It's not just that. Nothing is an imaginary concept. Nothing is actually something - an idea.
What about zero probability (ie. impossibility)? Is impossibility something? Like nothing, impossibility is a concept, not something that exists ontologically, as what is impossible, by definition, cannot exist. — Harry Hindu
Using this example, there are far more configurations of god than of not-god, making the existence of god more likely over time. — Harry Hindu
I didn't mean that concept itself isn't real. Concepts have causal power. Concepts are real and they are something - that I think we can agree. My point is that the concept doesn't correspond to anything real in the world. It's just a concept. We can imagine things that have no corresponding ontological reality to them. I challenge you to point to nothing in the world, like you can point to something. Are you talking about a vacuum?Nothing is nothing, absolutely nothing. <Nothing> is the concept of nothing. It is a real concept, not imaginary. The idea of nothing, as idea, is indeed something, but it is the idea of the opposite of something: namely nothing. — Janus
It's the same point I made on page 2 of this thread - the concept of nothing is something. I'm still waiting on someone to show me that nothing is more than just something as a concept, but as something that exists ontologically as opposed to just epistemologically.Impossibility is not something existing, but the condition that some particular thing cannot be. If nothing at all existed then there would be neither possibility, impossibility nor probability; that is the point. — Janus
what I find interesting is ‘the realm of possibility’. It’s a real realm, in that there are real possibilities, but by definition, possible events are not existent, but potentially existent — Wayfarer
//so the philosophical question is - what is the ontological status of ‘the potential’ or ‘the possibile’. It’s neither is (1) nor is not (0) - but somewhere in between. That’s what is interesting. — Wayfarer
I challenge you to point to nothing in the world, like you can point to something. Are you talking about a vacuum? — Harry Hindu
It's the same point I made on page 2 of this thread - the concept of nothing is something. I'm still waiting on someone to show me that nothing is more than just something as a concept, but as something that exists ontologically as opposed to just epistemologically. — Harry Hindu
[In this paper], three scientists argue that including “potential” things on the list of “real” things can avoid the counterintuitive conundrums that quantum physics poses. ...At its root, the new idea holds that the common conception of “reality” is too limited. By expanding the definition of reality, the quantum’s mysteries disappear. In particular, “real” should not be restricted to “actual” objects or events in spacetime. Reality ought also be assigned to certain possibilities, or “potential” realities, that have not yet become “actual.” These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are “ontological” — that is, real components of existence.
“This new ontological picture requires that we expand our concept of ‘what is real’ to include an extraspatiotemporal domain of quantum possibility,” write Ruth Kastner, Stuart Kauffman and Michael Epperson. ...
Considering potential things to be real is not exactly a new idea, as it was a central aspect of the philosophy of Aristotle, 24 centuries ago. An acorn has the potential to become a tree; a tree has the potential to become a wooden table. Even applying this idea to quantum physics isn’t new. Werner Heisenberg, the quantum pioneer famous for his uncertainty principle, considered his quantum math to describe potential outcomes of measurements of which one would become the actual result. The quantum concept of a “probability wave,” describing the likelihood of different possible outcomes of a measurement, was a quantitative version of Aristotle’s potential, Heisenberg wrote in his well-known 1958 book Physics and Philosophy. “It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.”
I think much of this is more about different possible ways of talking and usages of terms than anything else. — Janus
I already have her book on the subject, handily. — Kenosha Kid
I don't think any scientist have found "something to come out of nothing (vacuum)" — hans solace
These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are “ontological” — that is, real components of existence. — Wayfarer
How do you know it wasn't an actuality all along and only appears to be a potentiality because we are simply ignorant of the actuality in the future. Isnt it strange that actuality only exist in past evenrs and potentiality exists in future events that corresponds to our knowledge of such events?I'd say that a possibility or potential is not until it is; when it ceases to be a possibility or potential and becomes an actuality — Janus
Then you haven't read the OP, or the back and forth between us?I don't think anyone has argued that a nothing could "exist ontologically" (not sure what the 'ontologically' is doing here); to argue that would be absurd since anything that exists is something, not nothing. I think you might be attacking a strawman of your own devising. — Janus
Seems to me that the MadFool is implying that nothing is as real as something, but is the opposite of something and that something can come from nothing.In other words, the probability of something is greater than the probability of nothing, and that's why there's something rather than nothing. — TheMadFool
Nothing is nothing, absolutely nothing. <Nothing> is the concept of nothing — Janus
I don't think any scientist have found "something to come out of nothing (vacuum)" — hans solace
The something in the question, if that something is claimed to be more than ONE in number, has to be made up of distinct individuals. — TheMadFool
It's not simply 'a way of talking', it's a different conception of the nature of reality. If you admit 'possible existence' as real, then that has ontological ramifications - 'what is real' overflows the bounds of 'what exists'. Put another way, 'existence' is no longer a binary value - either 1 (exists) or 0 (doesn't exist) - but it's a scale of possibility; there are 'degrees of possibility' meaning 'more or less existent'. — Wayfarer
Lawrence Krauss wrote a book on this idea, Universe from Nothing. It was discussed up-thread — TheMadFool
A conceptual is a something that points to nothing, except for the causal process that created the concept, like I already showed:Yes a nothing cannot be anything more than a conceptual fiction, otherwise it would not be a nothing, but a something. — Janus
What I'm driving at is that just as a car or an elephant is said to exist in the universe, a unicorn or god too exists in the universe. True that one exists in the physical and the other in the mental but both worlds are, at the end of the day, part of the universe — TheMadFool
<Something> + <Opposite> = <Nothing> — Harry Hindu
They would need a good reason to do that. What would be the reason when we know that the physical and mental causally interact? Seems to me that the physical and mental are all part if the same causal universe.But some would separate the physical universe from its mental counterpart and suggest "universe" is only the physical universe. Same with "objects": physical and mental. — jgill
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