The wrongness of "nothing is still something"
Recently I've heard this idea that "nothing is still something" in a number of places, e.g. on The Atheist Experience, and often used in the context of explaining existence itself.
But the reasoning is flawed, and the misconception actually flows from a linguistic issue with English.
In English, we have a noun Nothing. But this noun is special, in that really it is a contraction of logical-NOT and thing.
So, for example, the sentence "There's nothing to be afraid of" is not suggesting that we be afraid of 1 thing, and that thing we're referring to as "nothing". It means there are zero things to be afraid of; the set of things to be afraid of is the empty set.
Likewise, when we're talking about the whole universe and asking questions like why something exists instead of nothing, we're asking why the set of things that exist is not empty. We're not suggesting some reality where there is a discrete thing we're calling "nothing" has the property of existing.
As further proof, note that not all languages have "nothing" and so this whole issue is largely sidestepped. When Matt Dillahunty says "Demonstrate me a nothing existing" I have no idea how to translate that into Mandarin; I'd have to say something like "Don't demonstrate something existing".
Oh, and just to head off some possible responses, I'm of course talking about philosophical "nothing" here, so arguments of how a volume of space time necessarily contains virtual particles or whatever is irrelevant. I'm not talking about an empty space or a quantum anything.
But the reasoning is flawed, and the misconception actually flows from a linguistic issue with English.
In English, we have a noun Nothing. But this noun is special, in that really it is a contraction of logical-NOT and thing.
So, for example, the sentence "There's nothing to be afraid of" is not suggesting that we be afraid of 1 thing, and that thing we're referring to as "nothing". It means there are zero things to be afraid of; the set of things to be afraid of is the empty set.
Likewise, when we're talking about the whole universe and asking questions like why something exists instead of nothing, we're asking why the set of things that exist is not empty. We're not suggesting some reality where there is a discrete thing we're calling "nothing" has the property of existing.
As further proof, note that not all languages have "nothing" and so this whole issue is largely sidestepped. When Matt Dillahunty says "Demonstrate me a nothing existing" I have no idea how to translate that into Mandarin; I'd have to say something like "Don't demonstrate something existing".
Oh, and just to head off some possible responses, I'm of course talking about philosophical "nothing" here, so arguments of how a volume of space time necessarily contains virtual particles or whatever is irrelevant. I'm not talking about an empty space or a quantum anything.
Comments (52)
But a ham sandwich is better than nothing.
Therefore a ham sandwich is better than heaven.
Truer words have never been said
I don't think so. Shunyata, as an analogy, is about composite numbers - numbers that can be decomposed into primes - but it doesn't, in fact can't, deny the existence of the primes. :chin:
Haha, that's brilliant. It's both funny and alludes to exactly the issue I'm talking about.
It can question what "exists" means though
??nyat? has nothing to do with number theory.
‘Nothing’ is only meaningful as the negation of ‘something’. If nothing existed, then ‘nothing’ would be meaningless.
Actually - no. I think your OP fails to come to terms with the existential angst behind the question. The original question was posed by Liebniz, thus:
Which is, of course, a theistic answer, because Liebniz was a theist (back in the day when this wasn't an internet slang term.)
But, science itself has recently declared with complete confidence that according to its reckonings, the Universe should not exist. It comprises many apparent flukes and miraculous coincidences, many things that have to be 'just so' in order for anything to exist whatever. But unless one is struck by the wonder of it all, then it's, well, just another internet post.
That's called equivocation. It's a logical fallacy resulting from the misuse of words. It would be very helpful for you in discussion on this forum, to understand this fallacy, and be able to readily recognize it, because it's commonplace here.
Aristotle examined this question of why there is something rather than nothing, in his Metaphysics, and determined that it was unanswerable, and therefore the wrong question to ask, because it's a sort of nonsensical thing to ask. Instead, he replaced this question with the more appropriate question of why there is what there is, instead of something else. It is in answering this question that he is led to believe that form is necessarily prior in time to matter, validating the assumption of immaterial Forms.
This is consistent with Leibniz' principle of sufficient reason. If we look at every thing which exists, and conclude that there must be a reason (cause) for it being what it is rather than something else, then the cause of a thing being the very thing that it is (rather than something else) is necessarily prior to its material being as that thing which it is. If we propose a first thing now, we cannot conclude that the first thing comes from absolutely nothing because there must be a reason (cause) of it being the thing that it is, rather than something else. And, since the existence of each material thing is organized in a specific way, and not completely random, we must exclude random chance as a possible cause of the first thing.
edit: the seed of this idea is found in Plato's Timaeus.
I suspect...
...that although there is the "linguistic issue with English"...
...that "nothing" is still "something"...even if it is just an idea.
An idea IS something...even though it has no substance.
A zero IS something...even though it is nothing.
Math was improved by the invention of "zero"...and probably could not exist coherently today without it.
1) zero is useful, but nothing
2) Aristotle did not like OP question because for him God was only the final cause of the eternal universe, not the efficient cause of a temporally finite one.
3) randomness can bring about patterns and life if the dice are thrown often enough. When thinking of something as huge as the universe and doing so in the universe and thinking with the matter of the universe, we have to be humble before the possibility of a lot of dice throws
4) what something is, what matter is... is a hotly debated subject in philosophy
Agreed! Yet another paradox for the Atheist to resolve!! The irony there is, that 'nothing' then becomes just a Platonic ideal; an abstract mathematical concept. And so the concept of nothing is just a concept in itself. In nature and reality, nothing doesn't really exist.
For instance, nothing would be something that consists of no space at all, and no time, no particles, no fields, no laws of nature, etc.. Using laws of nature (or any mathematical laws) the number 0 exists as an abstract metaphysical concept that is actually something, not nothing. ( In fact, me describing nothing is still something.)
To the OP, why is 'nothing is still something'' wrong?
:up:
I did say it was an analogy and the analogy holds. It's my understanding, possibly mistaken, that shunyata builds off of the concept of interdependence which states that many things that exist are actually composites - made of simpler parts. For instance a chair consists of wood or metal and nails or bolts. When the parts of a chair are separated from each other the whole ceases to exist - removing the nails, bolts, wood and metal destroys the chair. However, for shunyata to make sense, all things must be decomposable into its components and these components verily must exist. If not, an infinite regress is on the cards.
A wonderful paradox! Nicely said.
Wasn't Heideggger's entire (uncompleted) task to try to explain what existence even was? You're assuming it's obvious
Nothing is always framed by something. In the question "why is there something rather than nothing" our concept of nothing completely relies on the general acceptance that something cannot also be nothing.
In absence of framing what is or what isn't (by an observer) there is not even nothing.
No one wants to break the law of identity but what stops you from doing it. Nothing until something arrives to stop you. "You moron!, that is not how to do what ought to be done because it produces nothing of value because X,Y, Z. "
Well, kind of, but talking about wholes and parts in numerical terms is generally absent from Buddhist reasoning.
[quote=Thanisarro Bhikhu]Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them.
This mode is called emptiness because it's empty of the presuppositions we usually add to experience to make sense of it: the stories and world-views we fashion to explain who we are and the world we live in. Although these stories and views have their uses, the Buddha found that some of the more abstract questions they raise — of our true identity and the reality of the world outside — pull attention away from a direct experience of how events influence one another in the immediate present.[/quote]
Emptiness
.Quoting TheMadFool
??nyat? is not non-existence. It's that particulars are empty of inherent existence. Everything that exists, exists in relation to others; nothing exists 'in its own right'. It's a very subtle argument, easily misunderstood as nihilism (nothing exists.)
The parts-and-wholes analogy is spelt out in a famous scripture called The Questions of King Milinda, given in terms of a chariot. Ven. Nagasena says that the chariot the King travels in is nothing more than an assemblage of parts. However, the Platonist in me says it is something more: it's the idea of a chariot, and that those possessing such an idea are able to build a chariot, whereas those who do not, will not be able to. And that as long as the idea persists, then chariots can continue to be made, whether it's this or that chariot. I think that's why the West had the Industrial Revolution and the East did not. :-)
My point is that the reasoning behind "nothing is still something" is usually based on various misconceptions related the fact that in English, "logical negation" + "thing" has been contracted into a singular noun.
Statements like "Demonstrate me a nothing" or "Show me that nothing can exist" are nonsensical statements, that can't even be translated into languages that don't have this contraction.
So the burden is on believers of that statement to give some valid reason for thinking it to be true not based on this misapprehension.
Having said that, "thing" can mean different, well, things, and the statement is obviously true in some senses. For example, a state of nothingness is still a state; and the concept of "nothing existing" alludes to such a state.
But, importantly, "nothing is still something" is often used as a jumping off point for "solutions" to the problem of existence itself. For example, the implication is often that the concept of nothing existing is somehow self-inconsistent, and therefore a physical universe must necessarily exist. But again, once you appreciate the linguistic issues with "nothing" in English, there's no reason at all to think that "nothing existing" is self-inconsistent.
First you say it's non-sensical to ask if nothing exists, then you do just that. Also, nothing in the English dictionary does not say that nothing is kinda something. Your post is non-sensical.
No, I think you have not read my post correctly -- which is understandable; the whole issue that I am talking about here is how the English language is breeding certain Epistomological misconceptions and misunderstandings, so it is necessarily difficult to discuss this issue.
So, let's be clear. At no point have I said that nothing exists is itself nonsensical. Indeed I have said several times now that there is nothing logically inconsistent in nothing existing whatsoever.
What's nonsensical is asking for a demonstration, or evidence of, nothing in our universe. It's treating "nothing" as some discrete entity that we could view and measure, and that makes no sense.
No exceptions taken! (The concept of nothing is logically necessary, for there to be something.)
You might find this interesting, in thinking about 'unity of opposites' when it comes to such dialectic reasoning here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_of_opposites
Quoting Gregory
I'm not assuming anything.
I'm having trouble trying to define "existence" in a way that allows me to say "God exists but isn't perceivable/detectable".
It seems the existing definition of "existence" predicated on detectibility via senses/instruments is dripping with materialism/physicalism. Nonetheless, a less, or non, materialistic definition for "existence" is not a walk in the park. Try it if you don't believe me.
Let's start small. Where no one disagrees is the existence of physical stuff and the reason for this is physical things are perceivable/detectable by everyone. If we do a quick survey of areas where there is disagreement on the issue of existence, e.g. God, you'll come to realize that it's all about whether something can be perceived/detected or not. In other words, like it or not, most of us, if not all, have a materialistic/physical take on existence. The reason for this is clear - we can, well, show physical stuff to [i[others[/i], in an in your face kind of way, leaving no room for doubt.
As we leave or attempt to leave the physical world and begin to entertain non-physical entities, we enter into murky waters. Take unicorns for instance, universally accepted as something nonexistent precisely because they aren't physical but it's hard to shake off the feeling that concepts/ideas - unicorns, thoughts in general - have some kind of existence We could even say that, taking our brains as detectors, our brains perceive/detect such things as ideas/concepts.
Can you see where this is going? We've circled back to a detectibility/perceivability based conception of existence.
This is not really true, because we can consider all sorts of things without considering the possibility of nothing. This is why the concept of zero came rather late in the development of number systems. And being was not properly opposed with not-being until Parmenides presented it in this way. In fact, the proper opposite of "something" is not "nothing". This is because "something" refers to a particular thing, which has not been specified. It is an undetermined thing, something. So the opposite of "something" is a particular thing which has been specified, as this or that particular thing, a determined thing. "Thing" is the subject, and there is no opposite to the subject, only what is predicated has an opposite
I think one way to parse the distinctions would be in an a priori type fashion:
For example 'upward' cannot exist unless there is a 'downward', they are opposites but they co-substantiate one another, their unity is that either one exists because the opposite is necessary for the existence of the other, one manifests immediately with the other. Hot would not be hot without cold, due to there being no contrast by which to define it as 'hot' relative to any other condition, it would not and could not have identity whatsoever if not for its very opposite that makes the necessary prerequisite existence for the opposing condition to be. This is the oneness, unity, principle to the very existence of any opposite. Either one's identity is the contra-posing principle itself, necessitating the other. The criteria for what is opposite is therefore something a priori.
OK, so talking this analogy, upward and downward are opposing directions. In the case of "something", it would refer just to "direction", not any particular direction, so there would be no opposite.direction.
Quoting 3017amen
And in comparison to this example, "something" would be like temperature, neither hot nor cold, with no opposite.
I think what you really mean is that" something" would be inclusive of temperature both hot and cold.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Similarly, I think "something" would be inclusive of upward, downward, leftward, rightward, etc.using that comparison.
The more appropriate comparison relates to opposites because something and nothing are diametrically opposed as opposites. Thus direction and misdirection would be analogous.
That's what is meant by simple a priori comparison (semantics/antonyms). We're just using strict definitions from the meaning of words themselves. (Which is in the same spirit as logical necessity/a priori truths.)
It's just not true in general: I don't need an "anti-chair" for the concept of a "chair" to make sense; I can compare a chair to the absence of a chair.
And likewise I don't believe that we need evil for the concept of "good" to make sense, or that whatever is least good we would necessarily call "evil" any more than there needs to be an opposite of an itch, and the most non-itchy I ever feel must be labelled as some discrete concept in itself.
Now, in the case of "nothing" and "something", this might seem to be a distinction without a difference. After all, in this case specifically, [absence of something] = [opposite of something] = nothing.
But the point is, if I find this logic dubious in most cases, I already have reason not to want to apply it here.
Correct. Thus chair and no chair. Just like something and nothing.
Quoting Mijin
Incorrect. See above.
Quoting Mijin
It's not that you need the opposites, it's that the opposites are logically necessary for existence of any binary concept. As another example, it is logically necessary to eventually have sadness in the place of happiness. However it doesn't preclude the concept of a middle ground gradient of contentment.
Consider time and relativity. The changes in time, span from temporal time to timelessness by virtue of the speed of light, and any gradient of speed in between.
So the main concept to wrap your head around would be the phenomenon of change. If life was completely static (logically impossible), opposites would not be logically necessary.
No that's not what I meant, because I meant to show a category difference between particular instances of hot or cold, and the general category of temperature. The particular instances of something being hot, or something being cold, would be represented as subjects to which hot and cold are predicated. Since the term "something" references the subject, not what is being predicated, there is no opposite, like there opposition within the predicates, hot and cold. Any attempt to negate the subject is a completely different matter than the negation of a predicate which is a simple opposition.
Quoting 3017amen
That is what you are asserting, but I think it is wrong, for the reason I'm trying to explain. "Something" indicates that there is an object which can be represented as a subject for predication. Opposition is only a valid logical procedure in reference to the predicate. There is no valid procedure by which the subject can be opposed, or negated. That would be a matter of declining the proposition, but declining the proposition (skepticism, or agnosticism), does not constitute proper opposition. Proper opposition is a feature of predication.
You might claim that if the proposed subject, "something" has no corresponding object, as may be the case with a counterfactual, there is an imaginary subject which is presented as something, then this something is really its opposite, nothing. But that would be incorrect because an imaginary subject is not the opposite of a corresponding subject, and it is obviously not nothing. They are both valid subjects. So, as I say there is no proper way to oppose the subject, only to claim falsity or lack of correspondence, which is not the same as opposition.
Quoting 3017amen
If you would follow strict definitions, you would see that nothing is not the logical opposition of something, as I explained. "Something" represents "an unspecified thing". The opposite of this would be "a specified thing". Clearly "a specified thing" is not nothing. "Nothing" represents "not anything" so the opposite of this would be "anything". "Anything" means "a thing without significance or importance as to which thing". Do you see the difference between "something" and "anything"?
Quoting Mijin
I believe Christian theology has attempted to remove evil as the opposition of good. It views all existence (any something) as good, being created by God it is good. It is only through privation from its full potential, that a thing is less than perfect, but less than perfect is still good. This is why traditionally Catholicism focused on love, forgiveness, and confession. Jesus can deliver us from our sins. No matter how far we are from perfection there is still good within us, and that means we're not evil. To leave the realm of "good" we'd have to jump over into the category of non-existent, but it doesn't make sense to say that non-existence is the opposite of existence, because opposites are the extremes within a particular category.
Quoting 3017amen
Binary concepts are applied as predicates as your examples hot and cold, upward and downward, show. "Something" and "nothing" are not predications. That is your mistake, you are trying to represent them as predications, a binary concept, when they are not.
By using a priori logic there is... . It is logically necessary to eventually have sadness in the place of happiness. However its necessity doesn't preclude the concept of a middle ground gradient of contentment. It's just that the opposites are logically necessary for existence of any binary concept.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes there is, by virtue of time and change. Consider time and relativity. The changes in time, span from temporal time to timelessness by virtue of the speed of light, and any gradient of speed in between. If life was completely static (logically impossible), opposites would not be logically necessary.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
'Anything' would be the middle ground within the confines of unity and oneness.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's no one's mistake. The mistake is time and change itself.(The concept of eternity and timelessness solves the problem... .)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Precisely. The unity of good and evil is equivalent to temporalness and finitude. It's a duality. Or if you prefer existential. My mind wills one thing my heart another.
Quoting 3017amen
This is what I mean. What do you mean "incorrect"? I said we don't need an anti-chair and can compare a chair to the absence of a chair. What are you disagreeing with?
Quoting 3017amen
The point is, that many things, probably most things, do not have a perfect opposite, only their own absence.
An example of something with an exact opposite would be electric charge. We can talk about 3 states; positive charge, its opposite: negative charge, and finally, neutrality; no net charge at all.
Most things are not like this though; we can only talk about 2 states; the phenomenon is present to some degree or it is not.
In terms of psychological examples, I gave the example of itching, as a very obvious example of something without an opposite. You didn't respond to that, so let's go with your example of happiness and sadness.
In terms of "folk psychology" we might consider happiness and sadness to be opposites. After all, the same stimuli might provoke these emotions on a sliding scale; if the value of my company is a value X, then there might be values of X that would make me feel sad, some values of X that I would be ambivalent about and others that might make me happy.
However, in terms of neurology, there's little basis for this idea. Sadness is a whole different pathway in the brain, involving different neurotransmitters and different activation areas. There's no reason in principle a brain couldn't be constructed that could only experience one state and not the other.
Finally, the sliding scale argument falls apart when we consider other candidates for being the opposite of happiness: disappointment, frustration, anger, angst etc...all of these can be on a sliding scale with happiness depending on the stimulus.
And if we were to say that all of these emotions can be bracketed under the umbrella of "sadness" that would only serve to show that it's an extremely crude concept, and not something we can apply formal logic to, and call it the precise opposite of anything.
It's an incorrect analogy for the reasons I stated. Hence; something and anti something.
Quoting Mijin
Correct. The concept from unity of opposites bears that out. And the reality of time and change supports it.
Quoting Mijin
Correct. That's why nothing is not really nothing. Like mathematics it's a value concept, like zero.
Quoting Mijin
Ambivalence itself (in concept) would become a homeostasis. Meaning in our context, nothing is not 'really' nothing at all. Otherwise there would be no laws of gravity, no space time, no light, no dark, (no consciousness) etc..
Quoting Mijin
I love the idea, but it's not logically possible (consciousness tends to seek homeostasis).
It's like if I had said you can't square a circle, and your retort is that the analogy is invalid because you can't square a circle. You are repeating back what I said, as if it's a refutation, and, importantly, ignoring the actual point.
Quoting 3017amen
Sorry I don't follow what you're saying. Can you break this down?
Quoting 3017amen
I see no reason to believe the assertion that consciousness seeks homeostasis e.g. There are activities that might give us joy our entire lives...is that a broken consciousness?
But, even if I agreed, I don't see how this would rule out the possibility of a brain that could only experience various levels of sadness + neutrality, or various levels of happiness + neutrality. After all, a consciousness can experience various levels of itchiness + neutrality...there is no opposite to itching.
Squaring circles would be logically impossible. Maybe this will make better sense:
Chair and anti-chair (your analogy) is the same as saying something and anti-something. And I'm saying that's an incorrect analogy to something and nothing. Please read what I said.
Quoting Mijin
The point is that the unity of opposites require opposing attributes or properties for their identity and existence. And those opposing attributes or properties require time and change for same (their own existence). Think of it as potential and kinetic energy, if you will.
Both concepts of something and nothing, behind the scenes, have opposite identities or forces of energy.
But the point about equilibrium, in finding an appropriate analogy about the human condition (opposite feelings) and nature, was that while a person can be happy they will eventually be sad, but they can also be content. And so there you have opposites as well as stasis/equilibrium/contentment. Either way, you have energy (consciousness in this case) working behind the scenes through change and time. Nothing is static. The closest thing that comes to it is homeostasis which is the gradient between opposites that you even mention in your last post.
And so taking it another step further relating to our definition of nothing, because everything is dynamic and not static, nothing in reality is not nothing at all, it's just a concept, like zero is a concept. And so I was trying to use the idea ofhomeostasis and equilibrium in nature and in human phenomena as a description of the actual reality of nothing.
In short, you have an a priori definition of nothing, and then you have a natural (a posteriori) definition of nothing.
Even though you don't agree with unity of opposites, did you at least comprehend its meaning?
Quoting Mijin
Activities: requires time and change.
Entire lives: a phrase that implies a static existence, timelessness and eternal.
You with me yet?
Quoting Mijin
Agree. I don't either. But, once again, itching is not analogous because the concept or semantic definition of itching itself is a predicate verb (in that case). Therefore the opposite of itching is (simply) not itching.
Plato demonstrated that this type of opposition does not apply to emotions. Pleasure is not the opposite of pain, nor is happiness the opposite of sadness. They are distinct emotions, not dependent on each other. He demonstrated this by bringing into the discussion, pleasures which are not a release from pain.
Quoting 3017amen
This may be true, but the point I am making is that these things, something/nothing, happy/sad, are not binary opposites.
Quoting 3017amen
How is this relevant to the subject?
Plato the got many things right his philosophy but unfortunately he wasn't a hundred percent perfect. Unless you are arguing emotions are both a priori and a posteriori, I'm not sure where you are going with that... ?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What are you arguing in favor for... ?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That the concept of something and nothing is both static and dynamic.
"Please read what I said" :smirk:
I'm giving the example of squaring circles as something that is logically impossible. And the example of the anti-chair to illustrate that not everything has an opposite, many (most) things do not have a true opposite, but can be compared to their absence.
So, what part of either analogy is incorrect? What are you disagreeing with?
Quoting 3017amen
This is possibly the least clear thing you've said so far. How is a human lifespan "timeless and eternal"?
Quoting 3017amen
What you previously said was that consciousness seeks equilibrium, which is a baseless assertion. This new point, that consciousness is not static, I can agree with.
Neither point actually addresses what I was saying; that there is no intrinsic reason why a brain only capable of various levels of sadness or neither sad nor happy is not possible.
Quoting 3017amen
I don't get what you mean by it, no. And I don't think it's adding to this discussion; it seems to rely on agreeing to several propositions that I do not, and is not adding clarity.
Quoting 3017amen
What's language got to do with it? The simple fact is, brain states don't have opposites (just like chairs don't have an opposite). It's more obvious in the case of itching than sadness, and that's why I used it as an example. But neither has a true opposite.
In English, we have a noun Nothing. But this noun is special, in that really it is a contraction of logical-NOT and thing.
So, for example, the sentence "There's nothing to be afraid of" is not suggesting that we be afraid of 1 thing, and that thing we're referring to as "nothing". It means there are zero things to be afraid of; the set of things to be afraid of is the empty set.---Mijin
Because your foregoing quote asserted same.
Quoting Mijin
You may want to study Homeostasis. You know, cognitive science stuff.
Quoting Mijin
So, semantically, something and nothing are not opposite's? Chair and anti-chair (your analogy) is the same as saying something and anti-something. And I'm saying that's an incorrect use of terms in comparing the opposites of something and nothing.
Quoting Mijin
You said:
There are activities that might give us joy our entire lives
— Mijin
Activities: requires time and change.
Entire lives: a phrase that implies a static existence, timelessness and eternal.
And I'm saying that's impossible by virtue of time, change, stasis, and common sense. Otherwise, you must support some form of eternal psychological nirvana... ?
No it didn't. Again, you aren't reading.
I'm saying that this whole misconception is based on a language issue in English (and other languages that contract "logical not" and "something").
That's the polar opposite of trying to construct a philosophical proposition based on some quirk of the English language, which is what you just did. I'm criticizing such logic.
Quoting 3017amen
But I'm not making such a comparison. I am saying that comparing a chair to the absence of a chair is sufficient, and something indeed can be compared to nothing. The point is that we don't need an opposite in the sense of "sadness" and "happiness" (which you considered opposite) or positive and negative. (Implicitly) comparing things to their absence is the normal standard.
Quoting 3017amen
Once again: a lifetime is not timeless or eternal. It's typically 70-80 years. So I have no idea what you're getting at with this.
And so your point is...? I though we were discussing English language. (To be honest, your OP is poorly written.)
Quoting Mijin
Okay, what does that mean then?
Quoting Mijin
Yes we do. Otherwise we are static and not dynamic.
Quoting Mijin
Jeeze dude. We're not talking "lifespan" here. We were talking emotions (i.e., physcholocal nirvana). Actually, YOU were talking emotions being static, and I was critiquing them saying they were dynamic.
Be well my friend. You may want to start over with your OP.
when
arguments in response to why is there something rather than nothing
explain seemingly that the nothing had potentials. It wasn't really nothing.
In a lot of arguments on such subjects, I think people are getting away with calling a something nothing.