On the nonexistence of nothingness

Can anything not be? For to not be is to be nothing. But in what sense then is it being if it is being nothing? Nothingness therefore cannot be a state anything is in because being in a state assumes prior existing. And if you already exist surely you cannot not be. Before you were born you were neither existent nor non-existent. For there was no you to not exist as. You neither were nor were not. You were one with pure infinite possibility.

"Nothing proceeds from nothingness, as also nothing passes away into non-existence."-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 4

 

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a) Oppositions are of general importance. They play a prominent role everywhere, both in human life and outside it, both in language, in human relationships, in human conflicts, in personal development, in society, history, art, religion, philosophy, all the sciences (including logic and mathematics) and in their subject matter. Because they are to be found everywhere, it is impossible to define oppositions as such or to reduce them to something else. A vantage point outside their realm cannot be found. For if it existed, it would be, in virtue of that, be opposed to oppositions.

http://isotelesis.blogspot.ca/2011/02/diagonalization-self-reference-fixed.html

 

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We have to consider the properties of opposites. What makes one thing opposite from another?

 

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Is Being a property or a substance? I'm thinking the latter.

 

I wish -my hero- Amrit, were here to debate you.

 

If one believed in an eternal "world", whether of the the intelligible variety descended from Pythagorus or the block-universe sort descended from Parmenides... Then existing as either the general "rules for" a being or as any particular instantiated state of a being (in a dimensional sequence) is "already" or perpetually the case. But only those beings with a public appearance and location could be validated concretely at "somewhere slash sometime". That is, this would not mean that every possible/conceivable being existed tangibly if some were minus any appearance whatsoever in the past/future and space, as evidence. They could hardly be deprived of existence as ideas, though, as long as they fell out of imaginative thought or formulaic process "somewhere slash sometime". What either intelligible eternalism or dimensional eternalism would add is, again, the claim that they still or already exist. ("Real" might be distinguished from "exist" as concerning an item being perceived / represented "right here and right now" to a group of observers / confirming agents; or having good reason to believe the item would be present and effective "right here and right now" if such a group was available).

 

This is indeed a important question, the only nothing that we know is the nothing that were before we were born. That is the only time that we can look back and see ourselves end. The problem with this is that the memory of our existence has limits, if it didn't fade away as we try to remember further back then we should find a certain time where our existence "started", and thus be unable to remember anything further back. I wonder how those with photographic memory perceives this, or does that also fade away as they try to remember further back?

Perhaps we have memories of our "start", but that they are very hard to access?

Black is a natural description of nothing (when it comes to color that is), it is a color that actually doesn't exist in the objective world, yet the description seems natural enough, darkness does exist, and all fades except completely black does exist, so it is only natural to decide that the color for nothing is completely black.

To the same effect we can have fading existence, we could be half-conscious and know what that feels like, similarly we can take that to the extreme to get a sense of what nothing must be like (without actually being it). It is strange that we through our subjectivity (which is to know what it is like to exist) could potentially know the opposite that way. But how can there be something to not exist? Could that be as strange as it can be something to exist?

Indeed, if this is what it is like to exist, then why shouldn't everything that exists have that?

Personally I think that our existence is "what is revealed", and what we call "nothing" isn't actually non-existence, it is rather "what is not revealed". Because when I try to sense the opposite of my sensation of existence, then I don't get a feeling of "nothing" but rather of "the unknown", that which is not revealed.

 

Epistemic limitation does indeed seem to intercept ontic experience in this case. When I try to see nothing, I go blind. When I try to think nothing, I find I am not thinking anymore. When I try to remember nothing, I find I am only forgetting. When I am interested in nothing, I find I lapse into apathy. When I try to articulate nothing, I am dumbstruck. And when I try to understand nothing, I find I'm confused about everything. What a strange property, which so instantly shuts itself off from our every attempt reify it.

 

Maybe you're not trying hard enough?

 

I'm inclined to think that everything can not be. In other words, I'm sceptical that anything exists necessarily.

No, I disagree with that. Not being isn't another kind of being, however dark and mysterious.

If something doesn't exist, it isn't 'being nothing'.

Part of the problem here might be that we can think about things that don't exist, and our ideas of nonexistent things do have a sort of existence. But that only creates difficulties if we try to collapse together a thing and the idea of the thing.

I'm more inclined to say that when we are thinking and speaking of non-existent objects, our words and ideas lack reference to anything existing beyond themselves. 'The apple' (the words) refer to the apple (the thing). If the physical apple no longer exists, 'the apple' (the words) now lacks reference.

 

If "the apple" can be spoken of after it existed, don't our words still have reference to that apple? I can talk about the apple as no longer existing. I can describe how delicious it was. I can talk about how it grew from a tree in Washington. How is it possible to have reference to something if it doesn't really exist? Parmenides would say that since we can speak of the apple, there is some sense in which it still exists and will always exist.

 

That's kinda my point. No being can BE nothing since being presupposes itself in that very statement. There is no nothing to exist AS. In what sense then can a being be said to not exist?

 

“The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not. ~ Lawrence Krauss

It gets worse.

“If nothing is our past, it could also be our future. As the universe, driven by dark energy — that is to say, the negative pressure of nothing — expands faster and faster, the galaxies will become invisible, and all the energy and information will be sucked out of the cosmos. The universe will revert to nothingness.”

Nothing to nothing.

Life, what is it but a dream?

Did you know that in Lewis Carroll’s variation of Row, Row, Row, Row Your Boat, “the first letter of each line in the poem spells out the full name, Alice Pleasance Liddell, the "real" Alice that was Carroll's dream child muse, and inspiration?”

Was Lewis Carroll a pedophile?

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Nothing is real/ reality.

 

Meaningless Buddhist platitudes…not a fan.

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Another way of saying that is that nothing is not unreal. But rather genuine.

 

Perhaps, but nothingness is unstable. That's why there is something.

 

Row, Row, Row, Row Your Boat?
So How did he manage with the "R"?

 

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July--

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear--

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die.
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream--
Lingering in the golden gleam--
Life, what is it but a dream?

 

How can it be a version of "Row Row Row the Boat",
when the boat isn't even being rowed?

You haven't read the poem properly.
The poem says the boat is "drifting".