Do you think nothingness exists?

[Wictorian]

I don't think it exists because it if existed simply it wouldn't be nothingness. Keep in mind that I am not asking this in terms of physics just philoshopy.

[Anghammarad]

So here we would need to go further into the definition of "Nothingness".

 

Like is there some kind of a nothing space, some one comes around and creates a universe into that... 

 

Or when ones conciousness goes, is there nothingness or will there be something... 

 

I myself hope that there is a nothingness somewhere... well but that is just me

[mariushm]

Each time somebody speaks of nothing, my mind goes to Tracie Harris and her discussions about meaning of "nothing"

 

listen from around 2:30 if you're impatient

 ^ from around 9 minutes in if you're impatient 

[tkitch]

21 hours ago, Wictorian said:

I don't think it exists because it if existed simply it wouldn't be nothingness. Keep in mind that I am not asking this in terms of physics just philoshopy.

In a philisophical sense?  No, because there is no single definition of that "state of being"

 

in physics:  we've gotten damned close to it with artificial vacuums.

[Falkentyne]

On 3/13/2022 at 10:55 AM, Wictorian said:

I don't think it exists because it if existed simply it wouldn't be nothingness. Keep in mind that I am not asking this in terms of physics just philoshopy.

 

Are you talking about life and death here?  Because if you are, no one living can answer this question, because if they could, they wouldn't be living...

[Wictorian]

9 hours ago, Sakuriru said:

Taking a deep dive into philosophy lately are we?

 

Parmenidesian philosophy would have us believe that no, it does not exist. This is because to talk about something you must speak of its existence, and in a proof by induction, nothing before-hand could exist either because that thing must also exist. This position ever since it was conceived before the time of Socrates has been regarded as a preferred philosophical position, even now. Its logic is fairly convincing, supposing of course, its premise is valid.

 

But enter extreme metaphysical nihilism: the proposition that nothing actually exists. This position isn't seriously considered, but is certainly real, and while it offers an important foil against the aforementioned positive affirmation of existence, falls into the same trap as above.

 

So what trap is that? It's the school of philosophy that all other philosopher's fear and loathe: skepticism. "But how can you be sure?" the skeptic asks, forcing philosophers to deconstruct their arguments and reasonings until they're left tearing their hair out over the questioning of the very premises of logic and knowledge itself. We can in fact borrow greatly from this school without adopting it wholeheartedly, if only for the same of our own thought experiment.

 

Suppose that everything you see and perceive does, indeed, exist. You may then be permitted to adopt Parmenides's stance, except wait, how could you possibly know that there isn't also a lack of existence? In fact, consider that there are some ideas or stories, countless most likely, that will never exist because no one will think of them now or in the future forever. And how to account for the fact the empty set is a real tangible description in mathematics? It is useful to state that there is not such a thing that exists.

 

For me, skepticism defeats the Parmenides argument. But, it could also be taken a step further: there is a third category other than existence or non-existence: that of the unknown. Skepticism assures us not that there very well could be some kind of thing that is neither real nor not real, and indeed, beyond our own comprehension. Not that there is, but that there could be.

 

But practically does nothing exist? Yes, as an accurate and fitting description of specific things it exists as a necessity. The number zero, the empty set, even the principle behind null are all examples in how "nothing" can be used to enhance our understanding, perception, and function of the world around us.

I was talking about physical nothingness, like an area that has nothing inside. That’s not a vacuum though. Even if it was not for the fields, it consists of space. I don’t think this is possible because if it existed it would have to contain space. Maybe you can claim my question is problematic though.
 

Ofcourse nothingness in some way exists. 
 

Skepticism is cool but I think in terms of physical nothingness as I defined, we can say it doesn’t exist like how we can’t say objects can go past the speed of the light.
 

 

[clementishutin]

Isn't nothing the opposite of something? So in order for nothing to exist, there has to be absolute absence of something.

[IPD]

"Nothingness" is not a distinct construct so much as it is the absence of any construct.  In some ways it is similar to how I have heard abnormal psychology described; it is that which deviates (eg. 1 standard deviation) from the norm. 

[airborne spoon]

On 3/13/2022 at 10:55 AM, Wictorian said:

I don't think it exists because it if existed simply it wouldn't be nothingness. Keep in mind that I am not asking this in terms of physics just philosophy.

How does one talk about nothingness outside the realm of physics and philosophy? Those are the only 2 places that is discussed. and yes you can have nothingness. in the space between things in space there is nothing. and as far as philosophy that would turn into a religious debate but you have to remember the big bang has been proven, whereas god gets more and more ridiculous everyday because of all the contradictions and stupidity in the bible, koran, torah, etc.

[Commodus]

Never mind philosophically, there's probably a literal nothingness. There are giant voids in the universe where there's so little... well, stuff that there might be patches of nothing. The Boötes void is 330 million light-years across but has only 60 known galaxies.

 

For that matter, I suspect you could find true nothing past the edge of the universe's expansion. You're not going to hit a wall. The tricky bit, of course, is that no one knows where the universe ends, and getting there could take billions of years at the speed of light.

[whm1974]

56 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Never mind philosophically, there's probably a literal nothingness. There are giant voids in the universe where there's so little... well, stuff that there might be patches of nothing. The Boötes void is 330 million light-years across but has only 60 known galaxies.

 

For that matter, I suspect you could find true nothing past the edge of the universe's expansion. You're not going to hit a wall. The tricky bit, of course, is that no one knows where the universe ends, and getting there could take billions of years at the speed of light.

This assuming you wouldn't run smack into some Massive "body" in Space at Lightspeed before you even get anywhere near.

[Mihle]

9 hours ago, Sakuriru said:

Actually you'd never reach it at the speed of light, the rate of the Universe's expansion guarantees you'll end up somewhere between the edge of the observable Universe and here.

There might not even be a end of the universe, we don't know, maybe it is, or maybe it goes on forever.

[FliP0x]

There is so little that we know about the universe we live in, that it cannot be certain whether nothingless exists or not.

 

Yes, there are huge patches of "nothingness" in our universe. We define them as "nothing" because there are no galaxies, stars or planets in that area. However, there still is matter, so it's not "nothing".

 

Our universe stretches and contracts, while also rapidly expanding. The question is, what does our universe expand into? Does it expand into "nothingness", does it grow within another universe?

 

We are still multiple lifetimes away before we can even consider getting answers to those questions.

[Master Disaster]

Absolute nothingness is thought to be theoretically impossible, like even if we remove absolutely every single particle that we are capable of from a space there is still stuff there, in fact lots of stuff happening down at the sub atomic level. Stuff we don't yet fully understand.

 

The crazy thing about sub atomic physics is that it can (and usually does) contradict physics that applies to stuff made of atoms. Sub atomic particles can pop into existence from seemingly nowhere, borrow energy from the future and pay it back when the go away, exist in multiple places (and maybe no places) at the same time.

 

To quote Richard Feynman: "If you think you understand the world of quantum physics then you do not understand the world of quantum physics"

 

and Niels Bohr: "If you are not shocked by the world of quantum mechanics then you haven't really understood it, which is fine because nobody really understands it"

 

These 2 pioneered the field and literally wrote the books on the subject as well

[Commodus]

15 hours ago, Sakuriru said:

Actually you'd never reach it at the speed of light, the rate of the Universe's expansion guarantees you'll end up somewhere between the edge of the observable Universe and here.

Good point. You'd have to 'cheat,' like with theoretical technology that would fold spacetime in front of you so there's less... well, there to travel through.

[whm1974]

3 hours ago, Commodus said:

Good point. You'd have to 'cheat,' like with theoretical technology that would fold spacetime in front of you so there's less... well, there to travel through.

But how much energy will you need to do so? We also may only be able to take short "jumps" at a time.

[Master Disaster]

2 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

But how much energy will you need to do so? We also may only be able to take short "jumps" at a time.

Weirdly enough, maybe not that much. The only thing we know for sure that can warp space time is gravity and gravity is weak AF. Like we have the entire weight of Earth pulling us towards the centre of the planet and we can still move, pick things up, throw things around etc.

 

The drawback is that this implies that we must learn how to manipulate gravity and that will, almost certainly, be harder than generating any amount of energy.

 

Of course there might be other ways of warping space time that we simply haven't come close to even discovering the precursor of yet.

 

I think right now the major effort for theoretical physics is being put into dark matter and dark energy, or should really say, trying to work out if it exists or not and if not then why does anything exist at all. Without dark matter the universe doesn't contain enough stuff for gravity to have ever affected anything.

[Bad5ector]

I mean, if it's true that universe is always expanding at an ever increasing rate... then I would assume, the space on the outside of the universe would be pretty much nothing. At least that's how I picture it in my head cannon.

[Master Disaster]

6 minutes ago, Bad5ector said:

I mean, if it's true that universe is always expanding at an ever increasing rate... then I would assume, the space on the outside of the universe would be pretty much nothing. At least that's how I picture it in my head cannon.

There's a crazy theory that I personally like that says the universe is infinitely looping in such a way as, from our perspective, its always moving away from us. All our measurements show the observable universe to be totally flat but the reason the observable universe is even a thing at all is because seeing beyond it is impossible. Space appears to be moving away from us faster than C and any light (if there even is, at that point our understanding of the physics is like a 4 year old sitting a college Math paper) from beyond the barrier will never reach us, if the bit after the observable universe is the start of a giant loop in all directions then we would never be able to detect it but it would appear to be moving away from us in every direction we look.

 

I believe a lot of physicists don't really like this theory, luckily I'm not a physicist

[whm1974]

40 minutes ago, Bad5ector said:

I mean, if it's true that universe is always expanding at an ever increasing rate... then I would assume, the space on the outside of the universe would be pretty much nothing. At least that's how I picture it in my head cannon.

There is no way to know in any reasonable certain way of course.

[Bad5ector]

2 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

There is no way to know in any reasonable certain way of course.

Obviously....  hence why I said:

 

49 minutes ago, Bad5ector said:

At least that's how I picture it in my head cannon.

But hey, I smoke a metric ton of pot, sooo I have a lot of head cannons about things that there are no reasonable way to be certain of... It's just how I roll sometimes lol.

[Master Disaster]

2 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

There is no way to know in any reasonable certain way of course.

Quite honestly, and this is a pretty hot take, I don't think we should be wasting money on trying to colonise space, like at all. Its an impossible goal for multiple reasons, mostly the fact that its stupendously expensive, literally the most dangerous place you can put a person and the universe is vast. Any answers are going to come from labs, universities and scientists, not from colonisation. There's very little of value within our reach anyway.

 

The hundreds of billions spent on firing people up could have gone into research. All we have proven so far is that we can survive long term inside the van allen belts (which we knew anyway) and that flying animals don't do well in zero G.

[Wictorian]

1 hour ago, Bad5ector said:

I mean, if it's true that universe is always expanding at an ever increasing rate... then I would assume, the space on the outside of the universe would be pretty much nothing. At least that's how I picture it in my head cannon.

It is true but the universe doesn’t have to be all there is.

[Tan3l6]

I don't understand 80+ percent (probably above 90 tho) of what he said, but it's fun to listen:

 

[tikker]

1 hour ago, Bad5ector said:

I mean, if it's true that universe is always expanding at an ever increasing rate... then I would assume, the space on the outside of the universe would be pretty much nothing. At least that's how I picture it in my head cannon.

That would be if space is expanding into something in the first place, but we don't know whether there is something that we are expanding into, because we don't know if the Universe is finite or infinite in size. There's also a conceptual difficulty with the idea of expansion. We are not expanding in the sense of inflating a balloon where the surface of the balloon is the boundary of the Universe, but in the sense of the balloon's surface itself increasing. This does not require something 'outside the Universe' to exist. Does nothing existing outside the Universe constitute "nothingness"?

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

There's a crazy theory that I personally like that says the universe is infinitely looping in such a way as, from our perspective, its always moving away from us.

It's more of a a 'side-effect', if you will, from expansion and similar to being on the surface of the inflating balloon. From any particular point it will always seem as if everything else is moving away from you and since the speed at which it moves away depends on the distance between you and that point, any observer in space, wherever they may be, will conclude that everything else is moving away from them.

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

All our measurements show the observable universe to be totally flat but the reason the observable universe is even a thing at all is because seeing beyond it is impossible. Space appears to be moving away from us faster than C and any light (if there even is, at that point our understanding of the physics is like a 4 year old sitting a college Math paper) from beyond the barrier will never reach us, if the bit after the observable universe is the start of a giant loop in all directions then we would never be able to detect it but it would appear to be moving away from us in every direction we look.

We just solve the issue of not being able to study what's past the horizon by invoking the cosmological principle That states that the Universe is 'isotropic and homogenous', i.e on large enough scales it's the same everywhere. You touch on an actual problem, though, that is called the horizon problem. The CMB looks too similar across the sky given the separation between various points and that nothing can interact or exchange information faster than the speed of light. Cosmic inflation, an initial very rapid expansion right after the Big Bang, was proposed to solve this problem.