Hey BNW go back a page and check out my last post (it happened again; bottom of the page= lost and neglected) Don't expect you to agree with my thoughts, but look, I have learned how to use those pretty quotes.

This was written in one of your last posts on this thread:

"I did not exist prior to my conception. At most there was a potentiality for me to exist, within one sperm and one egg. I don't know exactly how much matter that is or its precise physical construction, but not much, I imagine. "

Potentiality is SOMETHING. The "I" existed potentially otherwise there is no chance of it being able to come into existence.



Non-existence is a form of existence, it is the existence of no existence.



Well define for me something that does not exist.



How can we visualise something that doesnt exist or nothingness? Honestly. If I had to say to you to visualise infinity would you be able to? Like nothing it is beyond the capabilities of being conceptualization. How can you conceptualize something that isnt anything? To be able to do so contradicts the very reason for atempting to do so.

So yes of course it is a reflection of my inability to visualise nothing. Frankly I dont understand how anyone can visulise something that isnt there.



So if nothing exists how is it nothing?



How is it that I believe that consciousness is a separate entity yet believe it pervades all?

I actually did read it and replied to it. So you ought to look back



What do you think about nothing?

Two great philosophers were arguing over the existence of objective reality, the nature of consciousness, and whether nothingness could exist. One argued srtongly and forcefully that there was no objective reality; only consciousness, and that nothingness could not exist. The second simply kicked the first hard in the shin. When the first had recovered slightly ,he asked, "why did you do that?"

"Do what? I did nothing," replied the second philosopher.

Nuff said?

Sounds like it was borrowed from a Zen story.

If you check the times, we missed each other by 3 minutes. Sorry about that. When I posted, your reply had not yet appeared on my screen, but thanks for the heads up.

Actually i made it up, especially the bit about nothingness, but it was inspired by a segment on Radio National on Monday discussing the nature of objective reality and consciousness. It does make for interesting reflection.

In that case great story!

To define for you something that does not exist.

My son does not exist, and never did, and yet I can visualise him, and probably quite accurately. Potentiality is nothing, until it becomes reality. I had the potential for a son or daughter, but they have never existed, thus the potential was nothing (like the number 0) and when multiplied by other life realities, it still creates zero, or nothing- ness.

As for infinity, I have been able to visualise at least the concept of this, if not the totality of it, since childhood.

You argue that by naming the concept "non existence" we make it real, but this is no more so than naming my non existent son jack would make him real. A label for nothing does not make it something.

If your son doesnt exist then he wouldnt exist for you to visualise in the first place. A visualisation is SOMETHING.



The number 0 is still a number and therefore something. Zero potential is something for it is zero potential and that is certainly not nothing. If zero potential didnt exist then we wouldnt be able to say it doesnt exist for the reason that it wouldnt exist for us to claim its non-existence.



You must have the best imagination in existence if you have been able to imagine the totality of infinity.



Why have the label at all? How can you have nothing as a lablel for nothing if nothing didnt exist? Nothing cant be labelled for the very reason that there is nothing to label and therefore the word nothing is invalid.

If nothing truly did exist then it would be an act of faith to believe so because there is no way to indicate its existence without contradicting yourself, also it would exist beyond the realm of all perception. Also if it did exist then that defeats the purpose of nothing being nothing for nothing is not meant to exist. If it does not exist then it wouldnt exist for us to be debating about in the first place would it?

I find it fascinating that two eastern philosophy descriptions of absolute reality can be applied also when describing nothing or non-existence. As Leonardo states in one of his posts

"We use a word to describe the concept of nothing because this is a concept that can never be experienced, because it is not a 'thing' to be experienced. It simply has no existence. In this regard it is identical to 'infinity'.

and he also says this on "nothing": There is no duality to that, it [the concept] is not any thing, it is not the opposite of any thing (or everything), it is nothing.

Now witness these next two definitions of absolute reality by Hinduism and a branch of Buddhism who describe a reality that also possesses no duality:

The significance of Brahman is expressed by neti neti (not so, not so); for beyond this, that you say it is not so, there is nothing further. Its name, however, is "the Reality of reality." That is to say, the senses are real, and the Brahman is their Reality.

--- Brhadarayaka Upanishad

Things are not as they appear to be. Nor are they otherwise. ---The Lankavatara Sutra

Amazing aye? I personally think so.

The guy who kicks the philosopher says he did nothing but he kicked philosopher so he did something or he is out righ lying which is also something. So I dont see the point of the story as good as it is.

Nothing at all.

I've wrote about this before in other threads. IMO after our 'deaths' the body just breaks down and is used for other purposes... whatever people imagine the soul to be-- it also breaks down with the body as it is a product of the body. So technically there isn't 'nothing', the life cycle continues, there is something--- although we will no longer have the capability to be aware of it. If the soul is eternal as you might think Brave... and unique to the individual, then why can't I remember anything definitive before this life? Why did my first thought occur in the early stages of this life? I do believe though, genetically, things can be 'seen' or 'felt' by us that may have been experienced before us. DNA evolves due to experience, it keeps track of all that is thrown at it, surely there are past experiences that can be felt from prior lives simply because the information is there.

Ok since we are on square one, the better question would be "what gives rise to nothing?"

How can we remember eternity if that is our real identity? Think about it, eternity has no starting point because it transcends both beginning and end. Anyway enough of that, I agree with you that there is technically no "nothing" because if there was such a thing as nothing then it would be something because it would be there and thereness is something.

Well how could you give rise to nothing? There is nothing to give rise to.

Sorry Brave...I'm feeling a little feisty today.

edited to say...that was actually directed at your first response, which you edited and removed completely. That one was way out there my friend.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA That fuc*&^% rocks!

Hmmm

Its it nothing or are WE nothing when we die????

I thought it was a little too abstract. Either way you are more than forgiven for being feisty.

Please elaborate.

Well I'm going by the title of the thread. And not going to get into semantic debate with you so don't bother replying if that's what your going to do.

Basically is it that Nothing is this thing that "exists" for lack of a better word, all the time, or is it a personal thing that happens to each human upon death with regard to our consciousness. We die and some people think that the spirit, or consciousness or soul of the person "goes on somehow" but what it just doesn't. So from that perspective the person becomes nothing. The person that you know yourself to be just ceases to exist. No soul, no heaven, no energy etc. Just nothing.

In other words we are only something when we are alive. When we die we become nothing.

Yeah this is my point. However it makes no sense to me because how is it that something can become nothing when you cant become nothing because there is nothing to become by being nothing.

To me its very easy to understand. I think instead of sticking to your inability to understand you should try to broaden your brain a little.

Try this


Take a piece of bread and take a small part and start crumbling it in your hands keep rubbing the pieces together until you get down to crumbs and going and going until you suddenly have nothing left in your hands to crumble, that at best is a very bad but close as I can get example to nothing.

You can see that the crumb goes down to nothing in your perspective. However you know somewhere in your mind that it does exist on a molecular level somewhere. You are arguing on this thread this concept.

That that crumb might get small but it still exists because it still is something somewhere. But what you are doing is trying to equate a physical quality to a mental one. Awareness doesn't have any molecules. When you die, your body will still exist in some way. But your sense of self will disappear.

Its hopeful to think that maybe we can still go on, our souls taken back into the energy, or something. But for me it just won't happen.

Its like we're plugged into an electrical charge and when we die we unplug. What's on your tv when its off? Some energy still.

But if the tv is unplugged and smashed up into a heap and grinded into bits and then recycled, the tv itsself still exists in some form

But there is nothing happening.

Anyway as I said you don't want to understand it so you won't. Because when we debate with you we are limited by language and each point along the way because of the language limitations we find traps that we fall in.

Try to understand it first before you try to make sense of it. You are trying to make sense of something you don't understand.

'Scewz me if this has already been posted, but....
Perhaps Nothing is simply the absence of Something?

Or... nothing might be the 'beginning' of something....
Ouroboros
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros

Brave,
I've read thru these posts and despite the 'tempers' that seem to be here... and really for unknown reasons as none of these posts seemed offensive....

I wanted to thank you for nothing more then a delightful brain exercise.
Seems we can all use this every now and again....

Ah ha!!!
NOTHING is what we think we have when we don't know that we have SOMETHING!
NOTHING is a multi-billion dollar enterprise created especially to provide us with all that we 'don't have'....
SOMETHING is a product designed to make us feel like we have SOMETHING!

So the moral to THIS thread might be....

We pay for SOMETHING in this world...
but we get NOTHING.
lolololol

"nothing" is prehaps best seen as an approximation to expressing a lack of existance, which is something we are unable to comprehend as anything we imagine is stemming from ourselves.

And what if there is no such thing as the absence of Something? I.e., does Something ever have the quality called absence?

I think we have to define "absence" better if we are to decide whether or not Something ever has it. We can probably agree that if a thing "has absence," then it is more accurate to say that it "is absent," which is equivalent to saying that it "is not present," or rather that if it is absent then it is not the case that it is present.

We have to recognize that the statement "X is present" or "X is absent" is necessarily elliptical (incomplete). Present or absent from where, and when? For now, I think it's OK to assume we might mean anywhere in spacetime.

So the questions we are left with are, given Something and Nothing, where Something is any thing and nothing is not-Something:

Is the statement "Something is absent" ever true?

Is the statement "Something is present" ever false?

Is it ever true that "Nothing is present?"

Can it possibly be false that "Nothing is absent?"

I look around me and find that there is always Something, and that there is never any Nothing here.

How profound.

So the question is not whether or not there is ever such a thing as Nothing, or if Somethng is ever absent. The question is, is it ever false that a human being is aware of any thing. I.e., is a human being ever completely unconscious-- either before birth, after death, or anytime in between. This is not an ontological question about nothingness.

Bad example. I'l tell you why though, it is because what you have left is your hands and air and space and they are not nothing but something.



It is exists on a molecular level then how is it nothing?



Can this be proven? Also the physical is the mental. Everything you see in the "physical" realm is in fact a thought in your brain's various vortexes which is only known about after a translation to consciousness. What we see and what we think are both one and the same according to the brain and even the brain is just a translation of itself within consciousness.

Even if our sense of self disappears then that is still something because it is "the absence of a sense of self".



Even if it doesnt happen then that is still "something". If it was nothing then there wouldnt even be the concept, as Greek philosopher Paramenides explains:

Thinking and the thought that it is are the same; for you will not find apart from what is, in relation to which it is uttered. For thought and being are the same. It is necessary to speak and to think what is; for being is, but nothing is not.

The part where is says "Thinking and the thought it is are the same" is in fact backed up by science.



What do you mean nothing is happening? The energy has only changed form and is still in motion in that form. So something is definately happening. If there was nothing happening the energy itself wouldnt be there and from science we know that energy cannot be destroyed.



I like to exploit language to its limits. But anything that goes beyond language or descripton requires faith to believe in because it is only things beyond the five senses that cant be described by language.



Isnt it only by trying to make sense of things we dont understand that we ever come to undertsand anything?

The absence of something is SOMETHING and that something is called nothing and therefore nothing is something.



Then nothing certainly is something in which it would go against the grain of what nothing is in the first place.

Aw thanks



Well written



So nothing is SOMETHING and not nothing at all.

Nothing is in the eye of the beholder.

In my view something cant be absent because if it is absent then it never was in the first place. It is like the way we ask 'how can something of come from nothing?' but the other way around to 'how can something become nothing?'.

If something has simply changed form then it isnt absent because it is still there but in a different form.




In my view it cant be false because something is and if something is then it is present. But by going down this road of logic I have to admit that nothing is also present. However in order for something to be present it has to be present and so nothing must be something to be present and this contradicts the very meaning of nothing.



If nothing is present then it must be something to be present. From another view if nothing is present then it must be beyond past, present and future. If nothing is present then it wouldnt exist in the first place for us to claim that it may be possibly true that nothing is present.



If nothing is absent then nothing wouldn't be absent either but then that is admitting it is certainly something if we are to say that nothing is absent.


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA That was beautiful. And great points made. How the hell are we ever to recognize what nothing is? And to do so would mean that it is something.

What standards do we have to go by that we can rely on as "real"? Then it comes down to 'what is real?' or 'can the real ever be absent?' and many more tantalizing questions which seem to me in the end to go against the grain of what our senses report to us.

Well said.

So nothing is in the eye of the beholder........ nothing is (meaning it is something) in the eye of the beholder.

Interesting writing about afterlife
maybe it gives some opinion and clue

Nice link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmenides :

Thinking and the thought that it is are the same; for you will not find thought apart from what is, in relation to which it is uttered.

For thought and being are the same.

It is necessary to speak and to think what is; for being is, but nothing is not.

Helplessness guides the wandering thought in their breasts; they are carried along deaf and blind alike, dazed, beasts without judgment, convinced that to be and not to be are the same and not the same, and that the road of all things is a backward-turning one.


Thus, he (Parmenides) concluded that "Is" could not have "come into being" because "nothing comes from nothing." Existence is necessarily eternal. Parmenides was not struggling to formulate the conservation of mass-energy. He was struggling with the metaphysics of change, which is still a relevant philosophical topic today.

Moreover he argued that movement was impossible because it requires moving into "the void", and Parmenides identified "the void" with nothing, and therefore (by definition) it does not exist. That which does exist is The Parmenidean One which is timeless, uniform, and unchanging:

How could what is perish? How could it have come to be? For if it came into being, it is not; nor is it if ever it is going to be. Thus coming into being is extinguished, and destruction unknown.

Nor was [it] once, nor will [it] be, since [it] is, now, all together, / One, continuous; for what coming-to-be of it will you seek? / In what way, whence, did [it] grow? Neither from what-is-not shall I allow / You to say or think; for it is not to be said or thought / That [it] is not. And what need could have impelled it to grow / Later or sooner, if it began from nothing? Thus [it] must either be completely or not at all.

[What exists] is now, all at once, one and continuous... Nor is it divisible, since it is all alike; nor is there any more or less of it in one place which might prevent it from holding together, but all is full of what is.

And it is all one to me / Where I am to begin; for I shall return there again.


Man...... I love this Parmenides Philosopher if any philosophers existed that saw through the illusion or matrix of the senses it was this guy. And he lived before Socrates even. I cant believe the astounding knowledge and intuitions of some of these greek philosophers.

For never shall this prevail, that things that are not are. ----Parmenides

How can we say what isnt? How is it that so many people here argue passionately that yes there is such a thing as nothing but then say they cant show what it is because that contradicts nothing? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr my arguement is this :

How can there be such a thing as nothing if it doesnt exist? If nothing doesnt exist then there is no such thing as nothing.

If nothing doesnt exist then we dont have to fear that there will be nothing when we die.

But that is not the same thing as saying that when we die we will continue to be aware. Consider the vacuum cleaner. It is still a vacuum cleaner when it is unplugged from the wall, but it's ability to vacuum is greatly diminished. Take the vacuum cleaner and melt it down into a mass of plastic and metal. It still is...but it is not a vacuum cleaner.

I think what many people fear from death is the loss of awareness. Many seem unable to cope with that end at all. Therefore, they conclude the 'life force' or the 'awareness' must continue into infinity. Consider the automobile engine...it isn't 'aware' that it is running, yet it is running and when the engine shuts off...it isn't running anymore. It is still an automobile, but where is the 'force' that caused its pistons to move? The 'force' still is...but it isn't in the form of an 'engine running'. I maintain that we are all 'engines running'...and that when the spark of electrical impulse leaves the machine...we die. And upon dying we are dead. We have no awareness. We have no life on into infinity....

Brave, have you had a chance to read Nagarjuna's writings on causality and emptiness?

Good point and I think you are correct, but I would tweak the wording a little. Rather than the loss of awareness I think it is the loss of "self" that causes the fear and struggle with the concept of death. Since people cling to the notion of "I Am" they create illusions of permanence such as the Atman (soul) or the afterlife.

It still is. Ever consider that 'isness' is the essence of our being? If it is then it is eternal. If it is the essence of our being and eternal then why worry? Unconsciousness isnt devoid of consciousness for it is a form of consciousness. Energy and consciousness go hand in hand and whatever form it takes is who we are.

Here is a verse from the Tao Te Ching by Lao tzu that illustrates my point:

"Be wary of both honor and disgrace"

"Endless affliction is bound to the body"

What does it mean,

"Be wary of both honor and disgrace"?

Honor is founded on disgrace
and disgrace is rooted in honor

Both should be avoided
Both bind a man to this world

What does it mean,
"Endless affliction is bound to the body"?

Man's true self is eternal,
yet he thinks, "I am this body, I will soon die"

This false sense of self
is the cause of all his sorrow

When a person does not identify himself with the body
tell me, what troubles could touch him?

One who see himself as everything
is fit to be guardian of the world

One who loves himself as everyone
is fir to be teacher of the world

----- Lao Tzu, verse 13 of The Tao Te Ching

Maybe losing self/ego awareness isnt such a bad thing?



Yet in deep sleep without dreams they are in peace. We make a comfy bed every night to enter such a state. How does deep sleep and death differ in that sense?



Whether we run or not makes no difference to "isness" or infinity. Whether we run or not we still are. If we still are then why be afraid?

I have one quote of his in my personal bible rev. It goes as thus:

The relinquishing of all views leads to emptiness

But if emptiness is the view, then you have achieved nothing.

---Nagarjuna

If you have any other insightful quotes by him then please do post them on the thread

What about the notion of Atman being the same as Brahman or Nirvana?

This is true in the sense of anything is everything. Yet, in the illusive reality, strike a match. The flame is...the flame is not. The energy of the flame continues...the flame does not. However, the flame cannot exist forever in it's flame state. It is a flame...only in the instance of the physical reality of it's existence...is that existence eternal? As much I guess as it's non-existence is eternal.