Is nothing actually something?

[Korpsy Knievel]

So yesterday I was reading "If the blah blah blah blah blah blah then the question arises, 'Why is there something, rather than nothing?'" And I thought to myself, isn't the perfect void, a total absence of everything and anything, a sort of thing in itself? Now of course my thoughts on non-being are prejudiced by a personal experience of being, but as to whether there is a quality of "thing-ness" to absolute and infinite nothing, I say yes, yes there is. Opinions?

[fen]

Nothing is a thing. Sort of ironic, but yeah.

[Galen]

As a concept, 'nothing' can probably count as a thing in and of itself. But in the realm of so-called reality, outside of idle human brain musings, I don't recall there ever having been a documented case of 'nothing.' Maybe I'm missing the point though?

[Raver]

I've thought about this before and in my opinion I think nothing is actually something. So if one assumes that there was nothing at all before the big bang and something came after the explosion of nothing then it could possibly mean that nothing is actually something.

[Gilly]

It is a thing itself, yes, but only because we conceptualize it as a thing, because there is no other way for us to comprehend it. In reality, without something to comprehend it, it is nothing.

[Galen]

I've thought about this before and in my opinion I think nothing is actually something. So if one assumes that there was nothing at all before the big bang and something came after the explosion of nothing then it could possibly mean that nothing is actually something.

This doesn't implicate that existence and non-existence are the same thing, nor does it mean that there was once a time where something never existed at all. We could probably go into quantum physics and string theory energy bullshit that nobody on here actually understands to pose the argument that something was never nothing in the first place, and that its presence was/is simply transmuted into another form which we are unable to personally comprehend.

[Gilly]

Its like the tree falling in the woods question. Does it make a sound? Well, it makes sound waves, so technically yes, but "sound" is a subjective thing, and it needs someone to hear it before there is any point in calling it sound, so no.

[krieger]

semantic soup.

[Galen]

Its like the tree falling in the woods question. Does it make a sound? Well, it makes sound waves, so technically yes, but "sound" is a subjective thing, and it needs someone to hear it before there is any point in calling it sound, so no.

Right, and thus we come to the point of how human experience plays a part in this question. Is what qualifies as "something" solely dependent on the human's ability to perceive it? If you look at it from the perspective being a human with an ultimate flawed means of perceiving things, then the answer would have to be yes because there would be no other way of understanding anything. But removed from the basic human condition I would have to say no: the universe is going to be what it's going to be regardless of what the tiny Earthlings will want to make of it.

This topic makes me really tired. Fuck you korp.

[Saberstorm]

I swear some philosophers beat you to this one.

A thing is an object. A nothing is the abscence of an object. I believe that philosophers have always used the idea of "Being" and "Non-Being" to play with these ideas. Being is a state by the way, not a field.

In fact, I need to hunt around for it, there is a great philosophy intro video that addresses something like this. Being is not existence and has no existence because existence is from something. (That is why the prefix "Ex" is there, ex- meaning "from." The "stence" is from a Greek root that means "standing or remaining" so it is "standing from." Substance means "Standing under" Being has neither substance nor existence, and yet it "is."

Being/becoming/existence/substance already been done. (To think that in 2500 years of Western philosophy the basic riddles of origin have not already been broached! Ha Ha )

FUCK spelling, it is 2:15 AM. I need to sleep.

[Korpsy Knievel]

My dad's math teacher hung upside down from steam-pipes in the classroom ceiling to relieve pain from injuries sustained in WWII. This fellow also professed a firm belief that anything he was actively perceiving ceased to exist the moment his attention was removed elsewhere. Perhaps my dad learned algebra from Berkeley's God.

It is a thing itself, yes, but only because we conceptualize it as a thing, because there is no other way for us to comprehend it. In reality, without something to comprehend it, it is nothing.

I don't think a reality of nothingness requires an observer qualifying its non-being for it to independently posses that nature. Whether someone has conceptualized it or not, in such a universal condition of non-being the fact that "nothing is" just Is.

Its like the tree falling in the woods question. Does it make a sound? Well, it makes sound waves, so technically yes, but "sound" is a subjective thing, and it needs someone to hear it before there is any point in calling it sound, so no.

Be careful not to conflate the objectivity of atmospheric pressure fluctuations with the subjectivity of their psychoacoustic apperception. If a tree has fallen on this planet it's also vibrated the earth and the air in its vicinity, and so those events have transpired regardless of a witness' availability to notice, interpret, and categorize them or their consequences.

semantic soup.

Would you care for a bit of grated cheese or freshly milled pepper with that?

[silke]

It must be something since it spawned an entire universe. Technically nothing doesn't exist, there is always something there, at least within the bounds of our universe.

[Korpsy Knievel]

I've thought about this before and in my opinion I think nothing is actually something. So if one assumes that there was nothing at all before the big bang and something came after the explosion of nothing then it could possibly mean that nothing is actually something.

I cannot deny that there might be more to existence than the material, and so I cannot definitively equate Being with the supposed resultant appearance of the Big Bang's space-time, energy, and matter. Nor, I think, must being possess extension and duration to exist (though it's kind of brain-bender to imagine how, because even if those are illusionary byproducts created by the nature of our limited understanding of the world, they're still how we understand the world). Still, if we assume the truth of what you're saying then can't the nothingness prior to the appearance of physical reality be said to contain the possibility of eventual somethingness? If yes, as your answer suggests, then that inherent quality of latent somethingness enhances the thingness of nothing, at least in this case. We can go a step further and say that being can exist in the absence of its manifestations.

Right, and thus we come to the point of how human experience plays a part in this question. Is what qualifies as "something" solely dependent on the human's ability to perceive it? If you look at it from the perspective being a human with an ultimate flawed means of perceiving things, then the answer would have to be yes because there would be no other way of understanding anything. But removed from the basic human condition I would have to say no: the universe is going to be what it's going to be regardless of what the tiny Earthlings will want to make of it.

This topic makes me really tired. Fuck you korp.

I like your distinction between "what is" and "what seems". So fuck you too.

It must be something since it spawned an entire universe. Technically nothing doesn't exist, there is always something there, at least within the bounds of our universe.

Sure, but I'm thinking of a universe where there is no universe because nothing exists, not even the possibility of anything other than nothing.

[woofwoofl]

I'm always immersed in something, and that something, no matter how solid it seems, has a shit ton of space in it.

I used to mistake the air for a nothing; upon learning first-hand how much the wind affects me on a bike ride, I know the air is a something. There's a bigass difference between climbing a hill with 60 mph wind gusts to my back than to climb a hill with the wind against me...

As for windows? I can't see them easily, though their reflections and the streaks and dirt that are visible on their surface do well to cue me where they're at. I can't move through them without permanently and severely altering them. An acquaintance from school accidentally attempted this with one of his arms. His blood went everywhere, as did the glass. An ambulance arrived.

Heavy fog has the polarities reversed; I can move through it just fine, but it's hard as hell to see through! I can see it, however...

When I'm pressing on the keys to this laptop, I get the impression that I'm pushing a brickwalled object with my fingers, which are also apparently devoid of any space in between the skin's surface to allow for much permeability. My finger will soak up water, given enough time; my keys will not. A drawing of subatomic particles and shit would show a lot of dead space in these solid looking areas, but I can't tell at all from where I'm at here and now...

Actual pure nothings and actual pure somethings are things I've never encountered; there's always an actual blend of sorts, though varieties of "something" are all I can pick up on from where I'm at. The purest something I can think of would be a neutron star. The purest nothing I can think of is a vacant portion of outer space.

That said, I don't think nothing can be something, since a level of somethingness would then be inversely proportional to a level of nothingness in any thing, collection of things, etc...

[leckysupport]

I don't believe absolute nothing exists, nothing only becomes what is by the existence of something and vise-versa (space defines the form).

[krieger]

Fallacy of Reification.

[Korpsy Knievel]

I don't believe absolute nothing exists, nothing only becomes what is by the existence of something and vise-versa (space defines the form).

OK, I agree with that. But throw all that being and becoming and space away and imagine absolute nothingness, and then determine whether that in itself, without anything else existing, is something. Same to woof (sensory-as-fuck answer, bro, hahaha).

Good pick on the video too, lecky. Uncle Al's "Out of Your Mind" lectures are some of my favorites.

Fallacy of Reification.

I agree with this too, but unless you can think of a work-around that reification is just a necessary step to play this game, like receiving your stack of funny money when sitting down play to Monopoly and fighting over who gets the Scottie dog or the top-hat. Still, a concept has a dependent relation to reality because it is created by ostensibly real things (humans) even if it's of dubious veracity or even false. So we can mentally lend an idea of nothingness a provisional sort of substantiality in order to toy with it for a while. And since metaphysics tends to fall outside the realm of verification/falsification, I don't expect any truly "correct" answers to appear anyhow. It's the interesting ones I'm after, and that's what people are providing.

[NewBorn STAR]

everything is nothing and nothing is everything

and it aplies to anything and nothing

[Brilliand]

I tend to think of this in terms of levels of indirection: at the same level of indirection, nothing=nothing, but "nothing" at one level of indirection becomes something when taken one step further. Of course it's possible to make the indirection circular, but when you do that, you crash headlong into Gödel.

From the spacial perspective, a similar view would be that a section of vacuum containing no matter contains nothing, but if you take it a step further, there's still the zero-point energy - and even if that weren't there, there's still a section of space that can be used to store stuff, which can be quite interesting in certain situations, precisely because there's nothing there. A nothing that isn't subject to that mental step of "there's nothing there, so it's a storage space" might be a true nothing, but such a nothing could not possibly exist, because to exist at all would contradict its being nothing.

[Absurd]

Nnnnnnoooooo....

[Korpsy Knievel]

I tend to think of this in terms of levels of indirection: at the same level of indirection, nothing=nothing, but "nothing" at one level of indirection becomes something when taken one step further. Of course it's possible to make the indirection circular, but when you do that, you crash headlong into Gödel.

Interesting phrase, levels of indirection. Thanks for that horizon expander, and to labcoat for his link as well.

From the spacial perspective, a similar view would be that a section of vacuum containing no matter contains nothing, but if you take it a step further, there's still the zero-point energy - and even if that weren't there, there's still a section of space that can be used to store stuff, which can be quite interesting in certain situations, precisely because there's nothing there. A nothing that isn't subject to that mental step of "there's nothing there, so it's a storage space" might be a true nothing, but such a nothing could not possibly exist, because to exist at all would contradict its being nothing.

OK, but it sounds like you're describing an absence of matter within a prescribed space, inside a universe like ours where space, matter, time, energy, etc. seem to exist. In other words, a nothing that only exists as a non-thing in relation to one or more extant or potential things, and a nothing that still contains something, i.e. spatial extensionality and an energy state. Rather like what Watts spoke of in the video that lecky posted above, a relative nothing instead of the absolute kind. But our OP's featured hypothetical is the latter sort, a universe of absolutely nothing but nothing, that excludes space and energy and anything else. So if all that there is Isn't, and there's no capacity for anything to be at all, is that total nonexistence actually extant in its own right?

[Absurd]

[Gilly]

Right, and thus we come to the point of how human experience plays a part in this question. Is what qualifies as "something" solely dependent on the human's ability to perceive it? If you look at it from the perspective being a human with an ultimate flawed means of perceiving things, then the answer would have to be yes because there would be no other way of understanding anything. But removed from the basic human condition I would have to say no: the universe is going to be what it's going to be regardless of what the tiny Earthlings will want to make of it.

This topic makes me really tired. Fuck you korp.

This seems like a nonsensical/circular question to me. What makes something qualify as "something" when we talk about it, is a product of both how we conceptualize it and what it is: the meeting point of the two in our brains. "Nothingness" is just a strange exception to this rule where only one of these applies. There's no semantically or definitionally perfect answer as to what "something" entails because it is pretty consistent in every instance except its opposite, for which we have to stretch the imagination a little bit.

So talking about what makes something "something" is silly, because (a) its obvious and (b) there is only one exception, which, in this case, manages to show us a linguistic flaw in our expression. Nothing is nothing; only we make it "something," and everything else is already "something" whether we make it so or not.

[717495]

Nothing is a word emphasizing "no things." Which means there isn't the presence of an idea, feeling, or any indirect and subjective manifestation of nothing. There plainly isn't anything.

Nothing, like all words, is represented as a kind of slang (we typically use to emphasize space change), as like all words, we don't actually grasp the full meaning. We use it relative to whatever we're talking about.

[Gilly]

OK, but it sounds like you're describing an absence of matter within a prescribed space, inside a universe like ours where space, matter, time, energy, etc. seem to exist. In other words, a nothing that only exists as a non-thing in relation to one or more extant or potential things, and a nothing that still contains something, i.e. spatial extensionality and an energy state. Rather like what Watts spoke of in the video that lecky posted above, a relative nothing instead of the absolute kind. But our OP's featured hypothetical is the latter sort, a universe of absolutely nothing but nothing, that excludes space and energy and anything else. So if all that there is Isn't, and there's no capacity for anything to be at all, is that total nonexistence actually extant in its own right?

Extant, yes, because it would be "what is," but is has no extension, no definable boundaries or substance, and therefore no true "being."

This is, of course, presuming the completeness of our knowledge of the properties of existence, which is questionable.

Isn't this obviously a purely semantic question?

[Korpsy Knievel]

&c. &c. &c. we have to stretch the imagination a little bit.

Eggggggzackly. If such an un-universe existed we'd have no way to know it because it couldn't exist in our own world, so we're punting around some entirely imaginary shit.

Nothing is nothing; only we make it "something," and everything else is already "something" whether we make it so or not.

And by the same token nothing is nothing whether we make it so or not, i.e. regardless of our knowledge or thoughts of it. So on that basis it could be said that that nothing is a kind of something. Yes? No? I voted yes.

This might look patronizing but for the benefit of clarity I'm going to paste wikipedia's physical description of nothing, with everything struck out that pertains to something and not to nothing. That way we'll get a good idea of what we mean by nothing through viewing the exclusions:

In physics, the word nothing is not used in any technical sense. A region of space is called a vacuum if it does not contain any matter, though it can contain physical fields. In fact, it is practically impossible to construct a region of space that contains no matter or fields [or time, space, energy, spirit, will, etc.], since gravity cannot be blocked and all objects at a non-zero temperature radiate electromagnetically. However, even if such a region existed, it could still not be referred to as "nothing", since it has properties and a measurable existence as part of the quantum-mechanical vacuum. Where there is supposedly empty space there are constant quantum fluctuations with particles continually popping into and out of existence.

Zip, zilch, jack, diddley squat. And nothing but.

[Korpsy Knievel]

Extant, yes, because it would be "what is," but is has no extension, no definable boundaries or substance, and therefore no true "being."

Eh, I see no reason why being can't be self-standing. I said as much in an earlier post by denying that it necessarily shows or even possesses manifestations, or other predicates beyond its inherent being-ness.

This is, of course, presuming the completeness of our knowledge of the properties of existence, which is questionable.

In my view the answer to that question is: we need to ask more questions because as much as we know, we don't know shit.

Isn't this obviously a purely semantic question?

Only as much as any metaphysical jaw-jacking ever is, which itself accounts for a large part of the fun. That's also why we've got a poll, for those who don't feel like climbing down here in the pit to wrestle this conceptual beast, but who still want to say "fuck yeah" or "fuck you" to the general idea and maybe capture a screenshot to show their future grandchildren and prove to them that they were here, man. They were right here.

BTW: The poll is anonymous, and I promise not to bite anyone in this thread who doesn't bite me first.

[Gilly]

I just lost a fucking epic post due to the backspace button. We will now never know the meaning of life, for my post has become nothing.

[Gilly]

I like my handling of the sound question. If the tree falls, there are still sound WAVES, but SOUND is defined by our perception of these waves; thus, waves, but no sound. Likewise "nothingness" is defined by the absence of the things which we perceive and come to call "things; thus, it has ideational or POTENTIAL existence, in a way, but the question itself would be negated by the answer.

I suppose it is a thing in itself, but it stands outside our existence; almost a separate dimension, in a way.

[Gilly]

I guess its really just a different category, a different mode entirely, that kind of defies our attempts to define it. There is no black and white, no off or on in the ideas of existence; merely different modes of extension. That's really the best way I can think of it.

[Gilly]

How do you know there's waves if there's no observer there to induce state vector collapse of the event's probability wave function?

*UFO sounds*

lol

WAIT YOU MEAN PHYSICS NEGATES PHYSICS?

[Gilly]

I think the bottom line is that nothingness is a state, rather than an object. "Thing" is just too vague of a word to handle the conundrum; the hammer is too big and it fucks up the thing you are trying to put a nail in.

[Gilly]

In my scientific wanderings into quantum physics and the like (which I will not for one second pretend to comprehend in any kind of complete fashion), I have been lead to believe that the universe, space, etc, is not actually a void that is filled by things, but rather more like a three-dimensional sheet of fabric, and that what we natural perceive as existence, extension, physicality, etc. are merely condensed waveforms in the vast interstellar sea of the fabric of spacetime. I rather like this view; it rings with me intuitively. My perspective on human existence boils down to a combination of this and a rather eloquent quote from strrrng:

all that matters is having fun with my sega genesis echo chamber, as I can feel where it's all heading anyway.

[Capitalist Pig]

~~QuAnTuM fOaM~~

[anndelise]

I ran across this page just now, which made me think of this thread:
http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/co...uestion-of-all

The Biggest Question of All: Why is there something rather than nothing?

[Korpsy Knievel]

I suppose it is a thing in itself, but it stands outside our existence; almost a separate dimension, in a way.

Seems that way to me, though I could easily argue against everything I've said here too, and call myself a dipshit in the process.

Regarding your backspace mishap, I've lost a few stellar posts that way too, so I finally became smarter than my finger and began writing most of them offline.



Cpig, I didn't see your marquee immdiately and so I ctrl+A the page to see if you'd put anything in white script. What I initially saw was just the tail end of a rectangle moving offscreen, so I assumed (until the marquee came back around a sec later and showed its text) that you were taking the piss with a moving white rectangle on a white background.

I ran across this page just now, which made me think of this thread:
http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/co...uestion-of-all

The Biggest Question of All: Why is there something rather than nothing?

I've been thinking about Being lately, and looking into Schopenhauer, so the question, which is a common one in the world of armchair what-iffery, bumped into me again here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer/#2

[Capitalist Pig]

Cpig, I didn't see your marquee immdiately and so I ctrl+A the page to see if you'd put anything in white script. What I initially saw was just the tail end of a rectangle moving offscreen screen, so I assumed (until the marquee came back around a sec later and showed its text) that you were taking the piss with a moving white rectangle on a white background.

That would have been funnier.

[Creepy-male]

From what I remember of quantum mechanics you have effects like quantum entanglement. The wave function of a particular particle is dependent on the particles in which it interacts. Normally in classical particle physics this is a foreign concept. A particle that is separate from another shouldn't effect the state of that particle as they are two distinct entities. If a particle somewhere decides to change from say a state which we shall arbitrarily call "red" to a state which we arbitrarily call "blue" then this shouldn't effect another distinct particle -- as it is separate, a particle changing to the "blue" state won't make another change "red". However in quantum mechanics it does, and a major question in physics is exactly what the mechanicism of this entanglement is.

I'll add more on this later.

[krieger]

[717495]

That fella is high on life.