does nothing really exist?

[Eldrakyn]

Okay, People here are generally smart, and seem to be quite a few levels higher philosophically than myself, so I'll ask this, and I expect a good answer: Does nothing really exist?

You can't think of nothing(well, I know a few people that could argue that...), and no one can find nothing, so... I'm quite confused. The only nothing I can think of is the nothingness of death, but even then, you can't be so sure... Please give me some thoughts.. curiosity strikes... deep...

[MorganaFang]

Okay, People here are generally smart, and seem to be quite a few levels higher philosophically than myself, so I'll ask this, and I expect a good answer: Does nothing really exist?

You can't think of nothing(well, I know a few people that could argue that...), and no one can find nothing, so... I'm quite confused. The only nothing I can think of is the nothingness of death, but even then, you can't be so sure... Please give me some thoughts.. curiosity strikes... deep...

In the animal kingdom even the word nothing doesn't exist, exist doesn't exist... And the wheel goes on...

[Wraywolf]

Because ‘nothing’ is mostly just used as a way to express the absence of something, and not a physical concept, it exists as a mental connotation.

[kat]

Sure nothing exists, just not on this planet. Our universe is "expanding into" nothing. Also: Read me (http://everythingforever.co m/personalities.html), care of Everythingforever.co m.

[Hellcat]

Because ‘nothing’ is mostly just used as a way to express the absence of something, and not a physical concept, it exists as a mental connotation.


It cannot be scientifically proven that 'nothing' exists, any more than you can define a space. I look at an area of my bedroom that appears to be featureless, yet there is a floor and a carpet and those things are not 'nothing'. I am not holding anything in my hand, but science tells me that there is air there, particals of dust and various other 'invisible' elements, again there is not 'nothing'. One might describe 'nothing' as a space without contents. Yet as long as there are gases, objects, or particals drifting within that space, there is something in it. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there. Imagine if you sucked the contents out of a glass with a vaccuum then you would have (theoretically) nothing, but when you suck something out of any container you are also removing the oxygen which will make the container implode- by the time the container has imploded the 'nothing' will have become something assuming the 'nothing' was ever there in the first place. Nobody knows what nothing looks like, it doesn't have a feel, or sound or smell, so scientifically we can't prove whether or not exists.


Just for amusements sake, here's something I wrote on the 28th October 2002 (tis in my book of thoughts)

"The universe was created from nothing- since nobody knows what nothing looks like, it could have been created from anything"

Incidently I am the copyright owner of that imaginative little piece :D

[kat]

I have an idea, EVERYONE IGNORE EVERYTHING I SAY!

[Hellcat]

I have an idea, EVERYONE IGNORE EVERYTHING I SAY!

Look you sarcastic git :D

If you wanna go post a ridiculously (sp?) short post while I'm busy writing an essay that's fine, but at least have the common decency to let me post mine first :D

...That way you won't acquire an inferiority complex in your dellusional belief that you are being ignored..bloody attention seeker :p

[kat]

And yet, have you read the information at the end of the link I posted? Or should I just cheat and copy and paste the stuff? ;)

[Hellcat]

And yet, have you read the information at the end of the link I posted? Or should I just cheat and copy and paste the stuff? ;)

I read about 2 paragraphs then my eyeballs kinda spun to the back of my head and blatantly refused to absorb any further information. In other words yeah, cheat :D

[kat]

There is however a real and physical nothing that exists, so my original supposition was not totally misdirected. What we imagine to be empty space is the real nothing that exists physically, although it is critical that we are fully conscious of how empty space is in no way related to the meaningless term non-existence. We tend to allow an unreal non-existence to contaminate the real nothingness. We mix the two as if they are the same when they don't even relate. One actually exists while the other does not.

Nothingness, the ultimate expression being empty space, lacks the presence of things. Nothing can be thought of as a space that is uniformly empty of any distinct substance in any discernable form. The word nothing properly breaks down into two words: no things. And I cannot better simplify the true and proper meaning of a real nothing that exists and is a valid part of existence. Within a world of many different things the only capable requirement of a nothing is that it doesn't express pluralism. is the prototype of nothing. And most often when we use the word nothing, this is our meaning. There is the nothing of empty space. A pure white canvas has nothing painted on it. There is nothing in the refrigerator. When properly used, the word nothing refers to a place or space without any distinguishing features, and therefore monistic in form. Nothingness can not be reduced further. The gross but definitely inherited error is to assume an absence of thingness is equivalent in meaning to non-existence. Once that mistake is erased, nothing is understood simply as a perfect uniformity.

[Ronin]

Does nothing really exist? Of course, you then have to ask yourself if nothing exists, isn't that an oxymoron? If there was truly nothing, then how could nothing exist since existing implies there is something there in the first place?

Uh oh...I'm going to 7-11 now and buying a slurpee and hopefully get brain freeze :o

~Ronin

[Nightmare GenoReaper]

Of course, you then have to ask yourself if nothing exists, isn't that an oxymoron? If there was truly nothing, then how could nothing exist since existing implies there is something there in the first place?

Uh oh...I'm going to 7-11 now and buying a slurpee and hopefully get brain freeze :o

~Ronin


:buttrock: :beerchug:

That means, i agree, he took the words right out of my mouth :notworthy

[LycanSpectre]

Of course, you then have to ask yourself if nothing exists, isn't that an oxymoron? If there was truly nothing, then how could nothing exist since existing implies there is something there in the first place?

Uh oh...I'm going to 7-11 now and buying a slurpee and hopefully get brain freeze :o

~Ronin

Not quite. You cannot define existence without something to define as non-existence, IE nothingness. With just one, the other would have no meaning, and therefore, the first would be undefined.

[Hellcat]

Not quite. You cannot define existence without something to define as non-existence, IE nothingness. With just one, the other would have no meaning, and therefore, the first would be undefined.

Yeah but which came first? The nothing or the something? If it were the nothing, then how did the world come into being? There must have something from which which the world was formed.

[Ronin]

First of all, thank you, Nightmare. But now I think people are thinking way too hard on the matter.

Not quite. You cannot define existence without something to define as non-existence, IE nothingness. With just one, the other would have no meaning, and therefore, the first would be undefined. Huh? Do you mean you can't have one without the other? Who says? There's no law that states that. Anything you go by is only defined by what Man has defined. Who's to say Man is the end-all be-all of what can and cannot be true?

~Ronin

[LycanSpectre]

Do you mean you can't have one without the other? Who says? There's no law that states that.

How bout we think about this a little. If there is no opposite for something, how can you define what that something is? Without dark, how would you know what light is? Without heat, then what is cold? So on and so forth. Even this conundrum has its conceptual opposite: we can imagine that there is no opposite for something, and yet it is the opposite of what I am saying. I'd say that is as close to a "law" as you can get.

Of course, you can never get to prove that "nothing" exists, because as soon as you get to it, there will be something. Nothing may just exist as a concept, nothing more. Or it could be real. :shrug: The world will never know.

Who's to say Man is the end-all be-all of what can and cannot be true?

No one said anything remotely like that. Im just pointing out what I see.

I challenge you to name one concept like the ones I just named that does not have an opposite.

Anything you go by is only defined by what Man has defined.

And exactly what else would you go by?

[LycanSpectre]

Yeah but which came first? The nothing or the something? If it were the nothing, then how did the world come into being? There must have something from which which the world was formed.

With Nothing around that something. :shrug:

Dunno, just guessing. I dont have the answers, I wasn't there.

And that is assuming that the universe really exists at all. :D

[Ronin]

Of course, you can never get to prove that "nothing" exists, because as soon as you get to it, there will be something. Arrrrrgh! That's what I already SAID in my first post that you replied to! Try to stay with me on this because you're trying to argue with me what I've already said which I don't understand why you would try and argue something with me when you yourself just repeated what I've said.

The fact that if nothing exists, then "nothing exists" is an oxymoron since nothing WOULD BE something if it, indeed, exists. Correct? Still with me? The question was, "Does nothing exist?" To which I replied, if nothing does exist then that would be an oxymoron since existing implies something already there. Correct? Still with me? So there can't be nothing since, if you prove it exists, then nothing is something and isn't just...nothing. Do you understand? You've already agreed with my point in my initial post so why are you trying to argue with me when we're both at the same conclusion? :confused:

Thanks for paying attention.

~Ronin

[LycanSpectre]

Hey, there's no need to get angry; it proves nothing and only makes you look less intelligent.

You misunderstand me. What I am saying is that we will never know. We cannot prove the existence or non-existence of nothing. It may or may not exist, but for us, it will exist only as a concept, and that is all we need. Oxymoron or not, I dont really care.

Despite all that, the excerpt you took from my last post was not my point, so before you go and get all worked up over it, perhaps you should take the time to find my point.

[Darth Cluich]

Arrrrrgh! That's what I already SAID in my first post that you replied to! Try to stay with me on this because you're trying to argue with me what I've already said which I don't understand why you would try and argue something with me when you yourself just repeated what I've said.

Ugh...run-on sentences make me dizzy.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, though, nothing is "something that has no existence." Even the dictionary, it seems, can't avoid the oxymoron. :shrug:

[Ronin]

Despite all that, the excerpt you took from my last post was not my point, so before you go and get all worked up over it, perhaps you should take the time to find my point. First, I'm not angry. It's just frustrating talking in circles with some people, and plus I had a shitty day in class last night so I wasn't in the mood to read something that I had already addressed as if I had said nothing about it.

Second, it goes without saying we'll never really know. We'll never really know a lot of things in this world so that point is moot and doesn't have to be reiterated. Thanks. The point is if we were able to know or prove it somehow.

~Ronin

[MoC]

Everything is Everything, Nothing is Nothing.

But Nothing in itself is Something.

- MoC

[Aquilan]

One could say that nothingness is the absence of existance, so no, nothingness doesn't exist because if it existed, it wouldn't be nothingness. Ta-da! :D

[DarkWolf]

If nothing exists, how do you identify something? Without light how would you define dark?

And if "nothingness" didn't exist, why would we have a word for it?

[Startraveler]

Imagine if you sucked the contents out of a glass with a vaccuum then you would have (theoretically) nothing...

Even in a complete vacuum there is something. Vacuums just have as little something as is physically possibly--they aren't nothing.

[Aquilan]

To contrast the idea of existance. It doesn't exist physically, but I guess if you think about it, it could. Mentally, as an idea. I guess it is up to the person thinking. :shrug:

[FocusedWolf]

Well theirs a good chance we're all just a dream that will eventually end.

[DarkWolf]

Well theirs a good chance we're all just a dream that will eventually end.
Stop watching The Matrix.

[Hellcat]

Nothing can exist, but only if you think about it. Stop what your doing and don't think. What are you thinking about? "nothing"

[Necro Mortis]

Ow, my brain hurts.

Nothing does exist in different contexts. Space is not nothing! It contains sooo many planets and stars and stuff that it is something. A vacuum is not nothing. It is a vacuum. Nothing can relate to non-existance but then what is that? It cant be anything because its NOTHING. No black, blank space, no anything. Its just about impossible to imagine. As somone has said this might be what happens to up when we die. We just disapear into nothingness.

Now im finished im gonna go stare at a blank wall before my brain leaks out of my ears.

[orange camelion]

i think nothing exists as a feeling because you can feel nothing after someone has caused so much hurt in your life and has taken up so much of your energy and you have forgiven them too many times to imagine anymore eventually after not talking to them and seeing them for a long time when they pop up in your life you can feel nothing towards them so yes i think nothing exists inside us as a feeling

[silenceowl]

I see nothing,

I hear nothing,

I taste nothing,

I feel nothing,

I smell nothing.

If i can sense nothing, then nothing must be something.

Nothing meets the definition of something, so nothing is real.

Nothing = real

But just because nothing is real doesn’t mean it exists now does it?

[chriz]

The gross but definitely inherited error is to assume an absence of thingness is equivalent in meaning to non-existence. Once that mistake is erased, nothing is understood simply as a perfect uniformity.

That's not a mistake. Absence of a thingness directly equals non-existence of a thingness -- they're synonymous in the same way as "0" and "zero" and "none".

Put another way, does Superman exist? Well, sure, he makes DC Comics a ton of money every year. But does that mean he exists or is "Superman" just a word for a concept?

[DarkWolf]

What is nothing? The term or the meaning? In meaning "nothing" is an absence of perception. So what is perception?

Perception is a process by which sensory stimulation is organized into usable experience. On a fairly simple level, perceptual psychology investigates such questions as how a frog distinguishes flies from the thousands of other objects in its world. On the more complex human level, perceptual psychology attempts to unravel such questions as how the brain translates stationary flashing lights into an illusion of motion, or how an artist responds to colours or shapes and translates them into painting.

Perceptual psychologists recognize that most of the raw, unorganized sensory stimuli that come from seeing, hearing, and the other senses are almost instantaneously and subconsciously “corrected” into percepts, or usable experience. For example, a car moving along a road is seen as full-sized no matter how small or large the image it actually makes on the retinas of an observer's eyes. Similarly, a musical theme can be followed through a maze of individual notes and rhythms no matter how many times the composer has changed the key. Perception is not a simple matter of organizing direct sensory stimuli into percepts. Percepts themselves, gained from past experience, also become organized, thus greatly advancing the accuracy and speed of the individual's present perception.

The study and theory of percepts reach beyond academic psychology to possible practical applications in learning, education, and clinical psychology. To “underperceptualize” —to fail to organize sensory stimuli—often means to experience the world as chaos. To “overperceptualize”— to organize sensory stimuli to the extent that stimuli not fitting into that organization are shut off or stimuli are perceived when none exist—means to experience the world in a state of depression or hallucination.

Despite the fundamental role that perception plays in the lives of humans and all but the most simple animals, its processes remain largely obscure, for two main reasons: because researchers have had only limited success in breaking down perception into analysable units—and because empirical and scientifically verifiable findings are difficult to obtain or repeat, as the study of perception depends mostly on subjective and introspective reports.

One phenomenon that researchers have attempted to explain is the principle of perceptual constancy. Once an object has been perceived as an identifiable entity, it tends to be seen as a stable object having permanent characteristics, despite variations in its illumination, the position from which it is viewed, or the distance at which it appears. Therefore, although a given object produces a much smaller retinal image at 100 m than at 20 m, it tends to be perceived as having an intrinsic size.

According to the classical theory of perception advanced by the German physiologist and physicist Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz in the mid-19th century, constancy—as well as depth perception and most other percepts—is a result of an individual's ability continually to synthesize past experience and current sensory cues. As a newborn animal or a human infant explores its world, it soon learns to organize what it sees into a three-dimensional pattern, taking as its guides largely those discovered by Leonardo da Vinci: linear perspective, occlusion of a far object by a near one, and increasing haze as objects become more distant.

Using tactile and audio cues as well, the growing infant quickly learns a host of specific associations that correspond to the properties of objects in the physical world. Such associations, or percepts, are made automatically and with such speed that even a trained adult cannot decipher, with any degree of accuracy, the visual cues from which they are derived.

Proponents of the classical theory of perception believed that most percepts are derived from what they called “unconscious inference from nonnoticed sensations”. Only when one is experiencing an illusion or misreading visual cues, as when cars and houses appear like toys from the altitude of an aircraft, does one become aware of such sensations and gain some insight into their role in the organization of percepts. Much experimental research in perception consists of testing subjects with illusory material in an attempt to separate individual perceptual units from the process as a whole.

--

There is such a concept of nothing: something we cannot perceive in anyway (an absence of perception). So by definition of concept, yes, "nothing" (as a subject itself not generalization) exists.

[COLONV]

Yes,it is a clear empty space in the vastness of thre universe.
t is difficult to explain it. :confused:

[DarkWolf]

Yes,it is a clear empty space in the vastness of thre universe.
t is difficult to explain it. :confused:
Actually that space isn't so empty. There are still particles, "space dust", tiny bits of rock and in theory a "dark matter" that fills that supposed void and theoretically makes up 90-95% of space.

[chriz]

Ok, look, it's very simple. The moment you define nothing, it loses it's status as nothing. In other words, if nothing exists, it's something.

[silenceowl]

Very true, but still, there is no way to say if something truly exists. Nothing may be something, but you can't prove something exists. One can look at the front of a picture and see something but look at the back of the same picture and you see a blank piece of paper. Depending on your perception, anything is anything.

[DarkWolf]

Depending on your perception, anything is anything.Exactly my point. :D

[chriz]

Very true, but still, there is no way to say if something truly exists. Nothing may be something, but you can't prove something exists. One can look at the front of a picture and see something but look at the back of the same picture and you see a blank piece of paper. Depending on your perception, anything is anything.

Both a picture and a blank piece of paper fall under "something."

Keep trying...

[silenceowl]

Okay......You can look into the sky and see mars if the suns light hits it in the right way, but if the light does not hit it in the right way you see nothing. That work? :)

[chriz]

Okay......You can look into the sky and see mars if the suns light hits it in the right way, but if the light does not hit it in the right way you see nothing. That work? :)

Nope. :)

You're deliberately trying to sense with the wrong medium. Mars doesn't cease to exist when you alter your method of perception, so this example still doesn't work.

Let me ask it straight out -- can you give me an example of a "nothing" that you can perceive?

[silenceowl]

How about when a song pauses?


I think you get what I mean when I say "one side of a piece of paper has a picture, the other side is blank."

I'm just saying that things are deferent depending on how you look at it.:)

[DarkWolf]

can you give me an example of a "nothing" that you can perceive?No, because from my understanding I still think "nothing" is what you cannot perceive. (Please note use of "cannot" instead of "do not" ;))

[chriz]

I think you get what I mean when I say "one side of a piece of paper has a picture, the other side is blank."

I'm just saying that things are deferent depending on how you look at it.:)

No, that is incorrect. The thing doesn't change when you alter your perceptions. It may sound like I'm being facetous, but that distinction is critical.

[silenceowl]

I give.


At least i tried.:)

[Lore]

If nothing exists then doesn't something exist, Nothing is something. But then if nothing is something and something is nothing and if everything is something then that proves something is nothing. thats confusing

[Shoggoth]

Okay, People here are generally smart, and seem to be quite a few levels higher philosophically than myself, so I'll ask this, and I expect a good answer: Does nothing really exist?

Nothing is, simply put, the absence of something. So it exists as a concept. But it is not a physical thing. You cannot hold nothing, you cannot measure the quantity of nothing. You can measure space, depth, width; but those are measurements of capacity. An empty box can be measured, but the amount of nothing inside the box is intangible. And no one says, "How much nothing can this box hold?"
Now, nothing can be seen. You can look inside an empty box and see nothing. But you are not seeing something. The two things are mutually exclusive. You look into the empty box, you note the abscence of a thing, and you quantify that abscence with the word "nothing."
In short: nothing is not a thing ("no thing"). It is a concept. It exists in the same way that darkness and love exist - as an idea.

[SqueakyOnion]

Suppose you had a vacuum, and removed all "space dust" or whatever was in it, everything. Guess what? There's still something there. Light. Light is something, and it is effected by gravity, which has been proven scientifically.

Concider the concept of the ying yang.

As has been previously said, nothing is a concept that can't exist without something. Since there is something, there has to be an opposide idea of something. There is an opposite to everything. If you never felt pain, you would never enjoy pleasure. If you never grasped the concept of nothing, you wouldn't appreciate something. Nothing is a mental concept, and is represented by a word. Words are dead, they are not "things," just representations of them. A word is a means of communicating an idea. A word on a piece of paper is just atoms of the ink and paper. A word is a representation of and idea, and the only way to communicate this idea is to make words...words are the train of information going from town to town. You could say that a train is something, but, remember the concept of a mathematical line...no widthe, heighth, or lenght. It is a concept, not a physcially representable thing. In closing, nothing is a mental concept, the opposite of something. If you still think that nothing is something because it is the opposite of something, you aren't using thorough logic. :shrug:

[chriz]

Shut up and pass that joint...

[Snackrib]

Okay, People here are generally smart, and seem to be quite a few levels higher philosophically than myself, so I'll ask this, and I expect a good answer: Does nothing really exist?

You can't think of nothing(well, I know a few people that could argue that...), and no one can find nothing, so... I'm quite confused. The only nothing I can think of is the nothingness of death, but even then, you can't be so sure... Please give me some thoughts.. curiosity strikes... deep...

I think everything around us exist, cause if they wouldn't they wouldn't be there. Everythings the same every day, same old stuff, same old school, same old work, and you are yourself everyday except maybe when ur sentimental. But this is but a paralell universe among others and in this universe things exist.

[Hybrid]

Does nothing really exist?

Mmmmmmmmm, perhaps. ;)

[McKitty]

To exist is to be something, so one can say that nothing doesn't exist.

[Khrystof]

The theory of Existentialism is 'I think therefore I am' so to think of nothing is to be nothing.

Thinking of an example of nothing is to try and say that a two dimensional object has to surface areas.