You have a material view of existence perhaps.
How would the notion of nothingness even exist if there was no existence in the first place?
And if we even accepted that nothing was possible, which in itself doesn't make any sense, how would something even start to exist?
Well the contradiction is already in the fact that there is a preexisting concept of nothing in the first place.
Existence is impredicative too.
It defines itself. That's a fact.
It is not because it is impredicative that it needs to be hard to understand I think. It's almost a tautology rather.
Oh by the way, forgniz exist, you made it to design something. It doesn't have to refer to something material. It could be an idea. After all, inventions don't exist by being material in the first place.
But idea have at least material support (your brain signals) and the data acquired through your body. As far as we know.
> How would the notion of nothingness even exist if there was no existence in the first place?
It wouldn't, that's the point. The is no need for a "notion of nothingness" if nothing exists.
Why do you think nothingness doesnt't make any sense? It's a simple concept: no space, no time, and therefore nothing else such as matter, etc.
> how would something even start to exist?
Perhaps it wouldn't. We weren't talking about the origin of the universe from nothing. If you want to say existence is irrefutable because we observe it, that's fine. But it's not irrefutable because of its definition, that's religious circular logic, like the ontological argument.
Not really, in mathematic or type theory it is a proof.
But that's besides the point.
If there was nothing, then we wouldn't be able to describe it.
We are only describing it because we think it might exist. So in itself it is illogical for it to exist since it can only exist if it does not exist.
Even if we had no data, the state before birth let's say, we still exist as a probability that is about to come to fruition.
That is still besides the point.
If there was nothing, as you are trying to call it, there would not be existence.
But then we would not be here. reductio ad absurdum. Even if life is a dream, it is still something, an experience. It is still an existence at some level. You are not discussing with nothing, while being nothing :)
You’re being downvoted, but your point is true — something can exist “by definition”, and yet not exist in our real world. The thing that exists “by definition” is just a version that we have imagined to exist by definition. But imagining something with property X doesn’t imply anything can actually be found with property X.
Side-note: the deontological argument is an argument for the existence of God, which uses the same principle as the grandparent. “Imagine God. Imagine God is good. A good God should exist, because otherwise that god is not good. Therefore, the good God we imagined has the property of existence. Therefore God exists”. The issue is exactly the same — we can imagine something with property X, but that doesn’t mean we can find something with property X
Nope :)
It 's not about that. It's not because I imagine that there is a banana in front of me that there will be. It's not tied to material existence in that way.
It's perhaps another notion of existence which should be more mathematical.
You could think it as "God" provably existing as an idea but that might or might not be realized probabilistically, in our material world.
The idea exists obviously. Same as "Zeus"... or "Batman" any other such notions.
"Existence" being different from "alive" as we colloquially understand it.
The point is absence of anything is still something.
The idea of nothing can only exist if there is existence first. How does it make sense? Then nothing can't exist.
Not as an absolute. It can only be a relative negative within a weirdly heterogeneous infinity.
Or you could see it as a predicate, sometimes false, sometimes true.
It forms a lower universe of types than existence which is the set of all predicates. Predicates just...exists. They don't have to return true all the time.
Funny thing is to ask: 'Is blue, blue?'
Now with existence: 'Does existence, exist?'
And then a bit differently: 'Is nothing something?'
We see that these are different types of impredicativity.
Existence just needs itself to define itself.
Nothing cannot exist if nothing actually somehow is. It needs existence.
Blue is a word. It does not exhibit the characteristic is describes.
The set of all things blue does not contain the proposition 'blue'.
While the set of all things that exist contains itself?
Sweet baby Ouroboros ;D
There are two main claims that I think you may be touching on:
1. The question of whether concepts exist in the absence of a human mind to imagine them. This is still debated in philosophy. I'm not an expert, so I won't make a claim about this, but I will point out that if it was easy to resolve, it probably wouldn't be a field of active debate after 2000+ years.
2. The question of whether it is necessary that _something_ physically must exist. This I do make a strong claim on: it is not necessary that something physically exist. There is no law that forces objects to exist. We find ourselves in a universe where objects do exist. This is not required. It just happens to be the case.
Side-note: I find the response "Nope :)" to be kindof condescending. I realize English may be a second language to you, so maybe you don't feel the subtle jab in that -- no worries if so, I'm sure I make the same mistakes in other languages all the time. Smiley faces are definitely allowed online, but in general I'd say to use them when making a joke or when acknowledging your own mistake.
Edit: In case somebody is curious, "the question of whether concepts exist in the absence of a human mind to imagine them" is debated at least since plato's time. I believe these concepts-that-exist-without-humans are sometimes called Platonic Forms. They are good for a wikipedia binge!
I thought the smiley would make the 'Nope' less argumentative. Sorry if you felt it was offensive.
This was in response to:
> Side-note: the deontological argument is an argument for the existence of God, which uses the same principle as the grandparent
which was not actually true. This is not the same principle. Maybe the way I expressed the idea wasn't too clear.
A close principle, would be Descartes' cogito perhaps...
The question of whether a concept exists even in the absence of the human mind is easy to answer. Without arguments to authority, it suffices to realize that every past event that predates a human being is a concept for that same human.
Every future event, even what one is likely to do the next day, is also a concept.
Besides, why human? this is too anthropocentric. It should be extended to animals at the very least.
Or let's have another example: you don't really perceive UV light, and let's say you've never been told that it exists and you live in a cave. You will never interact with it. That does not mean that it does not exist. Whether as a physical concept or merely a pure concept which is then a probability. Even if that probability is 0 or negative even (negative??? we are veering quantum :).
It's probabilistic, not all of these concepts are realized materialistically (for future events that is).
An apple exists even in the absence of humans. So does its concept. Awareness of the existence of this concept is a different thing.
One must not forget that, as wise and introspective as some of the ancients were, they were also prone to a lot of cognitive biases such as anthropocentrism.
In essence, my original point is closer to the one of greek philosopher Parmenides.
But this is again not about physical existence. Matter is just data with a set of properties and interaction rules. One of them being existence. A physicist would call matter a special kind of spatial perturbation perhaps.
On a whole other note, I am curious: what made it appear as if English was a second language? :)
No worries, i did feel it was a bit dismissive, but no hard feelings at all.
I think your main claim is that concepts exist even if there is not a human to perceive/think of them. I have no horse in that race, sorry if that’s disappointing haha.
However, sometimes your comments seem to be claiming that _something_ must exist. _This_ i disagree with. We can observe that something does indeed exist in our universe. However, there is nothing that forced that to be the case. It just happens to be.
Regarding English, your phrase choice is just a bit odd and somewhat poetic, haha. It reminds me a bit of my dad, whose first language was Farsi. Here’s a couple concrete examples from your writing:
- “Maybe the way I expressed the idea wasn’t too clear”. “Too” is close in meaning to “excessive” (among other uses). I think it would be more common to see “wasn’t so clear” or “wasn’t clear enough”
- “Besides, why human?” I think there are a few words that have been dropped here, which would not normally be dropped even in casual English. You mean something like “Besides, why do we need a human perspective?” From context your meaning is clear, but the phrase “why human?” just feels unusual. I think the phrase “why X?” is common when X is a verb, but not so much when X is a noun. Consider, “why drive?”, “why worry?”, “why wear that?” all sound normal to me. On the other hand “why apple?”, “why lamp?”, “why monkey?” all seem unusual, even somewhat humorous.
- “On a whole other note”: i think the common phrase here is “on another note”. I’ve never heard “whole other note” before.
And now I’m curious: Is English your second language? In either case, your writing is unique in a very interesting way, and not something you should be worried about. I like the style, it gives you much more personality than most comments i see.
Edit: I can’t help myself, I want to guess where you’re from, lol. My best guess is Central Europe. The use of “too” to be “adequate” feels vaguely French to me, although that’s probably just based on Hollywood portrayals, since I don’t know any French. So I’ll say French is your first language, but I’ll claim victory if it’s anything from Central Europe :P
Edit edit: after googling, i see France isn’t usually counted as Central Europe. But I’m leaving my guess as France + Central Europe
Haha, before I answer you, could you do me a favor?
I'd like you to paste the message in an LLM of your choice and also tell me what they infer. I think that could be very interesting. ;p
Then I'll give you an answer.
Haha I did the same and it is a bit more nuanced. But it is hinting at either native speaker or French.
I do speak French. But it is still quite surprising to me. Although it did not pick up everything or it pointed at things that should indicate something other than French wrt punctuation for instance.
I think they mean existence in general, not the existence of any specific thing. Meaning that if there were no “existence” then we wouldn’t be here to consider its nonexistence.
> I think they mean existence in general, not the existence of any specific thing.
Yes, but the definition of "existence" doesn't require that anything must actually exist.
In other words, it is not the case that existence "cannot not exist by definition."
> Meaning that if there were no “existence” then we wouldn’t be here to consider its nonexistence.
That's an anthropic principle argument, which is not an argument from the definition of existence. One of the premises of that argument is that we exist already.
How can nothingness exists, if it is supposed to not exist since it is nothingness?
Concept are not really for humans, but humans can grasp them. Or would you say that the sun only exists because (some) humans see it?
It's not because a human is unaware of something that it does not exist. Its concept is still there somewhere. Independent of its treatment by human cognition.
I can say the same about forgnoz, which is something I've just invented that must exist by definition.
You'd need to try a bit harder to make existence actually inevitable.