If I ask someone "what are you thinking?" and they say "nothing", I suspect what they really mean is "nothing culpable". In order to think nothing at all, I suspect someone would then have no way of communicating.

NOTHING, as @TheMadFool correctly stated earlier, is a completely negative concept.

However, unlike most objects (mental/physical) NOTHING is defined in the negative. In fact it is the ultimate negative - the absence of everything.

So it follows that we cannot describe NOTHING in positive terms. In other words, we cannot say what nothing is; we can only describe what it is not, which is literally anything.
For example,
NOTHING is not a slice of pie.
NOTHING is not green.
NOTHING is not a concept that we can discuss or even think of.
NOTHING is not what I think it is, and it's not what you think it is.
NOTHING is not what I am presently writing a post about.
Whatever you call it, what we are discussing in this thread is not NOTHING. If you can think of it, and you can label it with a name, and you can talk about it's properties or even lack thereof, it's not NOTHING. The NOTHING I insist it is not is not even NOTHING. And neither is that last one. And so forth. It is unapprehendable and incomprehensible.

Interesting point-- and correct, but that person would be unable to think of it in the first place.

No one ever experiences Nothing. So, in a metaphysics that's about individual experience, there's no such thing.

Michael Ossipoff

Everything lies between "two" Nothing?!

Lawrence Krauss has something to say about "nothing".

simple answer: nothing is absence of something. Or, in some contexts, no thing. Example: nothing is taller than Mount Everest. No thing is taller than Mount Everest.

If "NOTHING" does not exist as an idea, then how are we discussing it? — bioazer

Good point. Look at it this way. We have the word ''gravity''. It points to a physical phenomenon which I will approximate as an attractive force between two bodies. We can say we have a concept of gravity but the concept itself isn't gravity.

Similarly, NOTHING is a concept of nonexistence but the concept itself isn't nonexistence. Am I right?

The idea is NOT the ideated.

No one ever experiences Nothing. So, in a metaphysics that's about individual experience, there's no such thing. — Michael Ossipoff

What were you before you were born?

What were you before you were born? — TheMadFool

There's a Mark Twain quote that I like:

"I was dead for millions of years before I was born, and it didn't inconvenience me a bit."

I like it, but it isn't what I'd say.

If you believe that you didn't exist in any sense before you were born, then that time isn't in your experience, and therefore, in an experiential metaphysics, there was no such time. And that answers that question.

But I don't say it that way.

I've been saying that the reason why you're in a life is because, among the inevitable infinity of life-experience possibility-storys, there's one in which you're the protagonist. There isn't/wasn't any "you" other than that. This life of yours is that possibility-story and you're that protagonist.

And I suggest that that's true whether or not there's reincarnation, and whether or not you had a previous life.

As I've said elsewhere, I claim that reincarnation is unprovable, and that, if there's reincarnation, the matter of whether or not you've already had lives is indeterminate--It isn't true that you either did or didn't.

It seems to me that there's probably reincarnation, because it's implied by an uncontroversial metaphysics.

Michael Ossipoff

No one ever experiences Nothing. So, in a metaphysics that's about individual experience, there's no such thing. — Michael Ossipoff

What about the experience of loss, lack, dread, angst? Perhaps these experiences point to a primordial preconceptual phenomenal aquantiance with nothing. It is true we never experience an objectified present-at-hand nothing since everything that is objectified in this way is a something rather than a nothing. But why do we need to objectify nothing and turn it into a something? For pragmatic reasons i guess. In other words because objectified derivatives of nothing such as not, minus, zero, but, etc help us to get around in our worlds...

I only want to point to the NOTHINGness of the time before we were born. Perhaps contemplating that state of NOTHING will give us insight into what NOTHING is.

What if nothingness is a state in which everything is the same thing. However, I believe it exists because it has a limit; that is, nothingness is just that, and it cant be something else which makes it exist.

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Does it have any kind of limitation?

"No one ever experiences Nothing. So, in a metaphysics that's about individual experience, there's no such thing." — Michael Ossipoff


What about the experience of loss, lack, dread, angst? Perhaps these experiences point to a primordial preconceptual phenomenal aquantiance with nothing.
— bloodninja

Ii doubt that.

To me, that sounds pessimistic. Loss, lack,and dread are all firmly part of the world of things and events. As for angst, that's just an ill-defined affliction limited to some philosophers.

But yes, you're right when you suggest that, though we never really experience Nothing, there's at least one time when we approach it.

As I've often said, at the end of lives, at the latest stage of shutdown, just before full shutdown of awareness, we probably don't remember that there ever was such a thing as worldly life, body, identity, events or time. ...or such things as menace, loss, lack, or dread.

That's why I disagree with your suggestion of implicating or blaming Nothing, for those negative feelings.

On the contrary, I suggest that, to the extent that we approach Nothing, we're free of those negativities.

As I've said, of course at the late stage of shutdown that I referred to above, full shutdown of awareness (our complete shutdown from the point of view of our survivors) is immanent. But we won't know that, or care, because we'll have reached timelessness. The immanence of complete shutdown is therefore quite irrelevant and meaningless from our point of view.

A life is finite. Even if we live a finite number of finite lives, that's still finite. ...while the approach to Nothing at the end of lives is timeless.

One dictionary definition of "Natural" is "usual or ordinary". Well, which is more "usual", something finite, or something timeless?

So, arguably the timeless sleep at the end of lives is what's natural, and maybe our lives in this changeful temporal world of events should be called the "Supernatural". :D

I've been saying that our world of experience is a hypothetical life-experience possibility-story, consisting of a complex system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals. I call that "something", and "real", because it's real in the context of our (temporary, finite) lives.

But, due to its temporariness and finiteness, could that purely hypothetical system of abstract facts be argued to be less real than the Nothing that we approach, but don't reach, in the timeless sleep at the end of lives?

Michael Ossipoff

I only want to point to the NOTHINGness of the time before we were born. Perhaps contemplating that state of NOTHING will give us insight into what NOTHING is. — TheMadFool

Agreed.

I don't say it quite the way Mark Twain did, but it's of interest.

What was there before, and how and why did this life start?

More in a few minutes or about an hour or so.

Michael Ossipoff

No one ever experiences Nothing. — Michael Ossipoff

Of course they do, when they are unconscious or asleep and not dreaming. If I may relate, it feels like no duration had transpired.

Of course they do, when they are unconscious or asleep and not dreaming. If I may relate, it feels like no duration had transpired. — Rich

Very interesting.

"No one ever experiences Nothing". — Michael Ossipoff

Of course they do, when they are unconscious or asleep and not dreaming. If I may relate, it feels like no duration had transpired. — Rich

What was it like? No, I'm not asking for your experience aferwards, when "it feels like no duration has transpired."

I didn't say that you don't experience a time after there was nothing. I said that you don't experience nothing )

So, what was it like when you were experiencing Nothing?

(...given that an experience is of something :D)


Michael Ossipoff

I didn't say that you don't experience a time after there was nothing. I said that you don't experience nothing ) — Michael Ossipoff

The mind loses consciousness and then somehow issues a spark to regain consciousness. In between there is nothing. One knows they were unconscious due to a discontinuity if memory. Similarity, one feels a similar discontinuity when one enters a dream state.

To understand life, one should study the nature of duration and memory, the key aspects of life.

I only want to point to the NOTHINGness of the time before we were born. Perhaps contemplating that state of NOTHING will give us insight into what NOTHING is. — TheMadFool

Earlier today I said:

"What was there before, and how and why did this life start?"

"Before" can be taken to mean "leading to" or "resulting in".

So it's reasonable to say "before", even though time is only there as part of a person's life-experience possibility-story, within that story.
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As for that possibility-story itself, it was/is timelessly there, as a system of abstract facts.

...before you were born, where "before" is taken to mean "leading to" or "resulting in".

That system of inter-referring abstract facts was all that would be needed.

The reason why this life started for you was that there timelessly was/is a life-experience possibility-story about and for you, from your point of view, with you as its protagonist. So that protagonist was the person who you started as, at the beginning of this life. There wasn't any "you" other than that.

The following reincarnation discussion is conjectural, and not part of my metaphysics though it's implied by it.

At the end of this life, you of course won't be the same person you were at the beginning of this life. There'll be different subconscious inclinations, predispositions, etc. But, most likely, for that person, too, there timelessly is a life-experience possibility story that starts out with/for someone just like that.. If so, then the reason why this life started will still obtain at the end of this life, for the person you are then.

As I've been saying, I claim that it's completely indeterminate in principle (not just unknowable) whether or not you lived a life before this one. It isn't true that you did or didn't.

I suggest that the deeper stage of shutdown that I spoke of earlier, when there's no memory or feelings about life, identity, etc. isn't reached by the person who still has inclinations and predispositions for life.

So I suggest that the timeless sleep at the end of lives is only for those very few life-completed people who have no remaining needs, wants, inclinations or un-discharged consequences.

There isn't time, before dinner, to finish this post, to relate it to what we were talking about. I'll continue tomorrow.

Michael Ossipoff

"There is Nothing like Nothing." Could it be the key?

I'll continue tomorrow. — Michael Ossipoff

Please do. Thank you

So I suggest that the timeless sleep at the end of lives is only for those very few life-completed people who have no remaining needs, wants, inclinations or un-discharged consequences. — Michael Ossipoff

This would be very close to the beliefs of some Buddhist sects, with all kinds of possible variations.

I find most Buddhists who believe this believe it because they were taught it. Being taught is much different from learning from experience. They yield a qualitative different feeling of knowing.

‘There would be no hammer’ is badly phrased. It sounds as if the object has ceased to exist, but that is not so; all that has happened is that no-one is now using the object as a hammer. Rather than saying ‘there would be no hammer’, therefore, you should say ‘no-one would be using this object as a hammer’. — Herg

A genius chipmunk with huge prehensile hands could use it to smash an acorn.

Nothing is nothing. — Cabbage Farmer

And you mean that in every sense of the word?

It isn't. — StreetlightX

It isn't (without its effects).

A genius chipmunk with huge prehensile hands could use it to smash an acorn. — Janus

All I was arguing was that the hammer's being as equipment (which is how we primarily encounter it rather than as an object) is dependent on us and a whole nexus of references to other equipment. A genius chipmunk might be able to use a hammer to smash an acorn, but they could just as well use a rock. A rock and a hammer do not have the same being as equipment even though they are used in identical ways by the genius chipmunk. What is relevant is not merely how something is used/misused, but the tool's relation within the whole equipmental context of significance, which comes about only through our shared ontological understanding of entities.

You might argue that relative to the genius chipmunk the rock and hammer have the same being.... To make that argument you would also have to argue for the claim that a genius chipmunk is ontological and has it's own understanding of being. But how can you make such an argument since you are moving beyond your own phenomenology?

What I was saying yesterday, I was saying because any discussion about what was before (leading to, resulting in) birth, needs some metaphysical framework or background about that, if metaphysics applies to it. It seems to me that we should, to the extent possible, explain things verbally. If something admits of verbal, logical, factual explanation, then that explanation should be said, before resorting to saying that it’s indeterminate or unknowable.
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We often hear people instead wanting to just invoke direct work by God, for things like the creation of the Earth, and the creation of the human species. …skipping the effort to explain as much as we can in discussable verbal logical terms that are accessible to us. Shouldn’t we verbally explain as much as possible first?
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So, there’s a physical mechanism for the creation of the Earth and of the human species. People here would tell a Biblical Literalist that God needn’t have contravened his physical laws to create the Earth and the human species, but could have done so via those laws.
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At the next level from physics, I say the same thing about metaphysics. When someone wants to invoke unknowability and indeterminacy in metaphysics, I emphasize that definite uncontroversial things can be said about metaphysics, and that we should explain what we can before invoking unknowability or indeterminacy.
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(Admittedly there’s some indeterminacy in some topics of metaphysics, though, for the most part, definite uncontroversial things can be said.)
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I’ve been claiming that metaphysics has a lot in common with science, with some of the same requirements and desiderata. Statements, claims, should be supported. Definitions should be clearly-specified and consistently-applied. Assumptions, brute-facts, and unfalsifiable unverifiable propositions are suspect, and discredit a theory, especially if there’s a different proposal that doesn’t have or need those things.
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And we should express such explanations when they’re available, before asserting unknowability or indeterminacy.
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But I also emphasize that there’s no reason to believe that metaphysics, verbal discussion or logic describes or governs all of Reality (any more than physics does).
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Therefore, metaphysics doesn’t contradict Theism, and shouldn’t be objectionable to Theists or, in general, to philosophers who don’t believe that all of Reality is knowable, determinate and discussable. …any more than physics.
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We explain what we can, and that’s our job, our responsibility—but without believing that we can explain all of Reality.
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Now, about what was before (in the sense of leading to or resulting in) our birth:
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Based on what I said yesterday, I don’t think that there was any Nothing for us, before our birth. The fact that there was you or I results from that timeless life-experience possibility-story about our experience.
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There was some early stage with the unconsciousness of ordinary sleep in which we had the subconscious inclinations, predispositions, feelings, that were those of the person we were later born as.
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I don’t think we go back any farther than that.
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Sure, of course non-contradiction among our experiences implies that we of course hear that there were earlier stages and events, going all the way back to biology, ancestry, evolution, and all the way back to the formation of this galaxy—all of which are implied by and can be inferred from the fact that we’re here.
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I emphasize that all that I said yesterday, and here too, is from a 3rd-person objective point-of-view that doesn’t say anything about what all that was really like. …something that we’d only know from experience, for as far back as we can remember.
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Michael Ossipoff

"So I suggest that the timeless sleep at the end of lives is only for those very few life-completed people who have no remaining needs, wants, inclinations or un-discharged consequences". — Michael Ossipoff


This would be very close to the beliefs of some Buddhist sects, with all kinds of possible variations. — Rich

Yes, and Vedanta, and Hinduism in general, too.

I find most Buddhists who believe this believe it because they were taught it. Being taught is much different from learning from experience. They yield a qualitative different feeling of knowing.

I claim that there's no memory of past lives (and that, in fact, they're completely indeterminate), and so no one knows about reincarnation from experience.

Sure, there are traditions, teachings, about those matters, that go back for millennia. That doesn't discredit them.

I claim that what I've been saying about those subjects is implied by an uncontroversial metaphysics.

Michael Ossipoff

Sure, there are traditions, teachings, about those matters, that go back for millennia. That doesn't discredit them. — Michael Ossipoff

People most definitely come into their lives with different "abilities".