Nothingness

[Sal]

Okay, let's start with semantics. Everything exists for sure, because "thing" implies existence. The question is whether it exists only as a concept, or as an object locatable in time and place (or some other framework). I'm pretty sure that there are no Invisible Pink Unicorns which can be located in our universe at any time, but IPU's existence as an important atheist meme can't really be disputed.

"Nothingness," I think, can only exist as a concept. To establish the "real" existence of something, it would have to be part of some framework (probably spacetime)-- and a framework is something. The fact that ANYTHING exists means that nothingness is impossible, because that particular nothingness has a property-- the potential for non-nothingness. And I'd say that a property is definitely something.

Benny, not the metaphysical thing again...

Joe

I agree with Benny, although how I word it is a tad different:

I think "nothingness", trying to attribute it to reality, is unintelligible. I also think that it fails as a meta-physical concept, because we can't describe it with any positive attributes; in that I differ from Benny, I think.

Unlike something that could be described intelligibly, yet not be possible to exist because of (positive) incompatible properties, e.g. the proverbial "married bachelor" or "square-circle" and thus cancel themselves out. You don't have that with "nothingness". It's even weirder than dividing by zero, it seems to me.