I think you would just be refering to a thing with the attribute of no attributes, which seems to hit the same logical contradiction as an existent nothing because I am not sure how something can be without any attributes.
It would be phrased as “no-thing is that which has no definable attributes.” When you are defining concepts, such definition mandates that you would be referring to it. I do not believe there is an attribute of “no attributes.”
Technically, concepts are thoughts, which exist physically as signals (or energy, or whatever the technical term is) within the brains of us humans, and they can be transmitted and shared by speech (also physical, soundwaves) or writing (clearly physical.)
That reduces to Nothing=Nothing.
Neither do I, that’s my point, its not possible to have a set of no sets, or an attribute of no attributes. Its contradictory.
Technically concepts exist in correlation with physical signals. Nobody has ever found a physical elephant in somebodies brain, but rather they have found physical patterns that correspond to the fact that somebody is thinking. The idea that the mind is synonymous to the brain is not a provable hypothesis, its just a widely believed dogma in the scientific community.
I do not deny that we express our concepts through physical mediums, so long as we understand that they are just mediums and are not synonymous in nature to the concepts they help to express.
Isn’t this the point of a defintion? To provide a statement that clarifies a matter. I could define a cat is a cat or say a cat is a small, domesticated carnivore part of the family of Felidae. Both statements are absolutely true but one attempts to provide clarity.
It’s merely being used to describe a condition. Black is not a color but one can use it to help describe the colouration of something, even if it’s ontologically untrue. This allows people to understand what it is you are speaking to.
Now let us proceed on more important issues…Like do you posters have jobs???Yes, I do. Do you?Anything can be a thing. It is dependent on the context on how the word is used…Period!
It’s pretty boring. I train people to configure and setup our OSS network software. It’s software that is designed to interoperate with network telecommunications equipment such as Broadsoft IP switches and Cisco BACCs. What about you?
Oh…I thought you were attempting to assert the a logical contradiction as valid by word play, sorry, I misunderstood. lol. The only time I open my mouth is to change feet.
I suggest a philosopher …and, of course, you may already guessed … Heidegger … and, more specifically, his book: What is a Thing.
So, you’re saying that God is a thing?
Most people think of things as a “this” or a “that” - something you can point at - something that can occupy a specific spatial location/specific temporal moment - something that belongs to a class of similar things.
Actually, don’t just look at Section 19 but at the entirety of Part III, pp. 91-145. Section 19, while interesting in its own right, is limited to a specific explication of Descartes.
This is purely semantics posing as an argument. You are using the word “things” here to make a categorical distinction between physical beings and the being of God, and then saying that my argument fails on the strength of your definition. However this is not the context in which i am using the word. All reality is some-thing or a thing insofar as it is not nothing. An act of reality cannot be the produce of an absence of reality. You are saying that the word thing cannot include God. Well, that depends on the context in which you express the word. I am certainly a thing if by that i mean simply that i am not absent from the act of reality. Its evident to me at least that this was made clear. You cannot use the idea that God is not included in the class of physical beings to argue that a thing can come from nothing. Nothing is an absence of reality. God is not an absence of reality, but rather the fullness of reality. This can only make sense if God is esse; God is the act of reality. Thus it is necessary to make a distinction between the act reality and the creation of a new essence. To create a new esse is to create another God. This is impossible.
It was not my intent and I can appreciate it wasn’t particularly clear. In a similar manner, saying “there are no absolutes”, which is technically self-contradicting in an aspect, allows the speaker to articulate a position we can understand without complex semantics.
You have presented a good summary of the history of philosophy. From Aristotle’s tode ti (a “this” or “that”) through Kant’s etwas, or x, or “some-thing … a thing insofar as it is not nothing.”