Re: IS NOTHING SACRED?
Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 4:20 am
Hi Ron, thanks, I hope we are circling closer to the point. Now you have changed your thesis again. This time you say "We CANNOT imagine a universe without humans". But your original claim was that "we cannot imagine a universe in which we are not present". That is quite different, because we can easily imagine a universe in which humans are in the past or the future, but not the present. That was why I asked you if you were talking about an eternal present, which you said you were not.rongreen5 wrote:Robert, Sorry to be repetetive, but I stand by my original statement. We CANNOT imagine a universe without humans, since in order to do that we have to be not around in order to do that.
We can in fact imagine a universe without humans. That is what the theory of multiverses is about, the idea of multiple universes, like soap bubbles in the bath of God. Perhaps what you mean is that we cannot imagine our universe without humans. I would agree with that.
All I am saying is if you want to talk about nothing, at least get your ducks in a row, even if they are nonexistent ducks.
Specialists know everything about nothing, while generalists know nothing about everything. (At least those are the asymptotic end points of the continuum.) Maybe you are the ultimate specialist?Since you insist on arguing with me without reading what I wrote on the subject, I am finding it tedious to answer every point of yours. So it goes with the issue of Eastern religions. Nothingness (the absence of something) is not Nothing. Tao deals with nothingness, which is something.
You state that "the paradox that to talk of nothing makes nothing into something." You are mixing up the term and the concept. There is no way we can talk about anything without using language. It's all we've got to discuss stuff. You are right, though, that we can't talk about the concept Nothing; the reason is that to touch Nothing in any way would mean that we would not be present. That is Nothing: the absence of everything, including ourselves.
Nothing is not a paradox. A paradox is something. Nothing simply isn't. As hard as that is to comprehend, it is what we have to contend with when we discuss Nothing using the word "nothing."
Heidegger pointed out that the nothing which sits outside logical conversation opens us up to a sense of everything, so has a useful rational purpose in existential ontology. His essay What is Metaphysics? is worth reading.
You haven't convinced me that we can avoid paradox if we wish to talk about nothing. How do you answer when people say the conversation is entirely without content, empty, vacuous, meaningless and absurd? A paradox is not something, it is impossible. Impossible things don't exist. Talking about nothing is a paradox. Even our conversation here is not really about nothing, it is just about how we can talk about nothing. Nothing has an amazing facility to elude all efforts to talk about it.
Tallleyrand said the Bourbons remembered everything and comprehended nothing. It looks like they were expert Taoists.
I will mull over your claim that nothing is the absence of everything.