No. No variance just means unchanging, static. That isnt necessarily “nothingness”, and its certainly isnt equal to it.

Yes. I certainly agree. I also agree with DingoJones who disagrees. But I don't like the language game of agreeing when it is combined with the language game of being naive, because naivety is immoral, and I don't want to be immoral when I speak with you Daniel. I'm not philosophically interested in the language game of naivety. If I said only "Yes. I certainly agree" I would use the language type of being full of myself. If I said "I agree with you 100 percent, Daniel" I would 1. lie or 2. be smarmy.

Let's take a closer look at your statement:

"A state of no variance is a state of nothingness."

1. In my view that's a surreal statement!

2. Here's the boring version of the same statement:

"A state should have a life in the same sense that every other organism lives."

3. Here's the language type where the speaker is full of himself:

"My country is dead."

4. And here's the wimpish/bizarre version:

"I hate my country!"

By variance I mean the quality of being different. Thus, a state of no variance would be a state where there is no difference/dissimilarity. Qualities such as unchanging and static presuppose a subject* whereas the quality of no-difference implies the impossibility of any subject. This way, nothingness equals no-difference.

What do you think?

* A person or thing that is being discussed, described, or dealt with.

I think there is a difference between something “having the quality of being different” and a “state of nothingness”.
“No difference” isnt the same as “nothing”.

I don't really understand what you mean.

I think there is a difference between something “having the quality of being different” and a “state of nothingness”. — DingoJones

Just to be sure, in the sentence above you meant "having the quality of being no-different," right?

Sure, either or.

So, the absence of difference is not the same as the absence of existence?

I entered your question into the database of my app some 15 minutes ago. I'm sure the users of Philosophy Challenge will understand what I mean. Currently the only user is a guy called Wittgenstein, though.

Yes, I would agree with that.

By variance I mean the quality of being different. Thus, a state of no variance would be a state where there is no difference/dissimilarity. Qualities such as unchanging and static presuppose a subject* whereas the quality of no-difference implies the impossibility of any subject. This way, nothingness equals no-difference. — Daniel

You are in a bit of a linguistic trap because this invariance is being related to a “state”. Invariance is the property. And so that seems to imply the existence of the subject or substrate being describe in those terms.

Nothingness is taken as the absence of properties because of an absence even of any substrate. Now that may also be an impossible conception, but it is what the language sets people up for.

Where you may be trying to head is towards an inversion where difference is itself the subject of the property of invariance, so to speak. So now you are imagining unlimited and unbridled difference - an everythingness of distinctions as a "substrate". And now an invariance or nothingness becomes the property or generalised quality of this chaos of distinctions.

If absolutely everything is happening all at once in every possible way, then nothing is actually happening as it is in the emergent state of a featureless confusion. There are no differences making a difference. There is the something else of a vagueness. A state of being neither here nor there due to a lack of any distinctive variance.

Would you agree with the statement that a state of no variance equals a state of nothingness? — Daniel

As if a stationary ball were nothing?

I think the question pointless. Language disengaged from our regular language games, disengaged gears spinning to no effect.

As if a stationary ball were nothing? — Banno

A stationary ball is definitely something as it is a state of least motion as fixed by the constraints of the rather particular thing of an inertial reference frame.

That is, to call it stationary is relative to the claim it is lacking motion. You are already metaphysically presuming a world that you can measure with some suitable yardstick like a ruler or stopwatch.

I think the question pointless. Language disengaged from our regular language games, disengaged gears spinning to no effect. — Banno

Your language is plugged into Euclidean geometry, Cartesian coordinates and Newtonian mechanics. But as naive realism, it then doesn't even want to mention this particular metaphysical grounding.

Your language is plugged into Euclidean geometry, Cartesian coordinates and Newtonian mechanics. — apokrisis

You're indulging in that weird name calling again, Apo. No, what I said is not limited or restricted in the way you claim.

So now you are imagining unlimited and unbridled difference — apokrisis

.

What if you imagine unlimited and unbridled no-difference? I don't wanna use the term "similarity" because I think this term also presupposes substrate; however, unlimited and unbridled no-difference implies the impossibility of substrate.

What if you imagine unlimited and unbridled no-difference? — Daniel

I don't see how the question asks anything.

Ducking the issue as usual then.

How can you say the stationary ball is stationary when, to quote Monty Python...

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at 40, 000 miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

The naive realist is always telling us how things are for them. Solipsistically, they are the centres of their own universes I guess.

Seriously? Rather than say the ball is stationary, you need me to include mention of frames of reference?

Oojah-ka-Piv

The people who live
On the Oojah-ka-Piv
Stand around in bundles of nine

When asked how it feels
They reply 'Curried Eels'!
Otherwise - everything's going fine!

What if you imagine unlimited and unbridled no-difference? — Daniel

Invariance is better understood as differences that don't make a difference. That is how you can describe reality in terms of symmetry (and symmetry breaking).

So a circle - a blank disc - could be spinning or stationary. You have no way of telling as the disc just looks the same whether it has turned a little bit, a lot, or not at all.

All these differences are possibilities. And yet none of them can change anything - at the macroscopic level of observation where we are describing reality in terms of gross movement vs gross stability.

This now defines "nothingness" in a rigorous sort of way as an absence of differences making a difference, and yet not ruling out difference at the level of raw possibility. Nothingness is modelled as an emergent property, not a fundamental one. Possibility becomes the fundamental substrate. But now it is a substrate described itself as merely a potential, a vagueness, rather than some kind of concrete and actual substrate.

The trick here is moving away from the usual concrete and actualised metaphysics of the naive realist to something with more intellectual grunt.

All questions are not resolved by this manoeuvre. But it moves us on from the unsophisticated language of a realist ontology with its concrete subjects and material predicates.

Why don't you need to if this is a general philosophical question?

Your everyday use of language is a use of language appropriate to the everyday, not to fundamental questions of interest to metaphysics/physics.

...after the Great Sage spoke, everyone nodded approvingly and mumbled their agreement. But all felt a secret dissatisfaction, for nothing had actually been said.

A judgement of any claimed property is contextual. Get over it.

A definition of nothingness cannot accept the existence of possibility. Nothingness is the absence of existence and as such it cannot be an emergent property, either. A substrate's existence requires the substrate to be different from the medium in which it exists, otherwise the substrate would be the same thing as the medium itself. If the quality of difference is absent then no substrate (including possibility) can exist; that is, in the absence of difference a particular (any particular) cannot exist. In other words, in the absence of difference there is an absence of existence because no particular can substantialize.

A definition of nothingness cannot accept the existence of possibility. — Daniel

Not with nothingness as the input, but it can with nothingness as the output.

Nothingness is the absence of existence and as such it cannot be an emergent property, either. — Daniel

Nothingness is what is left after possibility self-cancels. If it is possible for there to be both a zig to the left and a zag to the right, then those two possibilities add up to zero. If both happen, nothing is changed.

And this is the basis for a sum over histories approach to quantum theory. It is how things work in fundamental physics.

Space as a void emerges the same way. Space is defined by inertial symmetry. You can go back and forth in three directions. Step to the left, step to the right, and nothing has changed. The nothingness is what gives space its essential property of being "a nothing". It emerges as a macro description of the freedom to go in either direction, and hence in no direction at all.

Although there are three directions of translation, or dimensions, in which action can go. Plus three matching directions of rotational symmetry, or spinning on the spot.

An actual state of nothingness - an empty void - is quite complex really.

My question is why are we different?

I'm new to the forum, philosophy in a technical sense anyway, umm. Wow . It amazes me how phylosiphical topics, well some anyway can be debated to an extent that you even forget what the topic was even about after thirty odd pages or so. What do my fellow phylosophers . Wait a sec. Scrap what I just said. Forget I was even here. My oppogies.