On 5/7/2012 9:16 AM, R AM wrote:
On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net
<mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:
Hi Stephen,
- 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?
Some people claim that something cannot come from "nothing". I think
they are hanging a property on it.
Hi Ricardo,
Yes and some other people claim that something can indeed come out
of nothing - so long as that something comes with its antithesis so that
the sum of the two is equal to nothing, kinda like 1 and -1 popping out
of zero. I think that they are "hanging a property on it" and thus they
are assuming that it has "hooks" - to follow the metaphor. But I think
that here we are looking at the symptoms of something else, the symptoms
of the word "come from" or "caused by" or "emergent". They all involve
some kind of transformation. Are transformations possible within a
"nothing"? What about automorphisms? Those transformations that leave
some pattern or object unchanged?
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.
- 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?
I think a proper philosopher would say that "nothing" is the state of
affairs (rather than "nothing" exists).
Umm, OK, but would this not make "affairs" more primitive than
nothing? I think that this way of thinking starts of with a collection
of "somethings" (plural) and classifies "nothing" as that particular
member of the collection that is the place holder for the absence of a
state. This is the patterns that we see in the Natural numbers, where
ZERO (0) marks the spot that divides the positive numbers from the
negative numbers.
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?
One way of intuiting "nothing" is that which remains when you have
removed everything.
Right.
In fact, I believe that the philosophical "nothing" is nothing else
than classical empty space elevated to metaphysical heights.
I agree. We see this in the modern notion of the vacuum or vacua
(plural).
The problem is that even after you have removed everything (including
time and space), there is something that cannot be removed: the
possibility of something existing.
Exactly! Possibility itself can never be completely extracted, it
can only be countered.
It would seem that "nothing" (or rather, NOTHING) shouldn't allow even
for the logical possibility of something existing. But given that
something exists, this possibility cannot be removed. That is why I
said that the idea of "nothing" and the logical possibility of
existence, sharing the same state of affairs, is bizarre (if not
incompatible).
I agree. This is what I have in mind as well.
- 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.
Probably the best way of defining "nothing" is the absence of
everything (not this, not that, ...). But isn't it funny that in order
to define "nothing" you have to accept the possibility of everything?
And I think that is a very important point! This is part of my
argument that Existence is necessary possibility itself.
- 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?
I guess it couldn't be a set.
Right, because a set requires the definition of a function that
picks out its members, either by inclusion or exclusion. One cannot just
have a set and nothing else.
In any case, when people ask the question "why something rather than
nothing", they implicitely assume that there is some sort of priority
for "nothing" over something.
My short answer to "why something rather than nothing?" is "why not?".
Yeah, but while that is clever it does not explain much, but I
appreciate the spirit of the answer.
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, ... }
I agree, but why the absence of things requires less explanation than
the presence of things?
I think that it requires less of an explicit explanation as it
relies on the explanations that exist previously in the minds of those
that are apprehending the explanation. The fact that explanations are
what conscious entities do with each other, they communicate meanings,
not by pushing some "stuff" into them, but by implicating patterns of
relations between the elements of the minds of the entities. Knowledge,
learning, perception, Understanding are more like synchronization and
entrainment than anything else.
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.
OK, now prove the mass of the electron from these axioms :-)
Well, we would first have to be sure that we had the necessary
elements to define what the relations of mass and electron are...
--
Onward!
Stephen
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon
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