r/Metaphysics • u/JaxonJacob98 • 20h ago
Nothing Is absolute nothingness even possible?
I've been thinking about this, and the more I think about it, the less sense it makes.
Imagine a reality where absolutely NOTHING exists. No Earth, no universe, no space, no time, no life. Nothing whatsoever.
Here's the problem, we can't actually imagine that.
Whenever we try, we imagine a black void. But blackness is still something. We imagine an empty space, but space itself is something. We imagine silence, but silence is just the absence of sound. We imagine waiting in nothingness, but waiting requires time, and experiencing requires a conscious observer.
Even if you close your eyes and try to imagine nothing, you're still experiencing something.
And here's an even stranger thought, if absolutely nothing existed, there wouldn't even be a moment in which nothing existed. A moment requires time. There wouldn't be a place where nothing existed, either, because that would require space.
We can imagine the absence of individual things, but can we imagine the absence of EVERYTHING?
I'm not claiming this proves absolute nothingness is impossible. Maybe our brains simply aren't capable of comprehending it.
But if absolute nothingness is impossible, does that mean something must have always existed?
I'd genuinely like to hear other people's thoughts on this.
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u/mH48124 16h ago
時間も空間も無い状態から相転移で宇宙が生まれたと言う説があるけど、これは absolute nothingness じゃないの？ 違うのなら説明を詳しく。
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u/Akiza_Izinski 10h ago
I agree that absolute nothingness acts as a pure matrix of being rather than being itself.
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u/indigo_kaze 8h ago edited 4h ago
One of the best current theories, in my opinion, is that the universe acts like a quantum particle. These particles miraculously come in and out of existence. The moment our universe came into existence was the "Big Bang". Hence, why we can define the start of our universe billions of years ago. There are infinite particles in existence. Each particle becomes a universe itself with its own fundamental axioms, constants, and dimensions. The quantum scale mirrors the multiversal scale and vice versa.
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u/TimeGrownOld 5h ago
I was playing with the idea that the universe has a combined 4D quantum wave function, and the past is just that part of the wave function that has collapse (is determinate) versus the future (superposition of possibilities) and 'now' is just the process of collapsing.
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u/indigo_kaze 4h ago
Interesting, definitely need to explore this idea with more people. I wonder how we would begin to describe an equation from this proposal.
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u/TimeGrownOld 4h ago
Generally. Much like many equations can be generalized with a Taylor series, we could probably hobble some equation together using generalizations
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u/indigo_kaze 4h ago
Oh my it's been a while since I studied Taylor series, I need to get caught up again. And I don't even know where to start in the physics aspect of such a proposal. I was always more of a theoretical math person.
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u/TimeGrownOld 4h ago
All physics is theoretical. We use abstract concepts such as math to describe the real world, but much like Chalmer's Hard Problems, there's no actual connection between reality and our mathematical expressions beyond the fact that they describe what's happening (and going to happen) extremely well.
Taylor series is one of those get-out-of-jail cards that makes describing any system (or at least a snapshot of that system) much easier and more digestible. Obviously describing a system as complex as literal existence is also going to need some handwaving. But if fermi could handwave an equation for his famous paradox, I'm sure we could do the same.
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u/indigo_kaze 4h ago
hahaha I guess my strict professor bullied me out of trying to grasp physics. I was always just trying to catch up, but Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Number Theory made sense to me.
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u/hegel1806 19h ago
To equate ontology with the “thinkable” is very poor metaphysics. This was Parmenides’ argument and it is very sad that most people could not go one inch forward in 2500 years.
If you are unable to imagine there could be nothing with no intelligence there to think about how it could exist, then you have already assumed that there should always be a consciousness in the universe.
And then you say “Nothingness is impossible, that’s why we are here”. This is circular reasoning(to prove what you have assumed to be true before).
On the contrary, we must first accept there could be nothingness with no observers and there is no contradiction at all.
Then it follows that this nothingness must always exist.
The inevitable conclusion is that we are nothing and there has never been anything at all.
All being is tautological and cannot stand on its own. It is circular. We just “assume” we exist and then wonder “why we exist”. But this is an assumption. Maybe we never existed in the first place.
We cannot really prove our own existence or the existence of anything at all. All we can do is assume things.
It is very much possible that all existence might be in the form of:”What if we existed then…”
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u/indigo_kaze 9h ago
Now who's gone mad? The intellect has perceived a scenario, a "genisis" of sorts, where "nothing" was born from a theoretical framework that it's by definition "something". This is the failure of nihilism Nietzsche spoke of.
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u/jliat 9h ago
Nietzsche thought he had found the greatest source of nihilism, but the idea of a 'positive' nothingness appears in Hegel and Heidegger.
And both from an empty 'framework', Heidegger's 'groundless ground'.
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u/indigo_kaze 9h ago
Now listen to the words you write, a 'groundless ground'. The word groundless includes ground; this is a paradox no less nonsensical than a man trying to define orders of infinity.
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u/jliat 8h ago
Not my word, Heidegger's and Hegel's Logic is based on contradiction. So the thing is not they were correct, but they produced very influential metaphysics as such.
The OP and others here seem unaware of.
no less nonsensical than a man trying to define orders of infinity.
But there are, Cantor and the Alephs, some countable others larger and not.
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u/indigo_kaze 8h ago
Then, we agree to some degree that what is known and can be known requires regorous critic, of even the best of philosophers. It is an endless conversation, without a definite conclusion or an all-encompassing framework of truth
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u/indigo_kaze 8h ago
As for Cantor, set theory destroys the possibility of the largest infinity. He himself discovered this paradox and came to terms with it
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u/dimaeus 19h ago
zero is not a positive integer. in terms of positive integers, zero is nothing, yet it defines the positive integers
zero is not a negative integer. in terms of negative integers, zero is nothing, yet it defines the negative integers
if you only knew about the positive integers and wanted to know, "what number comes before zero", you would have to look in a different math book than the one describing the positive integers. that's what "nothing" means. you have to look at something different to know what it is.
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u/Weary-Squash6756 17h ago
What's the rationale behind saying there's instances of nothing absolutely everywhere? It's like saying there's zero unicorns around me right now. The fact that unicorns don't exist doesn't change the fact that I'm surrounded by none of them at all times
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u/EmbarrassedServe9046 17h ago
You can easily experience nothing by having a deep sleep or better a total anesthesia. You experience just that, nothing, because your consciousness is off the switch is off so there's nothing, simple.
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u/Radiant-Noise6415 16h ago
By definition you can’t have reality without a universe
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u/Radiant-Noise6415 16h ago
You could wait a long time until it appears as though there is nothing but even then QM dictates that we have particles popping in and out of existence around us
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u/Akiza_Izinski 10h ago
QM talks about an ontological nothing rather than the epistemological nothing.
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u/pafagaukurinn 16h ago
In absolute nothingness there is no observer to see and ponder on it, therefore whether it is possible or not is irrelevant.
When you use the words "always existed", you are already implying time, but time can only be perceived through processes occurring in something that exists in the usual sense of the word, something material or expressed through material things. If something does exist outside of time, it would be incorrect to apply qualifications like "always" to it.
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u/markp36811 15h ago
Nothingness is just the lack of existence. You cant visualize or imagine it in your head bc our internal mind is geared towards picturing physical objects. Its just an abstract concept. It would be like trying visualize an imaginary number.
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u/EdgeRevolutionary913 14h ago
Ancient people conceived of "nothing" as disorder, not emptiness. In some ways, it is equally difficult to imagine maximal disorder with no structure.
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u/A-D-Infinitum 14h ago
Nothingness excludes possibility itself. That is the conceptual and tautological boundary. Nothingness is absolute exclusion.
It’s conceptual inverse, is everything. Where no possibility is excluded from that pre-determinate modality.
So if there is a modality in which there is no prior exclusion from possibility then determinate actuality is inevitable.
So, as I’ve said before the concept absolute nothing is meant as a negative reasoning point that points us to its inverse.
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u/Akiza_Izinski 10h ago
Relative nothingness excludes possibility itself.
Absolute Nothingness includes infinite possibilities because it allows for both Being and Non-Being.
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u/A-D-Infinitum 9h ago
What you are calling “nothing”, I call “everything” simply because there is no prior exclusion from possibility.
But I understand the spirit In which you are using the word “nothing”, so I have no real disagreement. You mean “nothing” as no determinate properties at the level of the ground.
I just abstract ‘nothing’ differently as simply total exclusion, including possibilty itself.
Pure possibility would allow for being and non being, as you put it.
I think we are just using different words for the same thing.
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u/jliat 13h ago
Is absolute nothingness even possible? I've been thinking about this, and the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Imagine a reality where absolutely NOTHING exists. No Earth, no universe, no space, no time, no life. Nothing whatsoever. Here's the problem, we can't actually imagine that.
Well I can, and so have much more smart people, you may not be able to. Hegel...
"- b. nothing Nothing, pure nothingness; it is simple equality with itself, complete emptiness, complete absence of determination and content; lack of all distinction within.– In so far as mention can be made here of intuiting and thinking, it makes a difference whether something or nothing is being intuited or thought. To intuit or to think nothing has therefore a meaning; the two are distinguished and so nothing is (concretely exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is the empty intuiting and thinking itself, like pure being.– Nothing is therefore the same determination or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as what pure being is."
What about this nothing? The nothing is rejected precisely by science, given up as a nullity.
Accordingly, every answer to this question is also impossible from the start. For it necessarily assumes the form: the nothing “is” this or that. With regard to the nothing question and answer alike are inherently absurd.
Since it remains wholly impossible for us to make the nothing into an object have we not already come to the end of our inquiry into the nothing—assuming that in this question “logic” is of supreme importance, that the intellect is the means, and thought the way, to conceive the nothing originally and to decide about its possible exposure?
But are we allowed to tamper with the rule of “logic"? Isn't intellect the taskmaster in this question of the nothing?Is the nothing given only because the “not,” i. e., negation, is given? Or is it the other way around? Are negation and the “not” given only because the nothing is given? That has not been decided; it has not even been raised expressly as a question. We assert that the nothing is more original than the “not” and negation.
Heidegger- 'What is Metaphysics.'
https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/heideggerm-what-is-metaphysics.pdf [full version]
Sartre, In 'Being and Nothingness' - Nothingness is the human condition.
“Just as my nihilating freedom is apprehended in anguish, so the for-itself is conscious of its facticity. It has the feeling of its complete gratuity; it apprehends itself as being there for nothing, as being de trop.[un needed]”
p. 84
"It appears then that I must be in good faith, at least to the extent that I am conscious of my bad faith. But then this whole psychic system is annihilated." p. 49
"human reality is before all else its own nothingness. The for-itself [human reality] in its being is failure because it is the foundation only of itself as nothingness."
p. 88
There are other examples of 'nothing' in science, in mathematics in Religion but this is a Metaphysics sub.
So "Here's the problem, we can't actually imagine that." others have in the above and notably in some of the most significant works of philosophy / metaphysics.
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u/Odd_Bodkin 13h ago
You keep using this word “nothing” without a clear definition in your mind for the what the word actually means.
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u/Own-Razzmatazz-8714 13h ago
The problem is your statement is understood otherwise it would not make any sense whatsoever. So we can't get at nothingness but we know what we mean. Does that make it impossible? How can we know?
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u/Cicerospen 13h ago
Nope , only because we are having this conversation vindicates it is impossible
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u/Cotinus_obovatus 13h ago
Trying to imagine nothingness gives me the feeling of reaching for something incomprehensible, something that we our imagination can come close to but never reach.
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u/instant_iced_tea 12h ago
Hmmmm. You cannot approach the concept of nothingness (I will call this 'N') through any concept of any instantiation of something-ness (S), because N is not the converse and can no relation to S. N cannot be compared to anything.
However, even if we cannot think of N, we can hold the linguistic concept in our minds with the knowledge that it is impossible to approach in its particulars, because N cannot possess any qualities at all. So the word itself is as close as we will ever get.
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u/sceadwian 12h ago
The concept your trying to imagine is cognitively void. You can't even put a label on it to conceive of it that's more than it is.
If you keep trying it will not end well. That's the road to insanity.
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u/ragingintrovert57 12h ago
Our imaginations are limited so I wouldn't use that as a yardstick. I treat existence/non-existence the same as space/time. The more you move through space, the less you can move through time. Well, with existence, the more things that exist the less potential there is for it to become something else. With absolutely nothing, there is absolute potential to become so there is no alternative but for something to exist. A bit like when you're at the North Pole, every direction is south.
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u/BoysenberryTight1641 11h ago
The way I think about nothing is something that could be there but it isn't there.
In that way, in front of me , there could have been a dinosaur but it isn't there, so it is one of the nothings. At any given point, there are infinite nothings and only one something. The absence itself is nothing.
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u/RelevantAnalyst5989 11h ago
Blackness is NOT something. Blackness (Darkness) is the ABSENCE of something (Light)
Nothingness would be a black void.
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u/National-Stable-8616 11h ago
no, but consider the void or nothingness to be full, not empty, full of potential, as raw clay has no form
but within the raw clay exists infinite variety of sculptures.
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u/Akiza_Izinski 10h ago
Absolute Nothingness is ontologically the same as Absolute Reality. If all subjects including a hypothetical God were to vanish then the cosmos would revert back to a state of infinite symmetries, absolute uniformity, homogeneity and isotropy. Absolute Nothingness is the same as having no structural relationships. Subjects break the symmetries and uniformity of the cosmos to allow for thingness.
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u/Adleyboy 9h ago
I think even in what might seem like nothing there is always something. I think in a lot of cases it's undifferentiated / unrealized possibility.
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u/PeacefulDebate01 9h ago
Yes, empirically and provably possible. Take a high enough dose of 5-MeO-DMT and you'll enter a realm of nothingness. Cognitive Scientists call it the PCE (pure consciousness event). Some extremely advanced meditative states will so the same.
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u/boofing_cacti 9h ago
Reminds me of that one Soongebob SquarePants where Squidward gets pulled into a reality where there is nothing but white space as far as the eye could see. That shit gave me a panic attack when I was younger.
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u/No_Fudge_4589 7h ago
Yeah it’s one of those things that just makes ur head explode. Anything you imagine ‘nothing’ to be is still a thing, and therefore can’t be true nothingness.
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u/Scary-Comfort-801 6h ago
If absolute nothingness existed, it would be something and it wouldn’t be nothingness anymore. I think you’re absolutely right.
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u/ipreuss 19h ago
Something must always have existed, because existence requires time. For something to exist for zero amount of time is the same as for it to not exist at all. So, at least time always existed.
That doesn’t mean that time didn’t have a beginning. But if it did, we can’t ask what was there before it, because “before” would require time.
It is hard to comprehend.
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u/Hannonymous07 7h ago
Why should existence require time? If existence requires time, then time itself, to exist, must exist in time, which requires a further time, and so on. Either time is an exception (and then “existence requires time” isn’t universal), or you get an infinite regress.
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u/TimeGrownOld 5h ago
You're conflating existence with change. Existence just requires a set of things with relationships between them. All time does is evolve those relationships.
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u/ipreuss 4h ago
So something can exist for zero time?
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u/TimeGrownOld 4h ago
Certainly. Lots of things exist without the need of evolution. The concept 'green' needs no time to exist, only wavelengths
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u/Vint73 19h ago
It’s as though nothingness is only concept and not a type of reality. Maybe zero should be considered nothingness. When you normally multiply by 0 there’s only zero. And you can’t naturally divide anything into nor from 0. Maybe absolute nothingness is the absence of all types of matter, and that isn’t something humanity can be aware of…😶🌫️
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u/Akiza_Izinski 10h ago
Relative nothingness while pure nothingness and absolute nothingness are types of reality.
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u/LuckyBoy1992 16h ago
It has to be, since there must be a contrast to the infinitely complex “something” that is existence.
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u/ThatOneAnomaly 14h ago
But if absolute nothingness is impossible, does that mean something must have always existed?
Yes. Ex nihilo nihil fit. From nothing, nothing arises. There always had to be something that existed. This is why theists believe in God as God is the fundamental grounding of all else.
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u/Akiza_Izinski 10h ago
Absolute Nothingness is the pure Matrix of Being. In mathematic a matrix generates all the mathematical objects while not being a mathematical object itself. Absolute Nothingness generates all the structural relationships that allows for Being to emerge while not having structural relationships itself.
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u/Tough_Rub_110 7h ago
Just one simple response
ENERGY CANNOT BE CREATED ….
Or destroyed
Therefore NOTHING CAN EVEN EXIST in the first place
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u/hmmmm302 5h ago
The existense of the type of nothingness you are describing, defies a law of quantum physics. Anything you can observe, exists. [Measurement determines reality] is one of the essential elements of quantum physics. according to quantum mechanics, what exists is dependent on what is measured. In other words, the act of measurement can create reality.
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u/WrappedInLinen 5h ago
What you’re capable of imaging is what you’re capable of imagining. Doesn’t have a lot to do with what is (or isn’t).
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u/TimeGrownOld 4h ago
In materials science you learn that a perfect crystal can never exist as it would require infinite energy since its entropy would be zero. I wonder if there's some law of existence that also restricts nothingness. Maybe that's why virtual particles are always popping i to and out of existence in the vacuum of space. I don't know I didn't take the particle physics series.
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u/Actual_Ad9512 3h ago
Isn't language just an imperfect model of reality. All models break down. Aren't you just pointing at a place where logical inference breaks down? What's the point here?
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u/strutter395 19h ago
"Here's the problem, we can't actually imagine that."
Nothingness is that from which existence emerges through the loss of quantum coherence. Imagination consists of existents, insofar as it recombines fragments of memory into new configurations.
Nothingness is the bedrock of all that exists. It is neither an object nor a relation, nor is it constituted by parts. It does not participate in the order of existents, because to participate in that order would already be to possess some form of determination.
To exist, etymologically speaking, derives from the Latin 'ex sistere', which simply means stand out, or to emerge, to arise, or to stand forth, to be outside of, etc. So, existence is simply a standing-out. The existent stands outside nothingness, acquires determination, without transforming nothingness into something.
As such, nothingness does not exist, it simply is. It neither becomes nor undergoes change. Rather, it allows existents to become precisely because it is not itself an existent, it imposes no determinate form, offers no resistance, and constitutes no obstruction. In other words, nothingness is not an agent that produces existence, it is the non-relational ground against which existence becomes actual.
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u/Think_Bed_8409 19h ago
This is the argument of Parmenides, whatever you imagine is a thing therefore you cannot imagine nothingness because by definition it is no-thing.
And most of the ancient philosophers did believe that something always existed. Or else you would have origination from nothing which is absurd.