The world is full of things for which we don't have explanations. Explanations are human things. — T Clark

I wish this were more widely recognized. A succinct formulation of a key idea.

I have not argued for metaphysical nothing-ness ("actual void" as you say) but instead for nothing that is evident – I did make reference parenthetically to "baryonic donuts" – which is my non-speculative point.

5. Therefore, nothing exists. — lish

In nothing I've written here or on any other thread have I argued for metaphysical nothingness ("actual void" as you say) — 180 Proof

This is why conversations with you never get anywhere.

Clearly the OP is about metaphysical nothingness and not the relatively lack of some concrete thing - like the bit of dough that you noticed was missing from the centre of your donut.

( And where I come from, doughnuts didn't even used to have holes, as it happens. They were piped full of raspberry jam and whipped cream.)

So you were making a metaphysical objection ("nothing =/= nothingness") to my physical objection ("nothing sans nothingness") to the OP's nonsensical thesis ("nothingness exists")? Okay. Glad we cleared that up. :roll:

What you mean to argue remains opaque.

But I meant to oppose nothingness to everythingness as the path to the “less than nothing” that is a logical vagueness.

So sure, negative space might seem part of that train of thought. But holes in donuts are an overly concrete conception of the issue. They make a “void” seem like an accidental absence rather than a causal suppression of the possibility of an actualisation.

Modern physicalism - rooted in QFT - says everything happens (in probability space) but almost everything also self-cancels. We get left with the decoherent and renormalised path integral.

So my view weds the Peircean metaphysics and the quantum maths. Or at least attempts to.

You seem to be stuck with classical logic and classical physics. But who could really tell when a whole sentence without hieroglyphs and formatting tricks is a stretch.

I wish this were more widely recognized. A succinct formulation of a key idea. — Tom Storm

In a sense, I think it is a summary of all the things I've written about on the forum. At bottom, they all have this in common.

You seem to be stuck with classical logic and classical physics. — apokrisis

Not "stuck", the classical suffices to make my point. I just prefer not to overthink the (existential) question, apok.

I just prefer not to overthink the (existential) question — 180 Proof

Is the balance between over-thinking and under-thinking defined somewhere, other than in your personal opinion? What criteria are we applying here - on, for gawd sakes, PF?

If you are not here to further the OP discussion but simply to voice your discontent with the existence of such a discussion, well ... any number of threads deserve your censure.

So it's "under-thinking" to call a reified abstraction into question with a concrete quotidian example? :confused:

Without support for the equally reified concreteness, then yes. :up:

Things like "Pseudo-scientific" and "made-up shit" can 't hide your obvious ignorance. I'm not talking about macroscopic 4d wormholes. I'm talking about microscopic 5d holes. You can look right through the 5d bulk. There is a litteral hole in 4d space.

Modern physicalism - rooted in QFT - says everything happens (in probability space) but almost everything also self-cancels. We get left with the decoherent and renormalised path integral. — apokrisis

Metaohysical BS.

I'm talking about microscopic 5d holes. — EugeneW

Piling speculation upon speculation doesn’t increase the soundness of the speculation. Let’s just establish that there is a compactified and overlooked extra dimension first.

I mean I have nothing against speculation. But you are treating it as if it is some constraining fact I ought to be taking note of.



QFT may be BS if taken literally - reality as a stack of particle fields. But it is a mathematical framework with observables measured to an indecent number of decimal places. So it is BS that works in an everyday practical fashion.

It needs to be taken seriously. As does GR.

But 5D wormholes? Even if they exist, they still wouldn’t support your claim that they are where one finds a “true nothing” in nature.

But 5D wormholes? Even if they exist, they still wouldn’t support your claim that they are where one finds a “true nothing” in nature — apokrisis

Inside and around the 5D hole resides the true nothing. Through which you can look. A hole in space, like a hole in the wall.

QFT may be BS if taken literally - reality as a stack of particle fields. — apokrisis

That's exactly where it's NO BS.

:rofl:

Have I understood you correctly if I say that if an object is sitting motionless it can mean two things:

1. No force is acting on the object
2. Two opposing forces (+x and -x) are acting on it.

?

That would be right in the Newtonian mechanics view where the two forces were precisely alike and precisely opposed.

So even in Newtonian mechanics, that is rather unlikely.

Think of a pencil balanced on its point or a ball on a dome. There you do have such a balance. And it’s going to be upset by the slightest perturbation.

What’s the relevance to the OP?

$0 = (+x) + (-x)$

Nothing = Something + The Anti-Something

Nothing isn't really nothing. So, if you encounter something, don't think that's not nothing. It's still a bit hazy for me.

I haven't met operator valued distributions yet...

1. Nothing exists.
2. Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it.
3. Even if something can be known, it cannot be communicated.
4. Even if it can be communicated, it cannot be understood. — Gorgias

Nothing = Infinity

Nothing = Infinity — Agent Smith

Infinity = everything.

Infinity = everything. — 180 Proof

Yeah, I guess so. That's the prevailing wisdom. Infinity is an asymptote: we can get close to it, never reach it (King Tantalus).

In my systems science/hierarchy theory view, the whole is produced by what it produces. The whole shapes its parts - it contributes the downward-acting constraints. But the parts then construct the whole - they contribute the upward-building material being, the suitably shaped "atomic" components.

So it is a bootstrapping or cybernetic causal model. And if it sounds unlikely, it is at least less unlikely than creatio ex nihilo. :grin: — apokrisis

I get that, and it sounds interesting. This ‘upward building material being’ is a qualitative variability, in my view - there is no certainty of what constitutes a ‘suitably shaped component’ until it contributes to the whole, and is then subject to those downward-acting constraints.

So you may have a complete system theory, but not a complete explanation. Pi, for example, is not an explanation.

I don't follow your point. But given that I'm taking the internalist perspective of Peircean logic and semiotics, I would have thought that our position as rationalising observers of nature is covered by that. — apokrisis

I am partial to Peirce, but even in his theory, our rationalising position is assumed, not included. “Everything is possible” represents the object to the sign, but does not include an explanation of the sign itself.

(When I say "everythingness", that is a placeholder for logical vagueness - the everythingness that is both and everything and a nothing in standing metaphysically for an Apeiron of unstructured potential.) — apokrisis

I get that - but surely ‘everythingness’ is not the same as ‘everything’? Sorry, I’m being pedantic, but I would have thought “everythingness is possible” to be more accurate...

Not a paradox at all. I go over this here. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12098/a-first-cause-is-logically-necessary/p1

Yes, it is logically the case that there is a "first cause" or something that has no reason for its existence, besides the fact that it exists. That doesn't mean everything else can't exist. The problem he doesn't realize is that a self-explained existence's reason for existing, is simply the fact that it exists.

1. Everything must have some explanation (PE).
2. Reality in total cannot have an explanation (PU).
3. Therefore, there is no reality in total.
4. If anything exists, then there is the total of all that exists (reality in total).
5. Therefore, nothing exists.

Somehow I must be missing the point... at least none of you gave the answer that is very obvious to me, so probably I am wrong.

The problem as I see it resides in the formulation 'reality in total'. The assumption is apparently that reality is the sum of all things (total).However, indeed, there is no reality in total. Of course we can add all existing things, fine by me, but all those things indeed have an explanation. And so 'the sum of all things' is consistent with premise 1. Premise 2 though targets not 'the sum of all things', but it targets 'reality', the concept we have of a whole in which all existing things ft together, even though we abstract from the actual existence of these things. Reality as such is the most general, but also the most empty concept. I see all kinds of things, but I never see a thing I call 'reality'.

Reality, like being, nothing, becoming, is an abstract concept, a category of thought. Now premise 4 perpetutates the mistake of equalizing 'the sum of all things' with 'reality', indeed if anything exists, the sum of all things exist, but that says nothing about reality because reality is not the sum of all things. It is our conceptualization of 'everything that is the case', but not a sum of things. Because of this confusion the author draws the conclusion 5 but he equates again a sum of things with a mental conceptualization, namely nothing(ness).

The argument can be stated without this mistake as follows:
1. Everything must have some explanation (PE)
2. Reality cannot have an explanation (PU) (Indeed, because an explanation is explains a phenomenon in terms of something else, but reality being the most general concept, we by definition do not have something residing outside of it)
Therefore:
3. Reality is not part of everything

And indeed it is not. Reality being itself an empty totality in which everything else resides, is larger than everything. The paradox arises when one equates realty with 'everything' and the author of the paradox merely proves the futility of doing so.

Of course, everything that is real, must have an explanation. That is true. Reality itself though is neither real nor explainable.

The whole post is quite hermetic I understand, but it can be stated much simpler. Just analyze the phrase 'reality in total'. Is a 'reality in part' thinkable? Does one piece of reality add up together with another piece to come closer to 'reality in total'? The combination of words is gibberish.

The presupposition underlying much of this argument is the same one underlying the thread on Aristotle and time. An early formulation of this presupposition is found in Parmenides claim:

To think and to be is the same.

It is the height of human hubris and folly to think that what is, was, and will be are limited by what we can think or comprehend or give an account of.

It is the height of human hubris and folly to think that what is, was, and will be are limited by what we can think or comprehend or given and account of. — Fooloso4

Not really, because saying that 'there must be something that exceed the limits of our thought' as you seem to do, is then still conceptualized as a certain something an therefore thought. Something that cannot be thought, for lack of a better description, since what we are dealing with is the indescribable, cannot be anything for us. Even being is a way of conceptualizing. That which 'is not', is not, as Parmenides indeed held.

The genius of Parmenides is, at least I feel this way, is that he articulated the limits of our thought and by that notion invented philosophy, an inquiry leading to the insight that 'the world' is 'our world'.

Not really, because that which is not cannot be thought. — Tobias

The problem is not with thinking that which is not, although more on that below, but with the assumption that what is is limited by what is thought. Until quite recently what was thought did not include quantum physics or astrophysics. We still to understand them and there may be things beyond our capacities of understanding.

As to non-being and indeterminacy see this discussion of Plato's metaphysics:

Plato's Metaphysics

The problem is not with thinking that which is not, although more on that below, but with the assumption that what is is limited by what is thought. Until quite recently what was thought did not include quantum physics or astrophysics. We still to understand them and there may be things beyond our capacities of understanding.

As to non-being and indeterminacy see this discussion of Plato's metaphysics: — Fooloso4

Well up until recently there was no wheel either. What is, is limited by what can be thought. that is the thesis of the identity of thinking and being. What it holds is that we must hold that we can comprehend the world for it to be a world at all. It is metaphysics, not physics.