What is 'nothing'? is there any such thing?

Question

is there was such a 'thing', then it would be something so therefore the true answer is there is no such thing as nothing........... is that not an exciting prospect.

Answer 1

It's everything you dont knoe

Answer 2

Upon entering a room, and finding it empty, a person might exclaim with surprise: there is nothing in the room! But the sense of nothingness here and therefore the exclamatory expression are not for nothing, as they are far from being empty or even chaotic; they are filled with all that a person might expect to see in that room. It would NOT be a nothing in any sense as the impression of emptiness and then the expression of surprise is originally from everything that, according to a viewpoint, should have been in there.

And when we say: there is a nothing in existence, our notion of a room becomes a whole lot bigger, the grand absolute in scale. And then we what we really mean to say is: if I see there is nothing then I know nothing, however, if I know I know nothing then there are things that are there only that I do not see that as I could. As a room absolutely big surely is filled with everything, and by everything I mean everything.

I think any realisation of nothingness is in fact the realisation of everything in the mind, as visibly inverted reflections in mirrors.

Imagine the mind as human mind derived from the mind absolute just as thing in the sphere of the light of a candle derive their identity from its light. Then if our mind, the conscious mind, our awareness however increasing still limited, is in fact part of the mind a supper universal being, the absolute in existence, then what we know within the limited circle of our knowledge is something and what is beyond, what is outside the realms of our conscious awareness even beyond the domains of our questions we conceive as nothing. If we know all that is there then we would have never grasped the concept of nothing in any thing or a situation – nothing in our mind is a state of utter lack of knowledge and information.

This signifies at the first place that we know a little that we do not know as much as we could from within what exists and can be known. But the concept of nothing in human mind is at its best when it signifies that there is absolutely everything in existence.

Then this is here where what I have said assumes itself into a paradox as I could say: a nothing cannot be known until everything is known, but when everything is known there is nothing that can be known as nothing - if we had no idea what articles should be in a normal room we might have taken an empty room for a room with everything. If only due to the fact that we know somehow that the room of existence is full that we realise her is nothing, there is nothing, beyond the universe is nothing, or somewhere is nothing etc.

You are right this is ‘an exciting prospect’ as ‘there is no such thing as nothing’ but a concept that in reality is everything, a reflection of the absolute or everything, formed upon a limitative conscious mind.

Answer 3

Existentialism holds that the essential difference between humans and other species is the former's capacity to conceive of nothingness, hence Sartre's book title "Being and Nothingness". He and other existentialists would see the conception of nothingness as something against which our minds tend to react, so for example we are very concerned about the fact that we will die one day, despite the possibility (fact in their opinion) that there is no experience possible, so we are fearing nothing, and that fear or at least awareness dominates many people's lives.

This might also benefit from a Wittgensteinian approach, in that we think we can have a notion of nothingness, but in fact this is the result of a flaw in language: just as we can say "2+2=5" without it meaning anything, we can talk of nothing due to an illusion created by language.

If there are other possible worlds, one of these might be either empty or be nothingness. The former seems more coherent than the latter. That's one kind of nothingness.

If a term referring to a possibility is an indexical expression like "this" and "that", as in "there might be a current king of France", meaning "there is a current king of France in that possible world but not this one", a word such as "might" is actual referring to real situations "over there" in another possible world. So, if there is an empty world, we may be referring to something that exists in a similar way when we say "nothing".

Now, what about actual nothing? An empty world is not necessarily nothing, but suppose we say something like "the world might not yet have begun" or "the world might have ended already", meaning the Universe. In that case, we might be saying there's a timeline somewhere involving nothing. However, are we actually talking about real nothingness there? There is the passage of time, but can that be said to be happening when there are no events? Here, we're talking about a past or a future which seems quite artificial, and in fact an empty world is also suspicious because space is not necessarily a thing which contains objects so much as a relationship between them, and time is similar in that way.

I can think of another way in which nothing might exist though, which is in the same way that zero exists. Nothingness may be something we have to assume in order to make sense of everything, just as mathematics can't be done properly without zero. This could be similar to the existentialist view of nothing as something against which to react, or like the mathematical empty set.

The philosopher Brentano came up with a number of characteristics of mental events, including intentionality, meaning the quality of being "about" something, so a thought cannot be about nothing according to him and a lot of philosophers after him. Hence we could be said to be unable to discuss the reality of nothingness. However, i would say the process of meditation is the calming of the mind and the removal of all objects of consciousness, so that meditation is a mental state which is not intentional, in other words, about nothing." Most Western philosophers would disagree, because they would see intentionality as the most central feature of mental phenomena.

Have i just been typing about something or nothing? :-)

Answer 4

Yes, there is such a thing. Like when your wife / gf says there's nothing wrong.... that means there is, so 'nothing' DOES exist!

Answer 5

Fantastic question. Not so easily answered, IMHO, as others here think.

Nothing means no-thing. By definition it is not a "thing".

This begs the question as to what a "thing" is. Can reality be described merely in terms of "thing"s? Perhaps it can.

But here is something to ponder. Silence is thought to be "merely" the absence of sound. But on the other hand without silence, we would not be able to hear sounds. Without a background there is no foreground.

Answer 6

There is no dark. This is just a word to describe an area that has no light.

In a similar vein, there is no nothing. This is just a word to describe a condition of contradiction.

What does a blind man see? What does a deaf man hear? What does a mute man say? What exists when there is no existance?

Nothing.

Answer 7

No that is a bogus philosophy.In fact it is totally lacking in any philosophical intelligence. No one can think nothing even for a millisecond. It is impossible. Thy just may be blissfully unaware of their consciousness. That is a different thing. Nothingness is a lie. Don't accept any gibberish on this lack luster idea. It is a dark idea.

Answer 8

The answer to your question is simple, grasshopper. Nothing is the absence of anything.

Answer 9

Nothing is something,

Profit comes from what is
Usefulness comes from what isn't

Like a cup, profit comes from the porcelein
but usefulness comes from the space it surronds

Answer 10

"nothing" communicates an idea, a mental concept.
it's a useful word, but i wouldn't worry about it existentially.