Questions tagged [nothing]
Use this tag for questions about the philosophical concept of nothing or nothingness.
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What is nothing?
In Lawrence Krauss' book A Universe From Nothing he portrays "nothing" as a physical state. He says that nothing is found by removing all of what we know to be things (particles, electrons etc). I've ...
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How to denote the idea of nothingness in formal terms?
I was thinking about the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" , and have read about some theories that existence is the case because non-existence is logically impossible
So, I ...
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Some questions about Scientific American's article on nothingness
A Scientific American article I was reading (I couldn't find it online) has a one-page discussion about nothingness. Some of the discussion points seem a little questionable to me, and I'd like to ask ...
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Understanding "Emptiness"
One of the many sincere efforts by mankind has been to try to understand "Emptiness" sometimes by scientific methods, sometimes by religious doctrines. Recently, we are trying to investigate ...
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Can nominalists believe in their own death?
Can nominalists believe in their own death? You often hear people talk about death as nothing-ness, which suggests a universal nothing. And nominalists say that universals do not exist.
Just trying ...
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Is nothing an entity?
An entity cannot not be and the definition of nothing is not being. Can we include "nothing" among the abstract entities or should we differentiate nuances of nothing, eg. the mathematical nothing, ...
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Can something sensible be said about a world of complete nothingness?
One thought that keeps me up at night is when I start to think about the world "before" the universe existed and "beyond" the universe itself. I know that it doesn't really make sense to speak about "...
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Is dying in a simulation ever sufficient for death, and if not does that make death inconceivable?
Is dying in a simulation -- any simulation at all -- ever physically sufficient to die at that instant outside it?
I mean a simulation like in the film the Matrix, or in a dream, one that kills your ...
user44289
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What reasoning does Melissus or Parmenides give against the existence of "empty" or "the void"?
Melissus reaffirms Parmenides by explaining how there cannot be many without the existence of that which is empty, and since that which is empty is nothing, and nothing can't exist, thus there cannot ...
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Does defining nothing make it something?
I originally thought of 0 for this question. 0 is used to represent nothing withing mathematics. However, I thought that by defining nothing as 0 which (at some level is something) does it no longer ...
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How to explain nothingness in Consciousness theory of Tegmark
The hypothesis was first put forward in 2014 by cosmologist and theoretical physicist Max Tegmark from MIT, who proposed that there's a state of matter - just like a solid, liquid, or gas - in which ...
user47436
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Do questions of Infinite regress, uncased cause and nothingness just point to our limits?
A lot of debates and conversations with theists seem to end up with the "ultimate" questions where the questions themselves seem to me to be conceptual/linguistic/psychological dead ends.
Infinite ...
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Why do humans think that something starts with nothing?
I always had a problem with how anything came into being. What I mean is that how come anything exists. Creationists try to solve it by God making stuff, but then where did God come from? Another God ...
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Does Bergson mean we can't imagine our death, in The Idea of Nothing?
In fact, the object suppressed is either external or internal: it is
a thing or it is a state of consciousness. Let us consider the first
case... now, what is, and what is perceived, is the ...
user25714
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"nothing" and "no-thing" - is "nothing" a negative term that is too easy to convert into a positive one? [duplicate]
So for example a sentence like "Things only exist conventionally, about their ultimate status, nothing can literally be said."
If read as written, can the "nothing" be interpreted as a reification of ...
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Can we intend anything that exists and must it exist partly in that intention
Can we intend anything, even nothingness, or my own death, or an empty world?
And if so do these things exist in their intention, as something interior to the thought about them?
I ask because it ...
user6917
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Are Theists and physicists talking about an empty universe or no universe at all?
When they talk about the beginning of the universe, are Theists and physicists talking about an empty universe or no universe at all?
It is fairly straightforward to imagine an empty Universe - an
...
user6917
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If God does not exist then would God's heaven be classified as an "empty world"?
If God does not exist then would God's heaven, in the phrase "God is in his heaven" be classified as an "empty world"?
I have only encountered the phrase "empty world" in the SEP article on ...
user38026
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When is an absence a nothingness?
When is an absence a nothingness, completely nothing? I've read all of Heidegger's basic writings, a handful of commentaries on him and lots on Buddhism. Both these topics talk a lot about "...
user56815
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Does Hegel believe in many absences?
According to Hegel, is every absence the same thing, or are there very many absences?
I am wondering whether, in dialectics, nothing is truly absent from the whole unless the whole itself does not ...
user56705
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Is nothingness the same thing as the empty set?
I have read that someone defined nothingness as the empty set. Is this true? Is nothingness the empty set?
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If Non-existence is nonexistent, then does that mean a Supernatural Exists?
Ok, what I am asking is bascially, if non-existence (which I use synonymously with the word 'nothing' - this is my defintion of 'nothing' in this piece - non-existence, so please no dcitionary ...
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What happens when nothing happens? [closed]
If there is nothing to happen then nothing should happen hence if nothing is happening then something is happening if something is happening the nothing is not happening.
Just take example of nihilist ...
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