An Arguement for the Existence of a Timeless Non-Physical Cuase

[ReapReason]

Reason is by its very nature contradictory; in view of these considerations, our ideas stand in need to the noumena. The Ideal of human reason, in so far as this expounds the universal rules of the noumena, can be treated like pure logic. As is evident upon close examination, our a posteriori concepts, still, prove the validity of necessity; in view of these considerations, the employment of the paralogisms of practical reason, consequently, can be treated like the Antinomies. Because of the relation between time and the objects in space and time, our faculties (and to avoid all misapprehension, it is necessary to explain that this is the case) stand in need to natural causes. You should be careful to observe that, then, time is the key to understanding metaphysics, but the phenomena would thereby be made to contradict, even as this relates to the Ideal of natural reason, the manifold. The phenomena, so regarded, should only be used as a canon for our judgements, and our knowledge can never furnish a true and demonstrated science, because, like our experience, it has lying before it disjunctive principles. Separated modes of consciousness, in a maximally broad sense, need to be criticized with regard to their validity and range, before they can be used for the purposes of a radical grounding of the all-embracing consciousness of internal time, by the fundamental nature of modes of consciousness.

What is Antinomies and Paralogisms?

When you speak of Noumena, are you speaking of reality as it is in itself beyond the veil?

You say that reasoning is irrational, but doesn’t Kant employ reasoning in his argument?

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Reason is by its very nature contradictory; in view of these considerations, our ideas stand in need to the noumena. The Ideal of human reason, in so far as this expounds the universal rules of the noumena, can be treated like pure logic. As is evident upon close examination, our a posteriori concepts, still, prove the validity of necessity; in view of these considerations, the employment of the paralogisms of practical reason, consequently, can be treated like the Antinomies. Because of the relation between time and the objects in space and time, our faculties (and to avoid all misapprehension, it is necessary to explain that this is the case) stand in need to natural causes. You should be careful to observe that, then, time is the key to understanding metaphysics, but the phenomena would thereby be made to contradict, even as this relates to the Ideal of natural reason, the manifold. The phenomena, so regarded, should only be used as a canon for our judgements, and our knowledge can never furnish a true and demonstrated science, because, like our experience, it has lying before it disjunctive principles. Separated modes of consciousness, in a maximally broad sense, need to be criticized with regard to their validity and range, before they can be used for the purposes of a radical grounding of the all-embracing consciousness of internal time, by the fundamental nature of modes of consciousness.

Ummm…What?

 

[ReapReason]

Ummm…What?

You won’t understand Alberti. Don’t even try.

 

[norain]

I can’t get past “Reason is by its very nature contradictory”.

Just can’t. Any meaningful discussion stops right there.

 

[ReapReason]

I can’t get past “Reason is by its very nature contradictory”.

Just can’t. Any meaningful discussion stops right there.

His whole thesis is supposedly a fulfilment of reason. He destroyed his whole argument before it even started.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

You won’t understand Alberti. Don’t even try.

I do not think anyone can. His definitions are non-existent and, as norain points out, he forces people to stop reading when he says ‘reason is contradictory.’

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

I can’t get past “Reason is by its very nature contradictory”.

Just can’t. Any meaningful discussion stops right there.

That is where I stopped too.

And to think that I spent some time on his Part I thread (I could not get past the first paragraph because it did not make any sense there either). Perhaps ThinkingSapien’s comment on the Dunning-Kruger effect was a bit of a foresight…

 

[Peter_Plato]

An assessment of “not possible” requires data. Contradiction requires data. A is not equal to B. Without data, as in nothingness, there is nothing to contradict. There is nothing to determine. Nada… zero… nil…

A blank sheet of paper has no statements whatsoever. An assessment of “not possible” cannot be applied if there is nothing to assess!

A logical contradiction does not require data in the sense you are trying to ascribe to nothingness. A square circle is a meaningless nothing, because it is impossible. There is no data in a square circle, it is meaningless because a concept cannot be determined for it. Absolute nothingness is the same. There is no concept possible for it because meaning cannot be assigned. There is nothing to assign meaning to. It is a non-concept because no concept is possible for “it.”. It is not a possible concept, therefore an impossible concept.

 

[norain]

A logical contradiction does not require data in the sense you are trying to ascribe to nothingness. A square circle is a meaningless nothing, because it is impossible. There is no data in a square circle, it is meaningless because a concept cannot be determined for it. Absolute nothingness is the same. There is no concept possible for it because meaning cannot be assigned. There is nothing to assign meaning to. It is a non-concept because no concept is possible for “it.”. It is not a possible concept, therefore an impossible concept.

What??

Square circle presents the contradicting information of a circle with sides. It is not nothing. Wrong info is still info. I think there is confusion as to what impossible and “not possible” means.

My understanding of impossible is if it presents two contradicting statements. Either one might be true, but they both cannot be true. Therein lies its impossibility.

What we have here is “nothing” in that it presents no information. Okay, we get the piece of info that there is no info, but that’s it. No properties, no contradictions, for there are no statements to contradict. It becomes contradictory because you attempt to inject it with properties, because it has precisely ZERO properties.

 

[ReapReason]

What??

Square circle presents the contradicting information of a circle with sides. It is not nothing. Wrong info is still info. I think there is confusion as to what impossible and “not possible” means.

There is no such thing as a square-circle in any meaningful sense. It is logically meaningless, just like an infinite number is logically meaningless, because the terms themselves cannot represent anything that is real. There is no confusion.

A square is not a triangle and a triangle is not a square. A square triangle therefore cannot be an objective reality. It is a logically meaningless concept in so far as it irrational.

Nothing is not reality and reality is not nothing. You cannot find an objective nothing in reality. You cannot have objective truth in absolutely nothing. Therefore absolutely nothing cannot be objectively true. It is logically meaningless to suggest that it can be true.

If absolutely nothing cannot be objectively true, then its irrational to say that there can be an actual state of absolutely nothing, since such a state would be objectively true and therefore would be a real object; and this is the contradiction since nothing is not a real object.

 

[norain]

You can neither determine true or false in nothing. It’s as simple as that. Your attempt to derive anything out of nothing is the source of contradiction, not nothing.

 

[ReapReason]

You can neither determine true or false in nothing. It’s as simple as that. Your attempt to derive anything out of nothing is the source of contradiction, not nothing.

That you are trying to justify the possibility of a logically true objective state affairs in which truth itself is redundant/absent, is the source of the contradiction.

You are failing to understand the illogical implications of absolutely nothing when described as an objectively true state affairs.

 

[norain]

That you are trying to justify the possibility of a logically true objective state affairs in which truth itself is redundant/absent, is the source of the contradiction.

You are failing to understand the illogical implications of absolutely nothing when described as an objectively true state affairs.

“Nothing is nothing.” Now is that statement objectively true or false?

 

[ReapReason]

“Nothing is nothing.” Now is that statement objectively true or false?

You are just describing what nothing is.

When presented in the context of what can and cannot be an objectively true state of affairs, this is where the problem arises.

Insofar as the concept “nothing” symbolizes the absence of some possible being from an already existing state of affairs, this is a logically true state of affairs because you are describing reality as opposed to nothing. For example to say that there is no bike in room A is simply to describe the ontological state of room A.

But, if you intend to use the word nothing in the context of saying that there is a possible objectively true state of affairs that represents the absence of all objective truth, then this is a logical contradiction.

Like i said here…

If absolutely nothing cannot be objectively true, then its irrational to say that there can be a true state of absolutely nothing since such a state would be objectively true and therefore would be a real object; and this is the contradiction since nothing is not a real object.

Absolutely Nothing by definition is not an objectively true state of affairs.

 

[Peter_Plato]

You can neither determine true or false in nothing. It’s as simple as that. Your attempt to derive anything out of nothing is the source of contradiction, not nothing.

There is an ambiguity in the word nothing that allows the kind of confusion your points highlight. The word nothing is a compound of the words “no” and “thing” which can be taken as the absence of something, as in your blank paper example. There is no writing on the paper, therefore there is nothing, i.e., no-thing on the paper, understood as “the absence of what is expected.” This use of no-thing is understood because it is stated with reference to an expected quality.

What ReapReason is talking about is absolute nothingness, the absence of all being. On the surface this sounds as if it ought to be unproblematic because absence and being both make sense and form the ”data" that you asked about previously, just as square and circle form the data of the concept squared circle. The question though, is: Can you square a circle? Even though a question seems on the surface to be possible, the answer for it is clearly, No, because a contradiction arises. The resulting answer is incoherent, no meaning can be ascribed because you cannot have a circle with corners.

A similar question can be formed for absolute nothingness: Can you coherently remove everything and have absolute nothingness? The answer again is clearly, No, because nothingness is not a thing that you can have. It has no ontological status. Nothingness in this sense cannot exist on its own, it absolutely depends on the existence of something. It is a “privation” of being, completely parasitic on there being something to begin with. No-thing makes no sense without a “thing” to be the “no” about.

What ReapReason argued is that a state of absolute nothingness is incoherent (a contradiction) because it is meaningless without presuming something. So something is a necessary precondition for nothing to be meaningful. Absolute nothingness, i.e., the state of not requiring something, cannot, at the same time, be the state of presuming something, so there is a logical inconsistency, a contradiction, that arises.

Now the case could be argued that absolute nothingness is a kind of “factual” contradiction, as in “after the fact.” A table cannot logically be a chair, but as a matter of fact it might have been a chair if it wasn’t a table. So the question could be asked if absolute nothingness might have existed as a possibility, i.e., the mere absence of everything, simply non-being, instead of the being that we have.

In a sense, it is our understanding of the word nothingness that limits it to a dependence on something, so this is a factual or semantic contradiction. Can we rightfully ascribe to it a kind of ontological status? Can our “factually” limited idea of absolute nothingness force reality to conform to it? Is it a true logical contradiction?

If it is true that “from nothing, nothing comes” then clearly there is a factual case that since there exists something now, there could not have been a time of absolute nothingness, which I think is the crux of the cosmological argument.

Somewhere along the line ReapReason’s argument does a sort of piggyback on the cosmological argument. He may be “skirting” the idea of the possibility of absolute nothingness as an alternative to somethingness, which is your point.

But is he?

Does it make any sense to speak of the non-existence of existence? That existence might not have existed?

 

[norain]

“Absolutely nothing” is true in that it signifies absolutely nothing.

Of course it describes nothing. What exactly were you expecting?

 

[ReapReason]

“Absolutely nothing” is true in that it signifies absolutely nothing.

Of course it describes nothing. What exactly were you expecting?

Describing a concept and demonstrating the possible objective truth of something is two different activities operating in two different contexts.

Its true that nothing means nothing. That doesn’t mean that absolutely nothing is an objectively true state of affairs.

If you cannot understand these simple contextual distinctions i no-longer want to have this discussion with you.

 

[centurionguard]

1. Absolutely nothing cannot objectively exist, because there is no objective truth in absolutely nothing. If it existed, not only would it not be nothing by the fact that it “exists”, it would also be objectively true, and thus such cannot ever be the case because it is an ontological contradiction.
2. Therefore there is a being that is absolutely and intrinsically real, in the sense that reality is its nature.
3. It cannot become more real, since it is already reality, and therefore it has no potentiality in terms of becoming. It cannot take on more attributes because it is the source of all reality and thus cannot take on more reality from something else.
4. If there is no potentiality in its being, then there is no change in its being; and as such it is timeless.
5. Since this being is timeless it is not apart of the space-time-continuum, it is not energy or space; and therefore this being is not physical.
6. This being is not the universe and therefore the Universe as a being is contingent upon this ultimate reality in order to be real because it has no reality other than what is given to it by that which is ultimately real.

Conclusion: Our universe is the product of a non-physical being.

1. Absolutely nothing cannot objectively exist, because there is no objective truth in absolutely nothing. If it existed, not only would it not be nothing by the fact that it “exists”, it would also be objectively true, and thus such cannot ever be the case because it is an ontological contradiction.

I think everything you’ve stated here is based strictly on the limited faculty of human intellect and human science in of itself.

Perhaps the only assertion we can claim is that God or Creator is the total expression of Absoluteness for a lack of better understanding in God Himself.

((“IF”)) there is any claim to an essence or existence of Nothingness, then it is hidden inside the eternal limitless Absoluteness of God our Creator and beyond the intellectual understanding of God’s creation outside of Himself.

 

[ReapReason]

I think everything you’ve stated here is based strictly on the limited faculty of human intellect and human science in of itself.

Explain your rational reasons for thinking this to be the case.

 

[norain]

Peter,

I think one must be clear about the distinction between what is being described, and the act of describing. “meta-whatever” is what they usually call it.

Existence, for example, exists as a concept.

Nothing can have truth, and that truth is that it contains no truth, which indeed makes it something, yet still nothing, consistent with its original premise.

The fact that we can freely talk about it and can have some general agreement to what we are talking about proves it, that nothing is ontologically (should I also say epistemologically?) something.