RE: Being can come from non-being
December 4, 2019 at 5:56 am
(This post was last modified: December 4, 2019 at 6:08 am by ThinkingIsThinking.)
(December 2, 2019 at 11:52 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Non-being not being possible and therefore did not ever 'exist' solves the conundrum nicely; though I would also note that 'not being able to be anything' seems like a property, and 'unbeing' only has the property of not being anything. It doesn't seem to follow that unbeing can't stop 'being unbeing', what would keep it in that state?
It's possible to describe impossible properties when making an argument.
If X has the property of 'not being able to be anything' then X does not exist.
We can obviously describe that which can't exist. For example "A square that has five sides ... doesn't exist." Just because I mentioned an impossible shape doesn't mean the shape is at all possible.
It's BECAUSE unbeing has the property of 'not being anything' that we're describing something that can't exist.
Nothing keeps it in the state of unbeing but only because there is no it. Because we're talking of an impossibility. It's no different to you asking "If nothing can't stop being nothing then how is it really nothing if it's BEING nothing?" well, the answer is that the idea of anything LITERALLY BEING nothing is already a contradiciton in the first place. Hence why I talk of "not being anything" rather than "being nothing" ... so there's less confusion. But it's also less confusing when you realize that all "being nothing" or "unbeing" or "being in a state of unbeing" actually means is "not being anything" and "not being in a state of being".
(November 21, 2019 at 7:04 pm)Alex K Wrote: Of course, it is far from clear what exactly is meant by being or non-being, but I wager that for any ontologically interesting definition of these terms, there is no way to show the statement to be fallacious.
The problem, then, is that there is no ontologically interesting definition of "non-being"! ... either non-being isn't being and therefore can't exist or the only reason it isn't impossible is because you're labelling a type of being as non-being ... which isn't interesting at all--it's just a nonsensical redefinition.