The Impossibility Of Absolutely-Nothing And the Necessity Of A Fundamental Unchanging Act Of Reality

[IWantGod]

we aren’t really describing the absence of everything

That is what i am describing when i say absolutely nothing - the absolute ontological absence of any possibility that could be true or real. Do you have a different meaning?

 

[IWantGod]

There is no proving this

I just did.

There is no truth in absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing is the absence of truth. If there was absolutely nothing, it would be true, and this is a contradiction because it is the absence of truth. It is nothing.

Absolutely nothing is not a possibility because only that which can in principle be true can be described as a possibility.

 

[Inquiry]

Inquiry:

we aren’t really describing the absence of everything

That is what i am describing when i say absolutely nothing - the absolute ontological absence of any possibility that could be true or real. Do you have a different meaning?

No, that was a language argument. Language cannot actually describe absolute-nothing, no matter how we try. Even the name absolute-nothing doesn’t apply, because a thing (a description that also doesn’t apply) that was exactly like the absence of everything except for having a name would not be the absence of everything. We are bypassing that problem for the sake of convenience, but we should not forget that it is a bypass not a valid description.

There is no truth in absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing is the absence of truth. If there was absolutely nothing, it would be true, and this is a contradiction because it is the absence of truth. It is nothing.

That’s not proving, that’s defining it out of existence. To be fair, that may be a valid thing to do with absolutely-nothing, but its still treating it as an axiom rather than proving it.

Here’s the thing: I agree with you overall. There are just some fundamental problems with discussing absolutely-nothing that make it difficult to describe in a useful way. For instance, normally you can say something is either X or not-X (whatever X happens to be) and the set of all things that are either X or not-X is the set of all things. But absolutely-nothing is not in the set of all things. So even if we say that it cannot be X, that doesn’t make it not-X.

 

[fhansen]

I don’t think we can actually imagine nothing. There’s nothing to imagine. And I think that may be the point. In Genesis the word used for nothing is darkness because that’s the closest approximation to “no thing” that they could conceive of, darkness being the absence of light. But either way we don’t exist in an environment where something isn’t present everywhere, if only air molecules. Maybe not. I’m no physicist. But in any case to imagine nothing doesn’t quite resonate

 

[IWantGod]

That’s not proving, that’s defining it out of existence.

Well i can define a square-circle out of existence by saying that it is neither a circle or a square, does that mean i am wrong to say it cannot possibly exist? Of course not; it cannot exist because it’s meaningless, just like all contradictions essentially are. By breaking down what a concept actually means, we can tell if it actually means anything rational or if it is just a meaningless absurdity like absolutely-nothing.

No, that was a language argument.

It’s not a language argument, that’s the actual definition of absolutely nothing - the absence of all possible truths/facts/actualities/meaning/ and beings including the very principles of logic. It is nothing at all.

The question is, can it be a possibility, and have i proven that it cannot, because if it were true, then it would follow that truth is a principle of nothing, which is a contradiction. it is meaningless as a self-referent. It only has meaning insofar as it compares to real things. For example one can reasonably say there is nothing in the room, but only because we are actually saying that all the possible things that could be in the room are not there. We cannot meaningfully say that there is a nothing in the room as a self-referent. It is meaningless. There is reality in the room and the room itself is in reality regardless of whether there are possible things in it or not.

The impossibility of absolutely nothing is even more clear when we consider argument number two where i talk about eternal truths.

The bottom line is, if absolutely nothing is meaningless, then a necessary fundamental unchanging eternal act of reality exists.

Absolutely-nothing is impossible because there are truths that are in principle always true and cannot cease to be true. There is no principle truth in absolutely-nothing thus absolutely nothing cannot ever be true. 2+2 = 4 is always true or is one such example. If there is even only one such example of what i would call an “eternal-truth”, it follows necessarily that absolutely-nothing is impossible.

 

[IWantGod]

but its still treating it as an axiom rather than proving it.

Well, perhaps this can be a discussion all by itself, because metaphysical axioms are not assumptions. They are not arbitrarily accepted, but rather they are accepted because there is no meaningful alternative.

 

[Vico]

… Nothing refers to the possibility of some thing that is absent from reality. …

The terms in Latin have these meanings:
Creatio ex materia: creation out of pre-existent eternal matter.
Creatio ex deo: creation out of the being of God.
Creatio ex nihilo: creation from nothing. God is changeless because change means passage from potency to act, and God is without beginning and end. God and a realm of non-divine potentiality (nothing) exist. The state of potentiality (nothing) precedes actuality (thing) in creatures.

 

[IWantGod]

The state of potentiality (nothing) precedes actuality (thing) in creatures.

What i will say is that while potency and potentiality is not a being in the common sense of the word, it is not absolutely nothing either. it is either what a thing is becoming or what could possibly be. I have the potentiality to lose a bit of weight (let’s face it, i need to), but the loss of that weight is not a real thing right now, it just could be real. What ultimately makes potentialities and possibilities not simply nothing at all is the nature of God. Things are possible because of God’s nature. Without God there would be no possibilities or potentialities. There would be absolutely nothing.

 

[Vico]

Vico:

The state of potentiality (nothing) precedes actuality (thing) in creatures.

What i will say is that while potency and potentiality is not a being in the common sense of the word, it is not nothing either. it is either what a thing is becoming or what could possibly be. I have the potentiality to lose a bit of weight (let’s face it, i need to), but the loss of that weight is not a real thing right now, it just could be real. What ultimately makes potentialities and possibilities not simply nothing at all is the nature of God. Things are possible because of God’s nature. Without God there would be no possibilities or potentialities. There would be absolutely nothing.

Potentiality is nothing – from Aristotle and in that sense St. Thomas Aquinas used it. God is not a created thing.

 

[IWantGod]

God is not a created thing.

I agree…

 

[Vico]

Vico:

God is not a created thing.

I agree…

And creation is neither an emanation of God nor is creation God.

 

[IWantGod]

And creation is neither an emanation of God nor is creation God.

i agree…

 

[Neithan]

What do you think of modal realism? If all logically possible worlds necessarily exist, does your conclusion mean anything other than “existence exists”?

 

[IWantGod]

logically possible worlds

This could be a thread all on it’s own. Is a logically possible world, by the very nature of being possible, a necessary world? And what is a logically possible world?

I don’t think modal realism affects my argument because i begin by questioning the possibility of absolutely nothing, and by showing that the concept of absolutely-nothing is impossible and more importantly meaningless, i am able to conclude that a fundamental absolutely necessary unchanging act of reality exists.

In establishing this, two facts necessarily emerge. Whatever it is that necessary reality essentially is (at this stage of the argument), it cannot be something that can cease to exist, and more importantly it cannot be something that is changing.

To put it simply; a necessary act of reality ( a reality that cannot cease to be in principle ) is by definition not comprised of potentially real parts.

In fact, i have established that such a being is in principle an ontological necessity before you can meaningfully begin talking about possible worlds, because whatever possible world exists this being is fundamental.

 

[itsjustme]

In establishing this, two facts necessarily emerge. Whatever it is that necessary reality essentially is ( at this stage of the argument ), it cannot be something that can cease to exist, and more importantly it cannot be something that is changing.

But how does the highlighted section apply to modal realism, or any other block universe or B-theory of time? After all, if the universe isn’t actually changing, and it never ceases to exist, then doesn’t the universe in its entirety fulfill your requirements of being unchanging and eternal?

To put it simply; a necessary act of reality ( a reality that cannot cease to be in principle ) is by definition not comprised of potentially real parts.

But this only implies that the parts aren’t potentially real, it doesn’t imply that they can’t be actually real, which they are if they cannot cease to exist, and they cannot change. So it in no way implies that there can’t be any parts. In some sense it implies that they’re not really parts at all, but are instead necessary attributes of the whole, such that the whole can’t exist without them. If the whole is eternal and unchanging, and the parts are eternal and unchanging, then the parts must be a necessary attribute of the whole.

 

[IWantGod]

it never ceases to exist, then doesn’t the universe in its entirety fulfill your requirements of being unchanging and eternal?

Firstly, there could very well be a block universe, but i don’t know what time would have to do with it since it does not change, and we are certainly not in one.

Having said that there are reasons for rejecting the idea that fundamental reality is a natural cause (Lets call our hypothetical universe a static physical universe, S.P.U.). So we have a static universe with stars and space but no processes, no physical activity, no transference of energy. The first glaring problem is the very fact that an S.P.U.* is a static physical object with no natural processes, and thus one cannot say that other possible universes is the natural end of a S.P.U.. Without natural processes it is not a natural cause. Since it is necessary, it cannot transform into other universes. Thus other possible universes (including our universe) are not or cannot be a natural parts of the S.P.U. since they cannot be a natural result of the activity it fundamentally lacks. Which is serious problem, in fact it is impossible that an S.P.U.* is the fundamental ground of all possible universes.

There are 2 other reasons for rejecting a quantifiable object as the ground of all possible realities, such as the fact that we talking about something that is made of parts and has finite dimensions. The problem arises with the fact that it is a limited reality which could be bigger or smaller, brighter or more powerful. There two problems with this,…

1. It’s features are arbitrary. Why would a necessary universe be made of 1 duck or 2 ducks, or three stars or 10 quasars, or any other quantity you could imagine? In other-words it’s a brute fact that doesn’t follow out of necessity. For example we know why the space in our universe is huge, because it expanded. We know why black-holes and quasars exist in our universe and that is because of blind-natural processes. But with the S.P.U. * none of those things are happening ( there are no processes that act toward a natural end ) and neither is it’s contents derived from necessity ( meaning, the reason they are there is arbitrary ), so why would it exist? In fact why would an S.P.U. * exist at all?
2. Secondly, a fundamental necessary act of reality is not limited in it’s act of reality. It has the fullness of reality and does not lack anything. It cannot get more reality from some where else because it is the very ground of all possibility; there is nothing else. And so it is meaningless to describe such a being as being limited in any way. Physical reality is limited. It can be bigger or smaller, it has parts, it has dimensions. It has limitations in it’s act of reality precisely because it’s a quantifiable being, and there is no rational reason for it to be that way ( any particular size shape or quantity ) out of necessity. It’s limitation is potentially infinite no matter what is imagined or added. it can always be more and is never complete.

 

[IWantGod]

Every attempt to replace an uncaused cause with a physical object has always resulted in a brute fact, existing for no reason at all. In other-words an S.P.U.* is an irrational object as far ultimate realities go.

 

[IWantGod]

But this only implies that the parts aren’t potentially real, it doesn’t imply that they can’t be actually real, which they are if they cannot cease to exist, and they cannot change. So it in no way implies that there can’t be any parts.

Did i make that argument?

 

[itsjustme]

itsjustme:

But this only implies that the parts aren’t potentially real, it doesn’t imply that they can’t be actually real, which they are if they cannot cease to exist, and they cannot change. So it in no way implies that there can’t be any parts.

Did i make that argument?

To put it simply; a necessary act of reality ( a reality that cannot cease to be in principle ) is by definition not comprised of potentially real parts.

My point was that while it may in fact be true that a necessary act of reality can’t be comprised of potentially real parts, that doesn’t preclude it from being comprised of actually real parts, which is what modal realism, B-theory, and block universe theories describe.

In a reality where nothing is actually changing, potentiality is only an illusion. In such a reality everything is pure act, and everything is part of the necessary act. And we may actually be living in just such a reality.

 

[itsjustme]

Every attempt to replace an uncaused cause with a physical object has always resulted in a brute fact, existing for no reason at all. In other-words an S.P.U. * is an irrational object as far ultimate realities go.

I do believe that you’re mistaken. If your “static physical universe” is quantum in nature then it wouldn’t just contain our version of reality, but it would actually contain every possible version of reality. In which case there’s no brute fact required, our version of reality exists because it can’t help but exist. It’s part and parcel of the necessary act itself.

It can’t…not exist.