No Where

[Zarathustra]

I deny [in my current modes of thought...it has been otherwise before, and likely will be again, at least temporarily] that we cannot wrap our heads around things which do not exist.

Imagining the opposite of existence (nonexistence) is no more difficult than imagining the absence of anything. I'm not saying it's easy, but no more difficult. Imagining anything as not existing necessarily involves imagining that thing (hence the difficulty). But we imagine things that don't exist all the time. Santa Claus. God. We're experts at imagining things that don't exist. We wrap our heads around them all the time.

But nothing cannot exist: it's a logical absurdity and thus whatever state or absence thereof pertained beyond the temporal boarders of our space time it was clearly not the concept that we try to wrap our heads around when we attempt to think of or describe 'nothing'.

The fact that nothingness cannot exist would perhaps explain why nothingness is inherently unstable, immediately breaking down into existence. It's like "nature abhors a vacuum." There is something rather than nothing because nothingness can't exist. There can be no such thing as nothingness.

[Vraith]

We're experts at imagining things that don't exist. We wrap our heads around them all the time.

???ummm....I think that's what I said? Even expanded on it a bit in later posts.

Non-existence in some particulars may be harder than absence [anti-light is harder than darkness] especially outside the realm of mathematics [where -1 is only a bit harder, at first, than 1 and 0].

So, I repeat what I said in another post---accepting is harder than understanding for many.

[Fist and Faith]

Imagining the opposite of existence (nonexistence) is no more difficult than imagining the absence of anything. I'm not saying it's easy, but no more difficult. Imagining anything as not existing necessarily involves imagining that thing (hence the difficulty). But we imagine things that don't exist all the time. Santa Claus. God. We're experts at imagining things that don't exist. We wrap our heads around them all the time.

This seems very different to me. We are not talking apples and oranges. Anything else you can name that does not exist that we can imagine has properties. We make up the properties of the thing we are imagining. But Nothing has no properties. We cannot wrap our heads around that. All knowledge and all imaginings are about something. We cannot have a discussion that does not involve the properties of what we are talking about. We sometimes talk about things "in the abstract". Like math. But math did not come into existence in a vacuum. Numbers were first a property of objects, before we removed the objects to talk about pure math. But a discussion of Nothing is silence. There's nothing to discuss. There has been no discussion of Nothing in this thread, or anywhere else in the history of humanity, because it is impossible to discuss it. It's not even a paradox; we're not discussing that which cannot be discussed. Because we aren't discussing it. We're only discussing whether or not it can be imagined. We can list all the properties Nothing does not have, but that's not the same as imagining Nothing.

The fact that nothingness cannot exist would perhaps explain why nothingness is inherently unstable, immediately breaking down into existence. It's like "nature abhors a vacuum." There is something rather than nothing because nothingness can't exist. There can be no such thing as nothingness.

"Immediately"? If there is no time, which there cannot be if there is Nothing, then there is no such thing as immediately. It's not eternal, and it's not an instant. It's something that we, beings who are entirely involved with/immersed in/dependent upon the passage of time, cannot imagine.

I disagree that we can't imagine nothingness. I disagree with your claim that we can't experience it. We want it to be impossible [if we do] because it is absolutely penetrable.

Ever had dreamless sleep? Ever been knocked out cold? Ever been under general anesthesia? All small doses of nothingness that we can look at, if we try, with utter clarity...and the temporary taste and comprehension of nothingness terrifies us because we know exactly what it is like.

It's the not ever waking up from it that is the problem.

Honestly, any fool can understand nothing.
Understanding mostsomethings is hard.

I disagree with you, too. We don't know exactly what those things are like. We don't experience them. We are aware, then we find ourselves waking up. I've been under general anesthesia. I tried to fight it, just for fun. "Is the stuff he just injected into the line what's gonna knock me out? I'm gonna try to stay awake." And instantly - as far as my awareness is concerned - I'm coming to consciousness, hearing the nurses discussing that I had a double hernia.

[Vraith]

I disagree with you, too. We don't know exactly what those things are like. We don't experience them. We are aware, then we find ourselves waking up. I've been under general anesthesia. I tried to fight it, just for fun. "Is the stuff he just injected into the line what's gonna knock me out? I'm gonna try to stay awake." And instantly - as far as my awareness is concerned - I'm coming to consciousness, hearing the nurses discussing that I had a double hernia.

You can disagree, of course. But I submit that that paragraph describes an understanding of nothing.
Sure, you only understand it because you woke up, we always and only ever understand ANYTHING by comparison/contrast/in relation to something else---but now and forward you DO understand it. Until you die, are nothing, and won't wake up.

[wayfriend]

You don't know nuthin', Vraith.

[Zarathustra]

I disagree with you, too. We don't know exactly what those things are like. We don't experience them. We are aware, then we find ourselves waking up. I've been under general anesthesia. I tried to fight it, just for fun. "Is the stuff he just injected into the line what's gonna knock me out? I'm gonna try to stay awake." And instantly - as far as my awareness is concerned - I'm coming to consciousness, hearing the nurses discussing that I had a double hernia.

You can disagree, of course. But I submit that that paragraph describes an understanding of nothing.

We've moved the goalposts from "imagining nothing" to "knowing exactly what those things are like." We can imagine nothing. We're all talking about it. Just because you can't have a mental image of it in your head doesn't mean you can't imagine it conceptually. It's simple: take everything, and then imagine it not existing. Can't imagine "everything?" So what ... take the sum total of what you can imagine existing, then imagine it not existing, and you're left with nothing. We can imagine 5-5=0. Thus, we can imagine "all I know to exist - all I know to exist = nothing."

We have little trouble understanding absence or nonexistence. This is why it hurts so much when people die, or when a relationship ends, or when the present becomes the irretrievable past. We understand it with every fiber of our being. That sense of loss magnified to include all of existence is our ability to imagine nothingness.

Our ability to comprehend our own death is our ability to comprehend nothingness. Every second of our lives is lived in the foreground of the Void, where we have stepped out of nothingness into Being. The Void surrounds us as the "darkness" we cannot see. It is why we know this is real. The knowledge that this is real is impossible without a simultaneous understanding of its opposite, the knowledge of the Void. It is with us always, right "behind" us. Right "before" us. Our lives are a constant process of moving from it and back into it again.

[Vraith]

" So what ... take the sum total of what you can imagine existing, then imagine it not existing, and you're left with nothing. We can imagine 5-5=0. Thus, we can imagine "all I know to exist - all I know to exist = nothing."

HAH! Sounds like something I read---was it Disc World? [or author?] Hitchikers [or author?] Don't recall. Went:
[[[this is probably way rough]]]
Imagine you have an apple.
Take away the apple.
Now take away another apple.

Anyway, the goal posts may have moved during the exchanges.
But I think understanding conceptually is almost easy peasy...because it is almost entirely THINKING, but not PERSONAL.
Understanding otherwise is seriously cock-blocked by other concerns...so harder, but not anything like impossible.

But [though I don't think, at root, Z and I are disagreeing in total] let's flip it up:
What the fuck is EVERYTHING?
Tell me. I dare you [royal you].
Show me how we "experience" it.
Honestly, "nothing" is one inch to our left, and incomprehensible, but "somethings" are infinitely to our right, but we get it. [or CAN, at least]
Bullshit.
Off topic, but, the Idea of God exists mostly because we CAN understand nothing [nearly entirely] but CAN"t understand everything [or even a small fraction of it.]

[peter]

We could say " Much ado about nothing"

[Fist and Faith]

I disagree with you, too. We don't know exactly what those things are like. We don't experience them. We are aware, then we find ourselves waking up. I've been under general anesthesia. I tried to fight it, just for fun. "Is the stuff he just injected into the line what's gonna knock me out? I'm gonna try to stay awake." And instantly - as far as my awareness is concerned - I'm coming to consciousness, hearing the nurses discussing that I had a double hernia.

You can disagree, of course. But I submit that that paragraph describes an understanding of nothing.
Sure, you only understand it because you woke up, we always and only ever understand ANYTHING by comparison/contrast/in relation to something else---but now and forward you DO understand it. Until you die, are nothing, and won't wake up.

We don't understand it, because we don't experience it. There is nothing to experience. We don't remember it; we can't describe it. I know I was on the operating table, knew what would happen, and knew why I was in a different room when I woke up. Knowing all that is why I believe I went through a period of nothing. It's not because I have any memory, awareness, or impressions of that state. For all I know, I could have been out for the instant it seemed to take; or I could have been out for days or weeks.

But what about the people who go through such a thing without ever knowing it took place? I'm sure it can happen. People have blackouts? People can be put under without knowing it's going to happen and returned to consciousness without knowing it happened? They would have no memory, awareness, or impressions of that state. Do you think they understand it as well as you think I do? Neither of us understands it, because we did not experience anything. There's nothing to experience. There's nothing to understand.

This whole Nothing idea is the same. If I imagine something not existing, I am imagining the thing. I can't think about it not existing without thinking about it. The only think I can do is not think about it. No thought. As I said, it's a Zen thing. Not thinking is achieving Nothing. But that's not the same as understanding Nothing. We can't. What is the difference between removing all things from existence and having infinite empty space, and having an absence of that infinite empty space? Describe the absence of ALL, even empty space. It's impossible. We can't discuss it, because we can't imagine it. No frame of reference. No properties to hold in our minds. Not even empty space.

We cannot envision an 8-cube. We can calculate that it has 256 verticies, 1024 edges, etc. It's all mathematical/theoretical. There's no way we can envision an object in that many dimensions. But at least we can discuss those mathematical/theoretical properties. Not so with Nothing. It doesn't even have that for us to latch onto.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

Imagining the opposite of existence (nonexistence) is no more difficult than imagining the absence of anything. I'm not saying it's easy, but no more difficult. Imagining anything as not existing necessarily involves imagining that thing (hence the difficulty). But we imagine things that don't exist all the time. Santa Claus. God. ...

But that would be because, by the parity with Santa, you're characterizing God as a "thing amongst other things". As the "religion of the additional dude", as Markus Gabriel says. A dude hiding out -- Where's Waldo? -- among other dudes.

FWIW, Catholicity and most premodern religions don't have such a mundane conception of God.

In that vein (and in the spirit of your post), it seems that imagining Nothing would be like imagining God (hence, apophatic theology). Neither God nor Nothing can be said to "exist" in the same sense as other, "mere things" exist.

[Vraith]

We don't understand it, because we don't experience it. There is nothing to experience. We don't remember it; we can't describe it.

To reference an old joke---what is the difference between a cat and a comma?
We understand cat, comma, and joke BECAUSE of differences...and in no other way.
I understand the nothing/lack of adequate characteristics/descriptions BECAUSE of the difference between being aware and being not-aware.
And so do you, and your sample person. The "not experiencing" is an experience in itself, born from comparison and reflection.
The apparent pontificated upon gap between something and nothing is no greater [and little different] from the understanding gap between one something and another something.
We're not afraid of death, and we don't imagine heaven, because we don't/can't comprehend nothing. We do both because we are entirely too understanding of it.
Some folk are really stressed out by change, new things, new ideas...because they don't know what might happen and have a certain stability with how things are [[which often means how THEY are...it's not that the "things" might change, it's that the "I" might.
This is the opposite. It's an old thing that they know too well, and do not want.

Fun thing about nothingness being unstable is that something will always come to be. And if one is of a certain bent, one might be comforted because that something could be them again. [and again, and again, etc...if the process is infinite.]
Heh...that's a little resemblance to Nietzsche. Might make Z happy.

[Fist and Faith]

Nah! Let's do a thought experiment. What if someone was raised where there was no sun moving through the sky. And there are no clocks. If nobody ever says anything about sleep, and everybody is always in the same place when the kid wakes up as they were when the kid fell asleep (or not in sight at all), so there are no visual clues that time passed, the kid would grow up not knowing time passed between falling asleep and waking up. The kid might not know there was such a thing as sleep; but think there's just this weird feeling people get on occasion, where you can't think clearly. Dreams might be explained as hallucinations.

I'm not going to fight over the exact setup. The point is, we could concoct a scenario where a person would never know there was dreamless sleep or unconsciousness. (Wasn't there an African plains tribe that didn't know about distance, because they didn't have trees, mountains, or anything that did not move? They thought things moving away from them were getting smaller, and things moving toward them were getting bigger. Maybe that's a story in a book.) This person isn't going to be able to describe it to you. There is no "comparison and reflection." This person, despite going through it every "day", will not know it exists. We only know of it because of external clues. We are told about it. It's a matter-of-fact thing everybody talks about all the time. We know how clocks work, and we see that time has passed. We know how the sun and moon move, and they are in different places when we wake up than they were when we fell asleep. We watch other people sleep. But we don't know nonexistence. There's nothing to know. There's no understanding of it, because there is no experience of it. There's nothing to experience.

We know of nonexistence, but we don't know it.

[peter]

That (I think ) is supporting my contention that whatever the nothing is that existence errupted into, it is not the nothing that we can, or cannot (depending upon all the above) get our heads around.

[Zarathustra]

This whole Nothing idea is the same. If I imagine something not existing, I am imagining the thing. I can't think about it not existing without thinking about it. The only think I can do is not think about it. No thought. As I said, it's a Zen thing. Not thinking is achieving Nothing. But that's not the same as understanding Nothing. We can't.

I think this reveals the mistake your side (in this debate) is making: that the thought of a thing somehow mirrors that thing, so that a "thought" of nothingness would also be nothing, i.e. no thought.

It's true that imagining a thing as not existing necessitates imagining that thing, but this in no way impedes our ability of think of nonexistent things, since the imagining of it is not the same as the instantiation of it into being. Holding it in thought doesn't mean that it must exist somewhere in the world, or at all. It is not the state of nonexistence that is the problem here. I think what is giving people trouble is the quality of non-thingness ("nothingness").

When we're aware of anything, our awareness necessarily consists of "that-ness" and "what-ness." We are aware that the object exists (or does not), and what the object is (or is not). These are inextricably tied together in the sense that there can be no thought of a particular set of properties (what-ness) without a simultaneous thought of those properties either existing or not existing (that-ness).

But--and this is important--does that mean that we cannot conceive of that-ness without simultaneously conceiving a set of properties? [This matters because the claim being made by your side is that we can't conceive of nothingness because it lacks properties.] While it's true that we come to understand Being through our contact with individual beings (objects, things) and their properties, this contact allows us to build up a generalized concept of Being itself, the state of existing, aside from the existence of any particular being and its properties.

So why couldn't the same also be true of non-being (or nothingness)?

The crucial point for this debate is not that we can't conceive the absence of what-ness (because we hold that "what" or that "thing" in our heads when we're conceiving it as not existing), but that we CAN conceive the absence of that-ness (i.e. we can conceive of whatever thing as not existing). It is no problem for us to conceive of nonexistence, or to know intuitively the difference between something existing and that thing not existing. Nothingness isn't merely the absence of all things, it is absence itself. There is no need to contain an impossible thought of "no-thing" (or "no-what") when we can already conceive "no-that."

In the end, it should be no more difficult to conceive of Being in general (abstracted from individual existent beings) than to conceive of Nonbeing in general (abstracted from individual nonexistent beings). If we cannot conceive of nothingness, than neither can we conceive of Being.

What is the difference between removing all things from existence and having infinite empty space, and having an absence of that infinite empty space? Describe the absence of ALL, even empty space. It's impossible. We can't discuss it, because we can't imagine it. No frame of reference. No properties to hold in our minds. Not even empty space.

Sounds like you just described it!

[Fist and Faith]

What is the difference between removing all things from existence and having infinite empty space, and having an absence of that infinite empty space? Describe the absence of ALL, even empty space. It's impossible. We can't discuss it, because we can't imagine it. No frame of reference. No properties to hold in our minds. Not even empty space.

Sounds like you just described it!

I didn't. I only listed some things it is not. That's my point. We cannot list things it is. We can only describe it in negatives. We cannot describe it in positives. We can describe reality, Being, endlessly, and we would never be done. We are familiar with more aspects of it, and more pieces of it, than we can name. And that's only with the senses we have, devices we've created to detect things our senses cannot, and systems of thought we use to describe things (real and imaginary) that we cannot sense with and without our devices. Our understanding of Being is a house that we built over millennia, cementing one brick to another, nailing one board to another, raising it higher and higher.

None of that apples to Nothingness. No senses or devices detect it. No system of thought describes it. Even our daily, direct experience of it leaves us with absolutely nothing positive to say about it. "It's not X, Y, or Z." does not tell us what it is; only what it is not. We have no bricks and mortar, no boards and nails. We cannot build our house of understanding.

I'm not saying I expect to be told what it is. It's impossible. Because it is not. I'm just saying we cannot claim to understand it, to wrap our heads around it, because all of the ways we understand things are useless. There is no way to understand, because there is no thing to understand.

[Zarathustra]

So describe Being. What is it? Can we conceive it?

[Fist and Faith]

Maybe not. Maybe Being is a bad word for this discussion. Existence. As I said, we are familiar with many aspects and particular pieces of reality. That which exists. We know of many properties of reality. Things like various elementary particles and how they behave, individually and in groups. We know strengths of various forces. We know an uncountable number of objects, what they're doing, where they're going. We could go on and on describing reality.

Now describe Nonexistence. Even only as thoroughly as I've described reality. Don't tell me what it's not. If I ask you to describe ice, you don't say, "It's not hot. It's not soft. It's not a metal." Tell me what Nonexistence is. Draw upon the daily dose of dreamless sleep that (I assume) you go through, just like the rest of us. From a personal standpoint (and many will argue it's from more than a personal standpoint), that is Nonexistence. And you've been in that state how many thousand times? Give me anything. Any description about any aspect of it.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

No one can describe Nothingness or Nonexistence because there would be neither sensory input nor a brain waiting to process sensory input. The closest approximation we have is when people are put under general anesthesia--one second they are on the prep table and the mask is placed over their mouth, the next second they are waking up groggy in bed some time later. In this example, of course you still existed but you didn't know that you existed--all brain functions which were not essential to base survival--breathing, pulse, blood pressure, etc--were disabled.

Defining something as the negation of something else, though, we do this all the time. In math, we define rational numbers as "the set of all numbers of the form a/b, where a and b are integers and b does not equal 0"; from here, we define irrational numbers as "the set of all numbers which are not in the set of rational numbers". Similarly, darkness is the absence of light--we can't flip a switch and turn on a "darkbulb", filling the room with some sort of light-devouring anti-photons (although that would be an exciting discovery), so we shortcut the definition of "dark" as being "the absence of visible light". Thus, Nothing is the absence of Everything.

We wouldn't want to experience Nothing, in any event--no light, no sound, no air, no motion, no time, no space, and so on.

Fortunately, this is all rather moot--even the space between individual atoms is "something", so there really isn't such a thing as Nothing in this universe.

[Zarathustra]

Maybe not. Maybe Being is a bad word for this discussion. Existence. As I said, we are familiar with many aspects and particular pieces of reality. That which exists. We know of many properties of reality. Things like various elementary particles and how they behave, individually and in groups. We know strengths of various forces. We know an uncountable number of objects, what they're doing, where they're going. We could go on and on describing reality.

But none of this describes existence in general. Nor does it describe "thingness" (as opposed to nothingness).

General, abstract concepts are difficult to describe. Many philosophers have tackled "the meaning of Being," falling short of clarity or completeness. I think perhaps Heidegger does the best job in Being and Time, but it's still Being as experienced in a human being. We are a piece of Being, one into which we have unique access, and thus offer a unique opportunity to study Being.

But this still doesn't get us all the way to a universal, general understanding of Being (or existence) aside from its examples we experience in ourselves and in objects we encounter. [It does, however, allow us to contemplate general structures or necessary conditions for anything to exist whatsoever.]

So we're still left with the same problem: if we cannot conceive of nothingness, neither can be conceive of existence. Both would require us to conceive of a state separate from individual things, which is all we ever encounter.

But this is ludicrous. We have a living, on-going relationship with Being ... as well as nonbeing. To know what something is, is to know what it is not. To know that something is, is to understand the opposite case: that it might not be. Our understanding of both existence and nonexistence are rooted in our encounters with individual things/properties, but we are able to abstract and generalize from these encounters.

If we can't conceive of nothingness, then we can't conceive of any general concept, because it is just one of many such concepts. Being has no individual properties ... it is the possibility of having properties. Nothingness has no individual properties ... it is the impossibility of having properties.

[Fist and Faith]

Hashi, is Nothing dark? I say No. Nothing (Not nothing; Nothing) is the absence of light and dark. And the absence of every other dichotomy. And the absence of every other everything else. And that's as much as we can say or understand about it. We can talk about it in that kind of abstract way, but we can't comprehend the absence of everything because that includes the absence of everything that comprehension is based on. We can't describe the hours we spend under general anesthesia. We can't describe the absence of visual data in the blind-spot, even though we can see in all directions around it. It's not dark. Can you describe it?

We think that, because we experience bits of Nothing every day, and because we can easily imagine one thing after another not existing, we have a good understanding of Nothing. But we do not. There is nothing to understand. Trying does not get us any closer; does not reveal more about it. We can't describe it in any way whatsoever. We can only discuss what it is not. How can we claim to possess any kind of comprehension?

Z, my point this whole time is that "abstract and generalize" is all we have. There is no real and specific. Tell me something specific about Nothing.

Not sure about your last paragraph. If reality came from Nothingness, which you say is inherently unstable, then properties clearly were not impossible. Nothingness seems to have had the possibility of having properties. I would say Nothingness is the lack of properties, and Being is the presence of properties.

Not sure how potential and instability figure into it. If Nothing became our reality, then it obviously had potential. Instability seems like a property to me. Some property of a certain stone tower makes it stable. It's going to stand for a very long time. But some property of a different stone tower makes it unstable. It's going to fall with a good wind. Is the instability a property in and of itself? Or is the reason it is unstable (Thin. Cracked. Weak type of stone) the only thing we can call a property? And what does all this say about the instability of Nothingness?