On 5/6/2012 1:06 PM, R AM wrote:
Some thoughts about "nothing":
Hi Ricardo,
I like these thoughts (as they imply questions!)!
- If nothing has no properties, and a limitation is considered a
property, then "nothing" cannot have any limitations, including the
limitation of generating "something". Therefore, "something" may come
from "nothing".
Can nothing be treated as an object itself? Can we "hang"
properties on it? Are we actually talking about "substance" as
synonomous with what the philosophers of old used to use as the object
minus its properties? I like to use the word "Existence" in this case,
as it would seen to naturally include "nothing" and "something" as its
most trivial dual categories.
[Side note: This is where we start to see that our words can be such
to sometimes have only other words as referents and sometimes have
actual objects (not words) as referents. (I wish we could get a
semiotic theory expert to join us! Can any one channel Charles S. Peirce
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce> for us?)]
- Given that something exists, it is possible that something exists
(obviously). The later would be true even if "nothing" was the case.
Therefore, we should envision the state of "nothing" co-existing with
the possibility of "something" existing, which is rather bizarre.
Does Nothingness exist? Can Nothingness non-exist? At what point
are we playing games with words and at what point are we being
meaningful? You are pointing out how "possibility" seems to be
implicitly tied to the relation between something and nothing. In my
reasoning this is why I consider existence as "necessary possibility".
Unfortunately, this consideration suffers from the ambiguity inherent in
semiotics known as the figure-frame relation
<http://photoinf.com/Golden_Mean/Petteri_Sulonen/Space_Figure_Ground.htm>.
Is the word we use to denote
<http://grammar.about.com/od/d/g/denotationterm.htm> or connote
<http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g/connotationterm.htm> a referent? What
if we mean to use both denotative and connotative uses?
- Why should "nothing" be the default state? I think this is based on
the intuition that "nothing" would require no explanation, whereas
"something" requires an explanation. However, given that the
possibility of something existing is necessarily true, an explanation
would be required for why there is "nothing" instead of "something".
I agree. We might even think or intuit "nothing" as the absolute
absence of 'everything' : the sum of all particulars that piece-wise and
collection-wise are not-nothing; whereas 'something' is a special case
of 'everything'; a particular case of everything.
- There are many ways something can exist, but just one of nothing
existing. Therefore, "nothing" is less likely :-)
But this statement implicitly assumes a measure that itself, then,
implies a common basis for comparison. Is there a set, class, category
or other 'collection' that has all of the forms, modalities, aspects,
etc. of something along with nothing? Would this set, class, category,
etc. have a denotative/connotative name? At what point does it become
impossible to 'name' something?
- I think the intuition that "nothing" requires less explanation than
the universe we observe is based on a generalization of the idea of
classical empty space. However, this intuition is based on what we
know about *this* universe (i.e. empty space is simpler than things
existing in it). But why this intuition about *our* reality should be
extrapolated to metaphysics?
And it is "explanations' that we are interested in here and thus we
spend time and thought here on these words. ;-) I would like to point
out that 'nothing' does seem to require a lot less explanation simply
because it is defined in terms of the negation of what is already
potentially in the mind of the reader of the word and thus using a is a
connotative definition. We tend not to think much of it, but 'Nothing' =
Sum of {not a cat, not a dot, not a fist, not a person, not a word, ... }
We require concepts like the complement of a set in our very
thoughts... I like to use the concept of an equivalence class to
consider these questions. We could say that Nothing is the equivalence
relation on the class of {not a cat, not a dot, not a fist, not a
person, not a word, ... }
- I think that the important question is why this universe instead of
any other universe? (including "nothing").
I suspect that the answer to this question is trivial: We see this
universe because it is the only one that is minimally (?) consistent
with our ability to _both_ observe it and communicate with each other
about it.
Ricardo.
On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 6:24 PM, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com
<mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Sat, May 5, 2012 John Mikes <jami...@gmail.com
<mailto:jami...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> Is it so hard to understand a "word"?
Yes, the word "nothing" keeps evolving. Until about a hundred
years ago "nothing" just meant a vacuum, space empty of any
matter; then a few years later the meaning was expanded to include
lacking any energy too, then still later it meant also not having
space, and then it meant not even having time. Something that is
lacking matter energy time and space may not be the purest form of
nothing but it is, you must admit, a pretty pitiful "thing", and
if science can explain (and someday it very well may be able to)
how our world with all it's beautiful complexity came to be from
such modest beginnings then that would not be a bad days work, and
to call such activities "incredibly shallow" as some on this list
have is just idiotic.
*>**N O T H I N G - *is not a set of anything, no potential
Then the question "can something come from nothing?" has a obvious
and extremely dull answer.
> I wrote once a little silly 'ode' about ontology. I started:
"In the beginning there was Nothingness.
And when Nothingness realised it's nothingness
It turned into Somethingness
Then your version of nothing had something, the potential to
produce something. I also note the use of the word "when", thus
time, which is something, existed in your "nothing" universe as
well as potential.
John K Clark
--
Onward!
Stephen
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
