I woke up with a though that seemingly made an end to a period of nagging doubt that’s been troubling me. I was always wondering how something could exist at all. As Heidegger phrases it, why does being escape the possibility of non-being? I think now that this questioning was based on a faulty interpretation of being.
After reading the many recent posts on these fora on something, everything and nothing, especially the Spinozaean ones with arguments like ‘nothing comes from nothing, therefore nothing does not exist’ etcetera, apparently in my sleep I decided that all this just isn’t right. As is often the case I was much clearer about it when I just woke up than I am now, at work, so just to consolidate the thought somewhat I decided to make this post.
The insight I had is that actually, everything, in the sense of all-ness, is nothing. I mean that when we speak of everything, in a universal sense, we really speak of nothing. There is no everything to speak of. The more universal, omnipresent concepts get, the less meaning they have. The only thing that really, fully exists to a consciousness (hence, to me) is the particular. So - something is something, everything is nothing. Between the fictional poles of nothing and everything, something exists.
I don’t know of this makes sense to anyone, but man am I relieved!
actually it does make sense, I cant remember the study that I read that first proposed this idea but it was very similar to how you have phrased it, its the thought that everything in the universe is balanced and when viewed as a whole equals . It had a mathematical example that went something like 0+1-1+1-1+1-1=0 We view part of the whole, but when seen as complete the stuff that we call existence becomes nothing.
There is only one problem I can find with this theory, and I don’t think you will like it.
Why is there something?
Why is the equation not just 0=0 it would make far more sense for nothing to simply be nothing when viewed in part as well as whole
Well, that is the problem I just described. Heidegger’s idea of ‘the most fundamental question in philosophy’ is: “Why is there being, and not rather nothing?” I totally identified with this anxiety. But it is fictional. A theoretical reason is only necessary when existence itself is seen as theoretical, metaphysical. I’ve been asleep under the opiate of universals. When I consider only the real, the actual, then any reason for it to exist is somehow beside the point. Existence is not the outcome of an argument.
Faust: I always knew there was something wrong in that Heidegger video - I just thought it was very funny how Sauwelios struggled with the absurd sentence - but I didn’t realize I was actually doing the same thing.
So then, what exactly is philosophizing - to me?
If all that can be examined is particular, that makes it a lot more difficult to decide what I want to examine. I can’t be talking about ‘existence’ anymore.
I agree with your conclusion, but not reasoning that leads up to it. Your reasoning does not follow, and is a misnomer. Nothing cannot come out of nothing because nothing cannot “come”. You cannot ascribe positive properties to nothing because it has none, if you say X, it is already a property, and no longer a nothing, but a something. My approach to nothing is not to approach it, because if you do, you will be bringing your mind into it, and the presence of your mind will turn it into something.
Perceiving everything is rather incomprehensible as the mind cannot know everything, but I would say here that everything cannot be nothing, because: it is obviously something, and because its mere existence would turn nothing into something.
But that is not mine, it is an example of the type of reasoning I kept running into on this board.
What is ‘everything’ to you? What does it mean? Does it have an actual meaning? To me it doesn’t, I just realized. It is only a word, a word that does not refer to anything real. In that, it is the same as nothing. Nothing is just a better term.
There is a difference. Everything has properties, so it is something. It may be incomprehensible to us, yes, but it is not nothing. Nothing does not have any properties at all to speak of.
Here’s the general problem: Language is designed to abstract meaning - it’s a limiting device. To use the word “everything” and to actually mean it as a “Universal universal” is to take away its meaning. You can’t abstract everything, for you won’t have anything left over.
The word has a use - as a universal over a specific domain.
And yes - choose your goals first. Philosophy doesn’t begin with philosophy.
And philosophy isn’t everything.
Pandora - every thing has properties. Everything has every property. Of what use is that idea?
I agree.
I would say “Nothing cannot come from anything. Nothing cannot exist. It’s because nothing is devoid of all properties/ potentials/possibilities/attributes/whatever, including a simple attribute like that of existence.”
I do see (I guess) what Jakob meant.
Everything encompasses all, and thus it cannot have any limit.
It’s infinite, boundless, and thus absolute in terms of “existence”, and it equals pure existence.
So, it’s pretty close to Nothing.
However, Everything has still one property, a limit, namely the “thing(ness)”, which I interpret as the “existence”.
So, I would simply use “absolute(ness)” instead of “Everything”, and say like this: the “Absolute(mess)” is limitless, boundless, infinite, and thus devoid of all limiting properties/attributes/whatever. So, Absolute(ness) is Nothing(ness), and something is something (limited and relative).
Faust is probably right, but it takes time to reprogram my mind. This is how I see it, in my dying state:
From historical perspective, ‘existence’ appears as a constantly changing and accumulating set of factors, things, states, or other nouns. But for the concept ‘everything’ to apply, boundaries are required. ‘everything we just said’, for example, makes sense. But look at it’s grammar; it is a perfect tense. In the present tense,'‘everything that we say"’ - requires a specification of time. ‘Everything we will ever say’, is the final version in this series. But there is the contradiction; The final ‘everything’ implies a limit to that which it refers to -for it to apply in general, it needs to limit existence to something which could theoretically be referred to in the perfect tense, in other words, as not existing.
Yes, but I think I arrived at a metaphysical negation of metaphysics. To call that meaningless does not do justice to the sheer distance from meaning at which that event could occur.
Or you might say that it’s a restricted quantifier or something like that, and consequently it can only be understood if regarded as an indexical term. I think…
Nothing is at least of the same, the opposite side of that coin. Spinoza’s objection to ‘nothing’ as existing should not have led to a proof of ‘everything’ - but to a disproof of that as well. Existence is not the outcome tossing a coin with on each side an absolute. If it were, the quarter would land on it’s side and keep rolling. Being nor non being.