Proof the nothing exists

[Qoeleth]

Existence (at least in a mundane sense) seems to be determinable as substance multiplied by duration. A ‘thing’ needs both substance (some mass, conceptual quality, etc.) and some duration (i.e. it must last for more than zero time) to exist.

Now, things of the past no longer have substance. There is no physical reality of the past. Even memory is a substance of present, not past.

Similarly, things of the present do not have substance. There is no physical reality of the future. Even anticipation of the future is a substance of present, not future.

The present, which is merely the intersection of the past and the future, has an infinitely small duration, effectively zero duration. The present is not one hour, or one minute, or even one second. It is literally ‘no time’. Therefore it does not really exist.

Thus neither past, nor present nor future exist.

Is there a fault in this reasoning?

 

[itullian]

things of the present do have substance

no matter how short the present is, it is.

thus substance and duration.

 

[Qoeleth]

things of the present do have substance

no matter how short the present is, it is.

thus substance and duration.

I disagree. Things of the present have substance, yes, but not duration. If we say that “NOW!” is the present- the word “NOW!” takes maybe 0.25 of a second to say. Some of it is in the past, some of it is the future. Only, literally a POINT in time is the present. And a point has no length or breadth. Thus the present has, literally, no duration. It is therefore non-existent.

 

[itullian]

stand by my original post.

 

[Nigel7]

This egg roll I’m eating right now IS yummy. Not “was”, not “will be”, but “IS”… RIGHT NOW.

Yep… Still is.

Mmmmmm

Now, leave me alone. I am eating.

That is “I AM” eating. Not I “was”, not I “will be” eating. i AM eating.

 

[thewanderer]

What about the fact that the past used to be the present? There is clearly more than one moment of existence for each substance. Say we take the moment you wake up to the moment you walk out your front door. When you wake up, it is the present, when you go downstairs it is the present. When you walk out the front door it is the present. Throughout each and every action one is in the present. That sure seems to me like substance a substance ‘lasting’ for a duration. In other words, past, present,and future all depend on what moment of time one is looking at.
Also, I fail to see how your use of the term ‘lasts’ for a duration doesn’t already imply existence. Making this argument circular?

 

[Qoeleth]

What about the fact that the past used to be the present? There is clearly more than one moment of existence for each substance. Say we take the moment you wake up to the moment you walk out your front door. When you wake up, it is the present, when you go downstairs it is the present. When you walk out the front door it is the present. Throughout each and every action one is in the present. That sure seems to me like substance a substance ‘lasting’ for a duration. In other words, past, present,and future all depend on what moment of time one is looking at.
Also, I fail to see how your use of the term ‘lasts’ for a duration doesn’t already imply existence. Making this argument circular?

Past does not exist- only memory of past exists. You remember the door from the past- the memory of the door exist, but not the door of the past.

Since time is infinitely subdividable, the moment NOW has, literally, zero duration. Therefore it, like the past, does not exist.

 

[JNdoum]

That’s an interesting theory, but technically faulty (simply outside of a faith perspective) that it seems not to account for continuation. If I write something down, and stare at it for twenty minutes, hasn’t it been exactly the same for those twenty minutes? Even if you consider the past as not existing (which to us, it doesn’t, in a sense), aren’t we currently moving through time? And if nothing has duration, then isn’t the qualification for duration a qualification for nothingness as opposed to somethingness? It’s like a triangle with four sides. To meet that qualification, it cannot be a triangle. Perhaps to meet the qualifications you conjecture, we cannot be something. Perhaps the whole idea is simply a mistake of perception; we only see the present being one moment, when truly we exist in several moments at once at a time. Or perhaps, though the past is “gone”, residues of it sort of hang around everything or sometihing? In a sense, time doesn’t even truly exist, everything is a matter of movement: atoms moving and so on. So the entire concept of duration is a fallacy, and doesn’t exist itself. So in truth, we do exist, and always have (since matter cannot be created unless God so choses to make more or destroyed unless God so chooses to destroy it) but we’ve changed forms, and we mistake this change of forms as an imaginary concept which we call time. Wow, that’s an interesting concept. Is anyone else confused?

 

[Qoeleth]

That’s an interesting theory, but technically faulty (simply outside of a faith perspective) that it seems not to account for continuation. If I write something down, and stare at it for twenty minutes, hasn’t it been exactly the same for those twenty minutes? Even if you consider the past as not existing (which to us, it doesn’t, in a sense), aren’t we currently moving through time? And if nothing has duration, then isn’t the qualification for duration a qualification for nothingness as opposed to somethingness? It’s like a triangle with four sides. To meet that qualification, it cannot be a triangle. Perhaps to meet the qualifications you conjecture, we cannot be something. Perhaps the whole idea is simply a mistake of perception; we only see the present being one moment, when truly we exist in several moments at once at a time. Or perhaps, though the past is “gone”, residues of it sort of hang around everything or sometihing? In a sense, time doesn’t even truly exist, everything is a matter of movement: atoms moving and so on. So the entire concept of duration is a fallacy, and doesn’t exist itself. So in truth, we do exist, and always have (since matter cannot be created unless God so choses to make more or destroyed unless God so chooses to destroy it) but we’ve changed forms, and we mistake this change of forms as an imaginary concept which we call time. Wow, that’s an interesting concept. Is anyone else confused?

That makes sense. Time is actually an illusion, which makes the problem of the existence of the past meaningless.

But then, if time doesn’t really exist, but then surely neither could change, since time would seem to be a measurement of change.

So this would be a bit like Parmenides, perhaps?

 

[empther]

From post 1…

Is there a fault in this reasoning?

Yeah.
Existence is not dependent on time.

End of thread.

 

[thewanderer]

Past does not exist- only memory of past exists. You remember the door from the past- the memory of the door exist, but not the door of the past.

Since time is infinitely subdividable, the moment NOW has, literally, zero duration. Therefore it, like the past, does not exist.

I believe you are not quite understanding what I tried to say. Every single moment in the past at one point in time was the present. So at one point each of those moments of time was the present, and so it existed. The substance endured through each of thosemoments of time while they were the present. Therefore it had duration, therefore it existed. While it is not as full or as perfect as an eternal unchanging being who would be outside of time, it is still an existence.

Also, like I said, I think the reasoning is a little backwards, existence does not depend on time, rather time exists as the measure of motion and change which exists only because changeable beings exist.

I hope this is helpful.

 

[CGDouglas]

Argument 1: Existence: A ‘thing’ needs both substance (some mass, conceptual quality, etc.) and some duration (i.e. it must last for more than zero time) to exist.

**Argument 2: **Now, things of the past no longer have substance. There is no physical reality of the past. Even memory is a substance of present, not past.

**Argument 3: **Similarly, things of the present do not have substance. There is no physical reality of the future. Even anticipation of the future is a substance of present, not future.

**Argument 4:**The present, which is merely the intersection of the past and the future, has an infinitely small duration, effectively zero duration. The present is not one hour, or one minute, or even one second. It is literally ‘no time’. Therefore it does not really exist.

Thus neither past, nor present nor future exist.

Is there a fault in this reasoning?

Argument 1: No problems so far, you base your reasoning of existence upon matter in relation to time (failing however to acknowledge that existence also stems from the Existence of God).

Argument 2: There is a physical reality of the past, for as your first argument states that one exists from lasting more than 0.** See argument 4.**

Argument 3: The future is unknown to us, we could die today in a few hours time, or tomorrow. However we know there is a future through Divine Revelation and natural habits of seeing tomorrow when we awake from our sleep.

Argument 4: This is where your argument falters,

The present at it’s minimum calculated value must be at least 1. So if one argues that the present is 1ms, when that ms passes, it becomes past and the new 1ms becomes the present and so forth. There is duration, even if the duration is so small.

Thus as the present is suceeded by the future (which cannot be certain to us), the what was present becomes past.

You’re argument is stemming from how one defines the present, the present is now, if you will that 1ms. Whether the scale is even smaller and becomes even smaller, there’s still a minimum value of 1. One hour, one minute, one second, one millisecond, etc.

Because it occurs so quickly, it does not diminish the present. When it occurs, it occurs then has occured. To be occuring is unknown to us.

God Bless,

Christopher.

 

[CGDouglas]

Past does not exist- only memory of past exists. You remember the door from the past- the memory of the door exist, but not the door of the past.

Since time is infinitely subdividable, the moment NOW has, literally, zero duration. Therefore it, like the past, does not exist.

I remember my door from the past, and of course the door exists, I’ve been looking at the same door for only God Almighty knows how long.

Qoeleth:

Thus the present has, literally, no duration. It is therefore non-existent.

Even if the duration is so small, it still exists.

God Bless,

Christopher.

 

[BobCatholic]

I have the simplest proof that nothing exists.

takes a look at his employment prospects

Done. There’s more than enough proof there.

 

[FaithfulAndTrue]

Existence (at least in a mundane sense) seems to be determinable as substance multiplied by duration. A ‘thing’ needs both substance (some mass, conceptual quality, etc.) and some duration (i.e. it must last for more than zero time) to exist.

Now, things of the past no longer have substance. There is no physical reality of the past. Even memory is a substance of present, not past.

Similarly, things of the present do not have substance. There is no physical reality of the future. Even anticipation of the future is a substance of present, not future.

The present, which is merely the intersection of the past and the future, has an infinitely small duration, effectively zero duration. The present is not one hour, or one minute, or even one second. It is literally ‘no time’. Therefore it does not really exist.

Thus neither past, nor present nor future exist.

Is there a fault in this reasoning?

You’re expressing a mathematical limit.

Lim(1/x) x->infinity = 0

As x gets infinitely large, 1/x gets infinitely small. It is said, the limit is zero but it’s not actually zero. It’s just infinitely close to it.

Think about it this way: Imagine 1 second of time. Now, divide one second in half. You get half a second. Now, divide half a second in half, you get 1/4 second. Divide 1/4 in half. You get 1/8 of a second. You can keep dividing the result in half an infinite number of times but you will never get zero. You will get only a value that is closer and closer to zero.

 

[Qoeleth]

You’re expressing a mathematical limit.

Lim(1/x) x->infinity = 0

As x gets infinitely large, 1/x gets infinitely small. It is said, the limit is zero but it’s not actually zero. It’s just infinitely close to it.

Think about it this way: Imagine 1 second of time. Now, divide one second in half. You get half a second. Now, divide half a second in half, you get 1/4 second. Divide 1/4 in half. You get 1/8 of a second. You can keep dividing the result in half an infinite number of times but you will never get zero. You will get only a value that is closer and closer to zero.

Thank you. Yes, I see my error. Even though the duration of the ‘present’ would seem to approach zero, it cannot really be zero, as then their would be no continuity of time, i.e. if every moment was really absolute zero time, it would never add up to a minute!

Thanks to all.

 

[FaithfulAndTrue]

Thank you. Yes, I see my error. Even though the duration of the ‘present’ would seem to approach zero, it cannot really be zero, as then their would be no continuity of time, i.e. if every moment was really absolute zero time, it would never add up to a minute!

Thanks to all.

No prob. It was an interesting idea.

 

[Qoeleth]

From post 1…

Yeah.
Existence is not dependent on time.

But surely, what if I was to say “Soon a giant pink elephant will appear in front of you. It will exist for zero time.” Now, unless the giant pink elephant exists for something more than zero time, it does not exist at all. If it exists for zero time, it really does not exist at all.

Would you agree?

Isn’t part of the reason why God’s existence is more real is that it is eternal?

P.S. I am not trying to show that nothing exists- as I see that the present is not really zero time. But, it still seem right that existence requires both substance and duration…

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Now, things of the past no longer have substance. There is no physical reality of the past. Even memory is a substance of present, not past.

Shelly Kagan did a course at Yale university on “Death.” I know that sounds morbid, but keep in mind it was a philosophical course. So it wasn’t dark and depressing as the title might imply. It had some material that might be relevant to the above. Though the course had 26 classes which may be more material than one would reasonably interject into this conversation.

I think what you are noting is primarily a linguistic and partially a question of identity. It’s worth noting that as of yet there’s not been any observations of mass/energy being created or completely annihilation. Though there have been massive instances of the physical arrangement of matter and energy being altered we may also label that as being destroyed. At least this can be said of discrete objects. We also give identity to a phenomenon regardless of whether the same matter is involved in the phenomenon between two different time points such as a river (which we usually identify from it’s location relative to some other geographical features). There are also systems in which the matter that composes the system is continuously replaced over time. You could use your own body as an example of such a system. Provided that there has been continuity of the replacement of the matter (or continuity in your thoughts) you would most likely identify some one you knew 4 years ago as being the same person now even though some of their attributes may have evolved. On a related note, there’s a story about a farmer that used the same axe for twenty years. During that twenty years he replaced the axe head a few times and replaced the handle several times, but it’s the same axe!

All of what I’ve said and more is covered in Kagan’s course on death.