affect upon something. “Nothing”, by definition has no affect upon ANYthing. Thus by definition alone, nothingness can’t ever exist (which means it can’t have dimensions either - no space allotment).
I can describe it with “Affectance”. And there IS nothing else, but affects… unless you choose to merely name different aberrant affects as “different things” (which is always done).
No point in talking about it or studying it if it doesn’t exist.
.