does nothing exist?

i mean...we made up the term and meaning of "exist"..so does that mean it's not real because WE made it up? so it's like a made up friend? it;s just not real?

There's this joke, about two men. One is named "No One" and the other is named "Stupid". One day, when they're out walking, No One falls into a lake and starts to drown. Stupid picks up his cell phone and calls 911. He yells into his phone "No One has fallen into the lake". "How good", the reciever answers. Thinking the reciever didn't hear him, he yells again "No One has fallen into the lake". "How good", the reciever says again, now a bit more irritated. Thinking the reciever didn't understand this time, Stupid yells for a third time "No One has fallen into the lake". The reciever loses it and asks "Are you stupid?". Stupid answers "Yup, that's me".

My point of the story?

If you start claiming that nothing exists, then someone will probably call you stupid.

Hahahaha. ^__^

I totally agree. :)

That's like saying dogs don't really exist because we made up the word "dog". The action of existing takes place whether we recognize it or not.

Something which is artificial isn't "fake". For instance, if we show an image of a tree on a screen, it isn't a tree, but it is a screen of LEDs/pixels/whatever which portray the image of a tree.

Theoretically we might not actually exist or something like that, but you can't prove that through talking about language usage. Language has a great deal of control over how we think of, rather, comprehend things, but it has no (direct) control over what actually is. Occam's razor says that the simplest thing is true; of course, one might argue it's simpler for everything to be imaginary than for this world to actually exist (I would disagree, though), or that there's no particular reason that Occam's razor works.

Saying things exist is like saying 1+1=2. You don't have to say, for instance, one person and another person are two people for them to be 2 people.

EDIT-Esgal, I know that story is in the odyssey in another form, but I've never seen it in a joke form like that. Was pretty funny :)

Actually, I translated the joke from the one I heard when I was 7 years old. And that's not the story I heard it from. :3

o lol nobody stabbed me in the eye lol

and ok now i see

that was just me up for 2days hopped up on soda/coffee/energy drinks

No straight sugar, though?

that too

dude sugar cubes

own

hardcore

Baklava owns hardcore. Hardcore'er than pie.

existance serves no purpose on its own. perception is what matters in the minds of all humans. after all, if somthing exists but we don't know of it then it will not afect us. say a tornado is created, people will see it but not know how it was made, maybe there is more to the winds than any of us realise.

but as i sit in front of this computer typing to people who i percieve as looking like thier avatars (it's just easier for me to think that), i know that whatever anothers theory on existence is, it dosen't matter because i can breath, walk, jump, eat, hear, smell, see and touch, that my fellows is enough for me

But isn't that like saying God doesn't exist because we can't see him?

:blink: !!! But that's a different matter... wouldn't it be?

*Existence* is tangible - you can't touch something that never was. And everyone has their own little quirks about God existing or not. ( :unsure: I won't get into that one... And infact, I haven't really read this topic yet.)

i suppose, i'm an atheist so i don't believe in that anyway

i was supposed to say this before, in medievil times virtually all people believed in god, which meant he was real regardless of if he existed or not, that's just how it was, nowadays so much of the world has been explained so people are alot harder to convince. even if somthing dosen't exist, if all the people around you (including you) think it is real then it won't make a difference

the world is black and white and all shades of grey, that is my belief

Things existed before humans, humans existed before civilization, everything existed before language.

Although our forms don't necissarily exist we certainly do.

But to say that nothing doesn't exist because you do not see nothing or know nothing is like saying that dieties and such are not there, right?

It's like saying that emotion is false and that lies are real and what's real is lies.

Ignorance is bliss.


I do not know you so you do not exist.

This is what humans choose to live out and we're stupid because of it.

Then we could also look at it as another variation of "I don't see you, so you can't see me?"

if a tree falls in a forest and no-one's around to hear it what sound dose it make
very old riddle... thing

the 5 senses, touch, sight, smell, hearing and taste. these 5 senses creat percption, if something dosen't cause a reaction to any of these senses then its existence becomes irrelevent. the mind ofcourse is the centre of it all.

it can only affect you is you know it exists... except for a ninja or sniper i suppose. like a person who you've never met, they don't exist as far as you're concerned, they may exist but if you don't know it won't affect you.

I would say, how do you know? First off, simply because most people don't understand the weather science which causes a tornado to form, doesn't mean that science doesn't exist (it is already understood how tornadoes form in science). Simply because people didn't know how fire worked doesn't mean it didn't work. Maybe I'm not getting where you're coming from, though? Even if we don't see something, everything does affect us (at the very least gravity has an infinite reach), even if that is negligible in the grand scheme of things. Plenty of people die without knowing what killed them; forgive me for being morbid, but if someone shot one of us in the head while we slept, we'd still be effected, changed. Barring an afterlife or whatnot, we'd never know what happened, but it would've happened.

If we even say that anything we are not collectively aware of does not exist, that bars us from existing. We don't know that god existed, and life wasn't aware of itself until it already came into existence. By that logic a conscious mind would never come into existence because there'd be nothing to know of whatever would be needed to bring it into existence. Or something.

Any sort of argument like "if a tree falls in the forest and nothing is there to hear it, it makes no sound" can only succeed if one eliminates any sort of understanding we have of anything. If you took it that far, you'd have to admit that there is as much chance the tree turned into a dragon as there is a chance that it fell.

But I can make you think you touch it if I mess around with your neurons. If you've looked at stuff about brain surgery, people who have been surgified have reported randomly smelling and feeling stuff that they couldn't possibly smell (like blueberry pie) because small nerve stuff gets touched during the surgery. BTW, people in brain surgery are kept conscious but on crazy meds (I don't remember why but for some reason they'd choke on their own vomit or something). Anyway, with enough understanding of the human brain one could (hypothetically) simulate any sort of feeling without you touching anything.

Gah. I'm totally lost in the logical derivation. Mou!

But I don't get it, still. Is nothing everything, then? Or is it that everything is nothing? I know there's a pattern, but conversely or inversely?

Personally, at least, I've never heard a nothing=everything argument that I see basis for, so I don't know but maybe someone else has stuff to say.

well what do you think, slap yourself. slaps exist.

i already said assasins and whatnot are a wierd exception to what i said. but if i use the human race as a whole then the assasin is included in the reality

hmm, how to explain, we (humans) created the 'word existence', so something can only ever exist in the context of the word only if we acknowledge it. if we don't then it dosen't matter, at all. reality is what the human phyche makes it.

lets say the world dosen't exist, there is a mind that sees an illusionary reality, illusion or not it is a reality in one mind... wait, i forgot what i was going to say,

well anyway, the whole tree dragon thing, it may happen but if we don't see (or any other sense) the end result then who cares, reality exist for us to shape it. if a maniac has an evil imaginary fried that tells him to stab people then that imaginary friend is affecting people even though he has no physical form

Nah. Look at it this way. People died of diseases before they knew what they were. No one knew what a "bacteria" was but it changed people, for the worse. Although we didn't acknowledge the existence of bacteria, it still did shit.

Just like the unknown gunman, there may be things beyond our current understanding which does shit to us. In fact, there DEFINITELY are such things. A baby is unaware of its own heart, but the heart continues to function. By your logic, the baby doesn't acknowledge the existence of its heart, so the heart should stop keeping the baby alive because the baby doesn't know it exists. Alternatively, on a "species level" cavemen did not know the existence and function of their hearts, but they still lived because here we are today.

Basically, our understanding of things does affect how they affect us. But it does not dictate how they affect us. And it is impossible for something to exist if it has to be known in order to exist. I have said much the same thing already and backed it in evidence. You need to refute these points.

wait, what am i talking about, i changed my avatar.

if it's there, it's there, if it aint, it aint
if i say it exist and you belive me then you think it dose and you react to it then it's the same to you as if it did, even if it isn't real. bacteria may have existed and killed with a desease but you fail to realise that a desease is made of bacteria (completly, aside from rotting flesh) so they knew that deseases existed and they knew there were cure, like holding 2 chicken under you arms while wearing a holy robe and sprinkling posey petals to cure yourself of the plague..... bad example. a tornado exists, then it smashes stuff, the peasants don't care how it got there they just want to get their pigs into the castle before it hits. reaction to the forces of nature may cause disasters but if the end result of it is all that matters to people then the end result is all that counts. why?, cuz you can't count what you can't see or feel or whatever.

lots of people belive in god and that belief afects even no-belivers even in a small way. regardless of if he exists or not he still affects us which means he exists if only in the minds of people. things can exist on different levels of reality

LOTET, this is completely off topic here, but you make some good points. However, your writing is so painful to read, I think you should work on your grammar.

Or i tYpe iT in WOrD oR $OmethIng tO SpeLlcheCk

i guess that's what happens when i try to write about stuff i don't ussually talk about

You said earlier that if the human race as a whole, if not an individual, does not know something exists, it does not effect them. Since they did not know bacteria existed, they should be unable to be effected by disease. I have said this already.

Humanity did not understand weather science. Therefore a tornado should not have come into existence for them to observe. Follow? In your own theories, the fact that we know something starts off by people experiencing something foreign to them - in other words, something which they didn't realize existed had an effect on their life, which completely disproves your entire theory.

All in all this is a rather unfair theory. The only way to prove it wrong in present experience would be for an utterly foreign thing to all of humanity to come and do something. However, by realizing that we did not always know everything we know now, it becomes obvious that our recognition of something does not determine whether it has an effect.

Obviously the concept of god effects people regardless of whether they believe in him or not. There are simply to many people with religious beliefs of some sort in the world for you to not be effected by religion and theism. However, being influenced by the concept of something is not the same as being influenced by something; what we portray something as is not necessarily what it is; even Plato got this down in The Republic (though he failed to show any understanding that the core essence of something is sometimes inferior to the actual manifestation). Anyway, god in christianity as an example is an all-powerful all-good all-knowing being. The fact that some people believe in god does not mean that there is such a being, but you seem to think that's true. Only the concept of god effects people at a level we can understand; an actual divine being is pretty much above proof - god exists through peoples minds in the same sort of way that a deceased person lives on in those who remember them.

Sorry, forgot to address this, but it's one of the most blatantly false statements I've ever seen someone make in my life. Kids tales are a good example to disprove this. In the boy who cries wolf, he tells people a wolf is attacking the sheep. They react and come to help and act the same as if it were real for a limited period, then come to realize the whole thing is a hoax. Not only does the actual nonexistence of the wolf stop their initial reaction; the fact that the wolf did not actually exist makes them think the boy is lying, even when the wolf really does exist. In other words, the substance behind the statement is key to how people react.

In order for your statement to be true, the villagers would have to go out into the field and beat at the air where the wolf would be and attempt to kill it.

I would say your belief works ok in the instant. Over time, a lack of evidence weathers down for some the strength of the belief in what may or may not exist. In the instant, it basically becomes obvious "If you believe I'm telling the truth, you will act as though I'm telling the truth." This is so obvious I think it's doubtful that it's worth discussing.

xDxDxDxD

You know, the topic started off as if nothing existed because we made up the term "nothing".

Hold on- I saw something earlier that interested me. And also, in response to Severian-san.

The term nothing is just a term for something that doesn't exist, right? But then, in order for it not to exist, it counteracts everything. That's why I'm thinking that nothing is everything and everything is nothing.

But if we look at existance, wouldn't it also be similar? To be dead is to be not alive, but to be not alive is to be dead.

just because somthing dose not exist dosen't mean it ca't be created later

everything is relevent to an action to anything else, a balance of actions and reactions causes everything in the world to work. existance is right in front of you, don't hinder your thoughts on what isn't there for you to be concerned about (unless you're a scientist of some sort). your life is how you live it, what you sense and what you learn

but i'm concerned about what we already know. the volcano erupts so we know about lava, there may have been an earthquake prior but as far as ignorant people are concerned the earthquake is just the ground shaking and don't even think about tectonic plates. the tectonic plates exist but until the human race discovered it they did, they were nothing.

what we sense is what we know. what we know is what counts. if it dosen't count then what purpose can it have to us. remember that you're a human too. if you don't know somthing, alone with the rest of the human race then it can't be acknowledged, catagorised, though about, etc. remember that we, all of us are the human race, we are the only ones that can communicate with each other (efficienly).

there are multiple planes of existance (highest to lowest)
1. we know of it
2. it dosen't exist but we think it dose
3. it dose exist but we don't know of it
I know what order i put them in!
we're the humans and what we do with what we know when we can at whatever place is all that matters because we are the best on this planet.

NOTE: in case you didn't realise i'm making this stuff up as i go, i always choose the more difficult side to take in debates

I see...?

But still, what of the other things? The "underneath the underneath" as it would be quoted in Naruto...?

If it's there, is there not also something behind it? So isn't it like saying that if everything exists, then what is under it?

But if everything is already on the existing plane, then only nothing would be below it. So is it not a way of saying that everything is true AND false?

But Vashies never really responded to the stuff posted, so that discussion has died, and meanwhile Lord has mentioned other ideas so why not discuss those?

Dunno about that. First off, nothing isn't "something that doesn't exist", it's just nothing. So you don't say, for instance, that because aliens don't exist, they are "nothing" or that something else that doesn't exist is "nothing". Also, there are other ways we can use nothing; for instance "nothing in that post is red". But maybe that doesn't matter?

To be not alive is not to be dead; to be dead, something has to be living, and then die. We don't refer to a rock as "dead" because it was never alive - one might argue that atoms and such in something might have been part of a living thing. I would say that for something to be dead, it also has to currently retain a certain resemblance to its living form - dead skin, for instance, is not dead when its decomposed and reconstituted into something else. This is sorta the closest one gets to reincarnation in current understanding of science, when the basic building blocks of our bodies become part of something else (of course, identifying those as "us" is as accurate as referring to a brick as one of the great pyramids).

Moreover, I would argue that antimatter exists, which is a sort of "negative existence". Nothingness is simply an area which has no antimatter or matter. Antimatter and matter cancel each other out, but proportionally; one speck of antimatter does not cancel out all of existence (if it did, we'd never exist, as antimatter is brought into existence naturally by processes dating far back before humanity).

For nothingness to counteract existence would be like...saying the sum of 0 and 1 is 0.

LoL how would anything be discovered? If you focus on what you instinctively sense or what seems to be the truth, you can easily end up wrong; you'd go along with a bloodletting because that's what people tell you will make you better.

Living life without concern for what you don't know; that's terrible. One of the most important things is being able to understand what you don't know understand. I believe Einstein said something along the lines of 'don't leave everything to the professionals'.

You are just restating what you have said before. Let me rephrase my challenge of this idea.
-By tectonic plates being "nothing" do you contend that they had no effect on anything?
-If so, please explain how an earthquake comes into being without tectonic plates?
-If not, please clarify what you mean by "nothing".

Another example of when I've asked you, it may be a better one to answer (not sure). How do we get sick if bacteria, which we did not know about, were "nothing" and could not affect us.

Again, don't see how you could argue this. Plague was a phenomenon to the people of the middle ages, caused as it was by bacteria; the black plague still killed many, many europeans.

LOL! What the fuck is "we"? Since when have humans done anything with one voice as one people? There's no point in even arguing that you're wrong, though you are, because there's no point in the near future when such actions will need to be scrutinized.

The planet is not all of existence. Therefore, by saying we are justified within our local plane 'just because', the same occurs on any smaller scale. A majority is responsible in killing off a minority, especially if they are superior (LOL ever heard of aryans?).

let me put it this way. if there is a grand plane of existence, surpassing matter, energy and time in such a way it would be impossible for somone like me to explain. it might affects us but we don't know of it. and it's because of the fact that we don't know of it means that it dosen't affect us to our knowledge. there may be a more forcful energy than the extreme heat under the earths crust that cause tectonic plates to move, but we can't find it.

put simply, i am a type of person that must see things to belive them (unless it's from a reputable source). people come up with explanations and regardlees of if they're true they have been explained and are assumed right (deppending on how plausible it is ofcourse).

in this world, at present, to the humans (or the humans i'm talking abiut at least), science is reality, what science tells us it what we believe to be reality, this may be altered by individual opinion

i ask you, do you believe what documentaries, school, encyclopedias, etc tell you. do you belive all of what they tell you. do you question the possibility that they may be wrong?

Fair enough. I think either I read too much into, or you overstated (maybe both) the extent of this point, but on this 'scale' I can see what you're saying. I would say something can change our knowledge without us being aware of it; this is pretty much how humanity has been developing since times immemorial. I think one of the defining things about the renaissance period isn't that it was a period of rediscovery of knowledge and shit, but rather that humans were very much aware of the legacy they were picking up on. The works themselves recognize the re adaptation of older stuff. But generally things we know nothing about still have an effect on our knowledge - the laws of physics and shit were doing stuff even when we had no comprehension of them; thus, we came to understand stuff about the universe because they 'held it in place' for lack of motivation to put it in better terms.

Also, simply recognizing the unknowable has a deep, profound impact on human knowledge, and so while the effects of something we don't know are different from what they'd be if we did know that thing, not knowing something still effects the rest of our knowledge. I may have badly worded this, if anyone can't follow say so and I'll try to put it in better words.

Well, I would argue we're talking about viewpoints, paradigms, not actual reality. We can say that you know, belief is truth, what people think is true is true, etc, but that's IMO overstating things. You know, what we believe isn't actually reality, and opinion doesn't actually alter reality at its core, it only alters how people respond to stuff (indirect influence on 'reality').

Well...if it's something fairly unimportant, I will take something at its word until it gives me cause for suspicion. Which does happen sometimes. If I begin to suspect the authenticity of something based on other 'facts' I've read, I'll try to talk with the teacher, friends, or whoever and find someone who knows something and can try to clarify if there's actually a conflict of my former knowledge and what's being told to me. If it's something I'm rather well versed on (history, literature, non-mathy sciences, other stuff) I keep a sharp eye out for any sort of important evidence that sounds a tad fishy, and again chat it up. This has used up some lunch periods on serious conversation instead of chillaxin, but whatever.

I've seen a number of academic ideas which are just plain wrong. One which occurs off the top of my head is that athenian dramas were performed in front of audiences which were made up of educated people who all knew the plot of the play because they knew all the myths (not universal, but I've seen it in places). Now, if one actually consults the ancient greeks instead of the modern era's academics, the truth is quite different, Aristophanes' Clouds being a case in point. In comparing Euripides and Aeschylus (two of the three great playwrights) he notes that Euripides precedes all his plays with a prologue which lays out the preceding storyline and gives detail to the citizens who aren't well versed in mythology. IIRC he even says it's an important technique in capturing a good deal more of the Athenian populace. If all scholars actually read the plays themselves and looked at the differences, they'd get to that level of understanding on their lonesome.

Hmmm.... Makes a lil' less sense to me now. Thanks~!

The purpose of DABAIT is quite often to elaborate in order to explain, so as things are clarified they become obscured. Much like opening window blinds, after a long sleep, in the late morning only to be blinded by the light shining in (guess how many sundays are like that for me).

But, if you ask questions, you may or may not come to a better understanding. Did anything I tried to say about nothing/everything make sense?