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The word was in the same sentence does not mean that there was actually nothing or nothingness actually existing before literally: The word was only works in the context of an observation.
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Keep_Relentless wrote:Yes, and that something must be moving. We can't refer to nothing, nothing is not there. I think we use relations of different existents to have the concept of "nothing" that we do, for example, a coin is not in your pocket, or nothing is the opposite of something, or something does "not" do.
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Gregorygregg1 wrote:Would you agree that an absence of space and mater would qualify as nothing? Are you saying that an absence of space and mater cannot exist? Or do you conceive of nothing from a different perspective great ruller of the visible universe?
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ronjanec wrote:K.R,
It was a very hard to understand post because of the nature of the subject matter and you are back in 9 minutes! You obviously did not spend hardly any time thinking about what was said here. Are you here to actually learn something K.R, or just make speculative posts about a number of different things?
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Keep_Relentless wrote:I must say that I agree. Far too introverted for my own good, huh. xD Okay, I will be taking a break from this.
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ronjanec wrote:Keep_Relentless wrote:I must say that I agree. Far too introverted for my own good, huh. xD Okay, I will be taking a break from this.
I was right about you when I said you were a very bright young man......
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mtbturtle wrote:http://www.philosophychatforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=21819 - another recent Why Something Rather than Nothing
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ronjanec wrote: This from the same person who just made fun of him recently by calling him "great ruler of the visible universe" in response to one of his posts?
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sponge wrote:ronjanec wrote: This from the same person who just made fun of him recently by calling him "great ruler of the visible universe" in response to one of his posts?
Hi ronjanec,
I don’t want to get involved here (my ears don’t need punches from both directions) and I guess Greg is big enough to defend himself but I needed to let you know that the title ‘great ruler of the visible universe’ was not meant as any kind of jibe. It came up when Greg, K_R, weakmagneto, and a few more of us were having some fun together on a light-hearted thread in the Odds and Ends forum. It was called ‘How Would You Take Over The World?’ Check it out.
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ronjanec wrote:Everyone,
I have a really interesting question(or paradox) for everyone in regards to this same discussion, and the question of 'Why is there something rather than nothing?';
If many people including myself have stated in the past that they do not believe that the beginning of existence could have possibly had a pre-existing cause of any kind, why are we having this discussion on Why something rather than nothing then?(I have talked about this in the past on the forum)
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Gregorygregg1 wrote:ronjanec wrote:Everyone,
I have a really interesting question(or paradox) for everyone in regards to this same discussion, and the question of 'Why is there something rather than nothing?';
If many people including myself have stated in the past that they do not believe that the beginning of existence could have possibly had a pre-existing cause of any kind, why are we having this discussion on Why something rather than nothing then?(I have talked about this in the past on the forum)
On the face of it, semantically nothing cannot exist. That we exist confirms that something exists. But the presence of something does not preclude conditions that could lead to the absence of the something. For instance, the existence of consciousness does not preclude the absence of consciousness. When consciousness ceases to exist, nothing takes it's place. In that sense, nothing exists by replacing existence when existence ceases. We might call this the paradox of the nothing.
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ronjanec wrote:Hi Greg,
An absence of something, or in this particular case and discussion, a complete or total absence of any and all existence existing anywhere, can at least exist as an observation that man can make today(Why something rather than nothing?)
Martin Heidegger is famous for asking, and then trying to answer the same question, in a lecture he gave in Germany almost a hundred years ago(the same lecture was also recorded in a book that is still published today, or 'An Introduction to Metaphysics')
The discussion I was actually trying to start and address here in my post(versus a discussion about nothing), was how can someone say and think that there could be no possible existing cause for existence because nothing could have possibly existed before to actually cause this first existence, and the same person on the other hand then turns around and asks himself the question why did all existence begin in the first place?(or again, why something rather than nothing?)
Or in other words, if you are saying on the one hand that nothing could have possibly existed to actually cause the first existence(something) in the first place, why are you now asking why? Thereby appearing to imply that there was in fact actually a cause or a reason for the first existence to begin with, and in the process appearing to completely contradict yourself!
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Gregorygregg1 wrote:ronjanec wrote:Hi Greg,
An absence of something, or in this particular case and discussion, a complete or total absence of any and all existence existing anywhere, can at least exist as an observation that man can make today(Why something rather than nothing?)
Martin Heidegger is famous for asking, and then trying to answer the same question, in a lecture he gave in Germany almost a hundred years ago(the same lecture was also recorded in a book that is still published today, or 'An Introduction to Metaphysics')
The discussion I was actually trying to start and address here in my post(versus a discussion about nothing), was how can someone say and think that there could be no possible existing cause for existence because nothing could have possibly existed before to actually cause this first existence, and the same person on the other hand then turns around and asks himself the question why did all existence begin in the first place?(or again, why something rather than nothing?)
Or in other words, if you are saying on the one hand that nothing could have possibly existed to actually cause the first existence(something) in the first place, why are you now asking why? Thereby appearing to imply that there was in fact actually a cause or a reason for the first existence to begin with, and in the process appearing to completely contradict yourself!
The concept of first cause is a paradox, so cannot have a basis in reality. There is the possibility that all mater and energy represents the transition between dimension and nothingness. Perhaps it occupies the boundary between the two, and always has. There is a bit of evidence for a "Big Bang", which screws with any steady state theory, but should not be presumed to be any more than a local event. What, after all is something that probably only affected the dimensions of a few hundred billion light years when we're talking of infinity? Human imaginations often fail secondary to the tendency to view everything from a human perception of scale.
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Gregorygregg1 wrote:ronjanec wrote:Hi Greg,
An absence of something, or in this particular case and discussion, a complete or total absence of any and all existence existing anywhere, can at least exist as an observation that man can make today(Why something rather than nothing?)
Martin Heidegger is famous for asking, and then trying to answer the same question, in a lecture he gave in Germany almost a hundred years ago(the same lecture was also recorded in a book that is still published today, or 'An Introduction to Metaphysics')
The discussion I was actually trying to start and address here in my post(versus a discussion about nothing), was how can someone say and think that there could be no possible existing cause for existence because nothing could have possibly existed before to actually cause this first existence, and the same person on the other hand then turns around and asks himself the question why did all existence begin in the first place?(or again, why something rather than nothing?)
Or in other words, if you are saying on the one hand that nothing could have possibly existed to actually cause the first existence(something) in the first place, why are you now asking why? Thereby appearing to imply that there was in fact actually a cause or a reason for the first existence to begin with, and in the process appearing to completely contradict yourself!
The concept of first cause is a paradox, so cannot have a basis in reality. There is the possibility that all mater and energy represents the transition between dimension and nothingness. Perhaps it occupies the boundary between the two, and always has. There is a bit of evidence for a "Big Bang", which screws with any steady state theory, but should not be presumed to be any more than a local event. What, after all is something that probably only affected the dimensions of a few hundred billion light years when we're talking of infinity? Human imaginations often fail secondary to the tendency to view everything from a human perception of scale.
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Positor wrote:A better question would be "Why is there this something rather than something else?". The "something else" could include any number of relative "nothings", but not an absolute "nothing" which (I agree) makes no sense.
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Gregorygregg1 wrote:When I said "cannot have a basis in reality, I did not mean to imply that it does not have a basis in existance. My imagination can provide me with a mechanism for placing nothing within the relm of existance, but not in reality, because at the instant nothing exists it ceases to exist. Kind of like time.
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ronjanec wrote:Gregorygregg1 wrote:When I said "cannot have a basis in reality, I did not mean to imply that it does not have a basis in existance. My imagination can provide me with a mechanism for placing nothing within the relm of existance, but not in reality, because at the instant nothing exists it ceases to exist. Kind of like time.
Greg,
With all this talk about nothing again on the forum, maybe I, or someone else who is also familar with the subject, should start another thread strictly devoted to this same subject in the very near future?
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